A Feathered Dragon

"The Skrayling Tree" by  Michael Moorcock is going very well, and Ayanawatta, Oona and White Crow are riding the woolly mammoth Bes. They are now battling with a dying feathered dragon that has lost its way, and came off worst in an encounter with Bes. White Crow thinks it will be humane to kill it as it is in so much pain.

Still reading "Imajica" by Clive Barker on my Kindle. This is a book I never want to end. When I finish it, I just restart it.

I recently discovered that my American Amazon Author page has a feed from this blog, which you can see here. It only shows on the .com site but not on others. C'est la vie.

The music is "Lord Of The Rings" by Bo Hansson

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal, but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

1. The Plagiaristic Poetry Series - Poems Taken From Random-Themed Lines
2. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
3. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
4. The King Of Elfland's Daughter - A Wonderful Book By Lord Dunsany
5. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
6. Barter Books - An Amazing Bookshop In A Railway Station In Alnwick
7. God Knows I'm Good (I Really Do) - Thoughts on Vocal Writing
8. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
9. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer, and this is her Instagram

The Secret Commonwealth

Although I've not really spoken much about "The Secret Commonwealth" by Philip Pullman, it's a 700 page tome and I am about three quarters the way through it, I am thoroughly enjoying it. It's the fifth is the His Dark Materials / Book of Dust sequence and possibly a little less magical and more political.

The events in the book are reflecting the current political situation in the UK and USA while still staying in the alternate reality of people and their daemons. This is at the same time as the BBC / HBO are showing a dramatisation of "His Dark Materials" and that follows the, in my opinion,  excellent "Golden Compass".

The irony is, and I am sure Philip Pullman did this deliberately, "The Secret Commonwealth" in the book refers to the world of magical creatures. The whole series, books and dramatisations is worth investigating, and I am loving all of it.

When I see a seven hundred page book I think will I ever get through this? When you are coming to the end you don't usually think that's the finish line, you just don't want it to finish. There is always the option to go back and two of my favourite book clock in at over a thousand pages, they are "Imajica" by Clive Barker (my favourite book ever) and "Lord of the Rings" by JRR Tolkien. Incidentally when my daughter was 8 she told her teacher she had read "Lord of the Rings". He was a little sceptical about this so quizzed her on it. He then realised that she had read it and had star pupil status.

So what music do we have this grey Saturday morning? We could go with Bo Hansson's  1970 album which you can hear here , but it's a bit elevator musicish. I'm going to going with this Peter Jackson "Lord of the Rings" sequence soundtracked by Clint Mansell's theme to Darren Aronofsky's "Requiem For A Dream" which is well work watching on a big screen played loud.