Here I am at the edge

I am no expert in film history. Film critics will tell you they think Carmen Maura 's best work was done with Pedro Almodovar . I am not a student of films, and have no qualifications to back my thoughts up, for me she did her best away him Pedro.  I think it is probably because I am not a fan of Pedro's obsession with young women and his humor does nothing for me. The film at the top was directed by Carlos Saura , and is a beautifully put together story of patriotism and art. I came to the conclusion I don't enjoy  Pedro Almodovar's films because most of them are about neurotic ladies and the last thing they can classed as is comedy. Another producer I enjoy working with Carmen Maura is Alex de la Iglesia . 800 Bullets La Comunidad La Comunidad is a laugh a minute comedy about a search for money in block of flats in Madrid , and the extent Ms. Maura goes to hiding the fact she has the money from the other tenants.

Indian movies T his month, I made an error of judgement in buying some DVDs from eBay . I cannot blame the sellers as the error was mine - I should have checked before buying the discs that they had  subtitles , but I was so excited to get some of the films for my  Bollywood  selection I forgot to check. Que Sera, it's not the end, I can always add the subs after downloading  them.   I came across something interesting, I am watching a movie from the late 60s, but with modern city names.

Non Uccidere. I am watching Non Uccidere , an engrossing thriller from Italy on Walter Presents . The story on WP follows on from the end of series 1 very well; two episodes into the second series the mother is written out, the actress playing the mother,  Monica Guerritore , didn't like the way her part was being portrayed. This is where it gets confusing, the version I am watching on streaming TV still has her in and this is up to episode 5; the story does make sense if you have followed the series, as it would appear in the streaming version that the daughter is living her life in retrospect to give her life now some meaning. In the Walter version she is trying to move on, both stories make sense, but neither of the channels show the same episodes that is what is so confusing. I am even more confused now. Last night I finished series 2, and was totally mystified; the reason is the last episode of the season is the same as the finale' to season 1. I can only thin...

Cassandra Clare. Cassandra Clare 's best selling series of books - The Mortal Instruments - was set to have a second film out this month, however, that plan has been put on the back burner; the film of her previous book in the series came out several years ago and has not broken even.

A month of surprises The two big surprises from this month for me, are being paid by Draft2Digital for eight months royalties - all of $10 - and finding out I sold an eBook on Amazon ; I wasn't surprised it sold in Japan as I have sold several there through Draft2Digital. A smaller surprise was finding I had bought another film in the Nagin series, instead of the horror film I was expecting.

Why I write short stories. I have gone back to writing short stories for several reasons, the main one being I find it hard to write at any length these days. With few if any sales for my e-books, I am not tempted to write at length as the previous attempts resulted in achieving one thing, making me feel useless as a writer. Another reason is that my style of writing is not to pad the pages with lots of detail that does not move the story on. As one character in one of my stories says "I write like Mickey Spillane , not Jane Austen , If something is in my story, it is there to add to the story, not to add to be a page filler."

I am not surprised by the news. The news that this morning's leading group of readers is from Morocco comes as no surprise to me, you may ask why? The answer is easy to understand if you have been my blog, you will have noted this month I have written a lot about Spain , and Spanish is a second language in the country. For some time, I considered rewriting a ghost story called Ghosts don't dance  that I have inquiries about, whether I was going to write a sequel or an extended version? My thought was to write a new version on a similar theme about a man who returns from Morocco to Spain. After he is thought to have died in a plane crash.

Walter Presents. I waited for these series to come back on Walter Presents , and now they have I can hardly bear to switch the TV on to watch them. The problem is not that I lost interest, or that I watch movies from Spain now. The issue is that by 22:00 I am so bored I go to bed.

Writing is a one-way street for me. When I began, over 11 years ago, I thought I wrote my short stories to be read, but now I realize what a one-way street writing is. I can spend hours, or days if I get into a story, writing page after page for you to read, and what is there in it for me? Zero Zilch Nothing Nada Noll That is correct, my only reward is you reading, for FREE, my work. In all the time I was blogging, I can say that few if any, blogs lead to sales of my e-books. The Bible may tell you it is better to give than receive, but some recompense for my time would have been nice.

I don't seek out any type. I have no favorite type of lady, the only thing I don't go for is a thin model type which is why Penelope Cruz does little to arouse my interest; I am not saying she is unattractive, but not for me. Nor do I have a nationality preference, though you could think I have a tendency for ladies from Spain , or India if you read my blogs. If there was a type that attracts me, it is a lady with a strong personality, such as the ladies in the romance  stories I write and try to sell at Amazon . I have found if you have a good facial structure, your beauty will last a lot longer.

In the land beyond beyond My back is sore from humping and dumping for three days as we moved the garden around, so today I will search for some mislaid DVD sets. I know they are in my room, the question is where LOL?

Going for a walk I could go for a walk as the exercise I would get could keep my right knee from becoming useless through inactivity, and the fresh air would help the state of my mental health . If I get stopped by the police doing their job, and they do not consider my exercise worthy, I could be facing a £60 fine. My problem is that because my left ankle has no strength I need to put more and more pressure on my right knee to remain mobile.  As the Royal Air Force forgot about me for over two years, after I applied for an EPV to enable me to have some mobility, even if I had no money to go out, and now Bristol City Council is doing all they can to delay the building of a shed for the EPV, before long it will be too late for me. If you wonder, Bristol Council is a Labour council and has been for longer than anyone can recall. Years ago, staying in was an option I was forced to take as my disability benefit had been cut, now it is a choice I make to help our NHS h...

A Russian following. For a long time, I have had a massive following for this blog in Russia ; I cannot define precisely what the reason is for this following. To my mind, I think it is because I can relate to the lifestyle of old Russia, as I have never had a lot of money.  These days, I get over 100 readers a day from Russia, most of these I suspect are young ladies either on webcam sites, or looking for someone to con me by trying to convince me that they wish to marry me. I have said many times their mothers would have more luck convincing me.

Where is the motivation? Last week, I thought I might have found some motivation as my story L'Enfant Terrible appeared to be coming alive again. I was enjoying writing the story as the character was about to spend some time in Spain  researching some mysteries and exploring some sights of the Civil War.  My new motivation is to copy Telemundo Novellas from Mexico off YouTube, as they are not available to buy.

Ashes from the sky The film Cenizas Del Cielo is a Spanish film about a Scottish writer who is forced to rest in a village in Spain when his campervan breaks down. During his stay, he gets to know some of the villagers, some are against the nearby nuclear plant, while others are trying to make it more prosperous.  For myself, I am against nuclear power until we find a safe way to treat the waste. My mind goes back to Three Mile Island iii when the USA almost had an accident three times as bad as the one at Chernobyl in Russia . In my post, A Russian incident , I recount a story I heard on the short wave band many years from Russia about a train crash outside Kyiv . I later used this as the basis for a short story on a friend's blog. This story brings me to a series on Spanish TV I am trying to download called La Zona , not to be confused with a film from Mexico with the same title. This series is about the clean up of an accident at a fictional nuclear power pl...

The hidden man El Hombre Oculto is not a horror film from Spain , well not in one sense of the word horror , the film is based on a true story of a man who hid in a tunnel in his house for 30 years after the end of the Spanish Civil War . His family only saw him for a few hours on a night in case they were betrayed to Franco . He was one of the fortunate, many other writers fled from Spain, never to return until Franco died in1975, others were hunted down and shot, and some like Frederico Garcia Lorca were shot, and left where they died with no grave. I started a new page this week called Alan's Obscurities   my aim is to seek out films that got little exposure, and give them some air time.

The opening to a new series of short story romance books If my plan was to come true, I would like to be asked a publisher to continue my story L' Enfant Terrible to the end I foresee for my romance short story . In this case, that would be for the story to form the first book in either a trilogy, or quadrilogy. The truth is closer to the book becoming a stand alone which rarely sells.

It is not an act of a vengeful God Some people I used to know paid me the compliment of saying that I thought like a Jew. I won't deny that at times I do, mainly because I can empathize with their struggles to exist as a Christian state in a Muslim area. However, I do not agree with the notion that all things have a Biblical relevance to them. Krakatoa will be taken as a sign that God is angry with the world by some religious people; for myself, I take it that the Earth has squeezed out the volcanic eruption. The earthquakes in Italy two years ago are another example, Italy may not be on the edge of a tectonic plate. Still, the country is mountainous, and with the planet's core, always moving things like this unfortunately happen. It is not religious, it is science.

L'Enfant Terrible My writing is like a ship adrift in the  Saragossa Sea , I know where I wish to go, for that I have a plan, what I lack is the motivation to continue writing a story (L'Enfant Terrible ) that will probably never be read. In essence, ennui is a writer's nightmare.

The language of romance To give my short story romance   L'Enfant Terrible   more passion, the characters will be talking in Spanish and French . To help me write in the languages I have bought two dictionaries, next month I hope to buy an Italian dictionary for use in a future romance I have planned.

The joy of an active mind Not for the first time, and I doubt it will be the last, I lost a night's sleep as my mind wrote the next chapters of my romance short story L' Enfant Terrible . The story, for now, is designed to be a short story but knowing me, if I can keep the motivation I could write a novel . I have had several themes in mind for exploring the concept of plot expansion, one was to try to bring my character to the exploration of the assassination of the poet Fredrico Garcia Lorca during the Spanish Civil War . I started to take sleeping pills to help me sleep as my back gives me such a lot of pain, now I find if I don't take them I cannot get to sleep, even if I am so tired I am falling asleep as I type. 

The thriller from Belgium . I recently bought this film from Belgium because I thought I could down English subtitles for it. I was wrong, the only Alias subtitles available refer to either the Jennifer Garner TV series or the series about a man escaping the clutches of drug baron Pablo Escobar . One of the reasons I bought the film is that in the movie are three of my fave actresses from Belgium  Hilde De Baerdemaeker ,  Hilde van Mieghem , and  Veerle Baetens . At least, this time, the film is in its natural tongue, not in Italian as my previous purchase is, that makes no difference when you can't get English subtitles.

Bad Banks Germany  is in such a bad state, the German economists say the country will never recover. To give you an idea of how bad the financial state is, if you were to write the figure it would be 30 followed by 14 zeroes. Watching the series, Bad Banks gets me wondering, was the collapse of the Deutsche Bank predicted ? Angela Merkel will get the blame for its decline with her Open Door policy that allowed the country to get flooded with Muslims, but the system began to fail back in 1978; I know because I was working in Germany at the time.

The Joys and the Sorrows. Los gozos y las sombras in English means The Joys and Sorrows. This TV adaption of the books by Gonzalo Torrente Ballester is set in the years before the Spanish Civil War , the story is centred on the return of a man who had left the fictional village many years ago, and the impact of his return to the fishing village. I finished watching the series last night, Sept 9th. the episode where the village turns out to witness the rescue of the vessel Marianna iii as she struggles in the stormy seas is typical of many such villages anywhere we men fish. My short story Lifeboat heroes on sale as Draft2Digital   retells the story of one of my late uncle's  who was involved in such a rescue in the late 70's with the Teesmouth lifeboat; also the story on the Christian short stories link tells a similar story about men fighting the seas, this was inspired by the hymn " Child, your cries have awoken the Master ." One of my fave actresses from Sp...