Photo Diary

OATH HB, originally uploaded by michael_jecks.

This is what the glorious new cover of The Oath will be like. Very dark and brooding, but entirely suitable for the thrilling tale inside.

The great thing is, that Conway Stewart pens have made me the first of their limited edition subjects. They’re creating a Detection Collection of pens, each designed in collaboration with an author, and the first will be the Michael Jecks pen. The really nice thing about it is the fact that Simon & Schuster and Conway Stewart will be running a couple of competitions, so readers and pen collectors can win either a free pen, or some pen buyers can win a free book – keep your eyes on the website for more information on this.

Personally, I’m just really looking forward to grabbing hold of the pen for the first time!

DSC_0008, originally uploaded by michael_jecks.

And here we have the weather at the fag-end of March. Cold, wet, overcast – and bloody snowing, for God’s sake!

DSC_0006, originally uploaded by michael_jecks.

So this is what the weather was like two weeks ago, on Mother’s Day. 14th of March we went off to the sea side with views over to Burgh Island. Lovely – especially since the sun was out and it was gorgeous weather.

This is a short note, folks, just to show what Simon & Schuster are doing with the covers for the new titles.

The first title from Simon & Schuster, number 29 in the series, will be called THE OATH, and I reckon that the jacket tells pretty much what the book is going to be like. What do you lot think?

Been a busy week, but worthwhile. I’ve managed to get the basics sorted with Conway Stewart for a pen, to be called the Michael Jecks, oddly enough. It’s going to be a limited edition pen, a “Winston” in Conway Stewart’s Dartmoor resin, a really lovely dark colour, with gold bands and nib. Very attractive. I’ve also agreed some other interesting projects with them, I’ve mostly completed an introduction to a new series, and now I’ve got a picture for the book to be published in May – and I’ve figured out a whole chunk of book 30 too! Which is good because next week I have two days in London, and a third on 24th, when I’ve a bunch of meetings with my new publishers.

A busy time – but fun!

Let me know what you think of the book cover!

CRB Checks Reviewed

What is the point of them? Will they work?

What really gets to me is, there was a programme last week on this issue. The first thing they learned was, there were no figures on how many children were saved or helped by the checks now in place – let’s not forget: over 11,000,000 UK adults are expected to have their backgrounds checked now. Some because they are trying to gain jobs as teachers, some because they have children in a club and have offered to regularly drive friends’ children to the same venue.

The best that they could do was contact Childline, a UK charity for children to call when they feel threatened.

Childline checked the figures, and found that of 12,000 calls alleging abuse last year, 3 – yes, 3 – could have been prevented with the checks being imposed. No more.

The ISA and CRB checks wouldn’t have stopped Ian Huntley and the Soham murders, for example. He got access to his victims through his girlfriend, and the CRB checks specifically exclude partners and others in the same household. Many offenders are not strangers, but members of the family. CRB checks will not uncover them, either.

It is said that if one life is saved, it’s worth it – but is it? It’s a brilliant piece of political spinning. Automatically anyone who argues is put to the side as a deeply unpleasant person. Clearly all children are ‘innocent’ and should be protected.

Yes, they should be protected. But that does not mean it is right to impose a new bureaucrasy on the nation, affecting millions, without thought. Especially when the actual result may be disaster for hundreds or thousands of children each year.

Because we don’t know how many innocents are accused maliciously and see their careers blighted or destroyed.

It is already all too common in the UK to see teachers accused of inappropriate behaviours by children. Unsupported accusations can cause teachers to lose their careers, to lose their spouses, to see everything they have worked for being destroyed.

How many innocents is it acceptable to see ruined? No need for a court hearing, because these are simple administrative matters. But the long term impact is appalling, especially when the matters do get the attention of the English courts, because then all publicity is illegal and contempt of court. So an accused is not permitted to allow information to be released into the press that could, say, verify an alibi. It is illegal in case the identities of the affected children are released.

So the innocents are assumed guilty, denied the ability to defend themselves, and all on the word of children who may be acting from malice or a frivolous inclination. But those same devastated teachers may have their own children, who can be taken away from a supposed abuser. So, how many families broken apart, how many children ripped from their parents to live with single parent families or adopted because of these accusations, balances the death of the one child?

Worse, perhaps, are the families ruined because of clumsy clerical officers putting allegations against the wrong name. Data entry is inherently unreliable. Humans are fallible – especially those humans paid pathetic amounts to sit at a screen and input data. Incorrect data was logged against names 1,570 times in twelve months in the CRB to March 2009. That is 1,570 people who had to bear the horror of utterly unsupported allegations. Out of that number, how many will never again feel comfortable working in their career? How many will lose their spouse?

The damage done to innocent families outweighs the damage to one child, I’m afraid. It’s sad, but evil things will be done to kids.

No system of checks can work. We now have the most controlled society in the western world. Hitler and Goebbels would have been delighted to see how the English would embrace these new technologies. Computers cross referencing the locations of cars by number plate, checking where any mobile phone owner may have been at any time, the checking systems are pointless, foolish, time-wasting, expensive, and seriously damage our society by creating an atmosphere of distrust.

And now they stop authors from giving talks. Marvellous!

CRB CHECKS

For some months now I have been negotiating with Caerphilly Library Service to go and hold a Medieval Murderers event with Bernard Knight for them.

It was to be a great little gig: Bernard and I always enjoy working together, and both of us like visiting different areas, but this would have been much more special. We were going to hold it in Caerphilly Castle. A great location for a talk, being atmospheric, scenic, and, most importantly for me, it’s one of the scenes for my next book. Number 29 will have a large chunk of action in and around the castle, because it was not too far from there that King Edward II was captured. Yippee.

But the show has been cancelled.

In the past I have cursed our modern nanny state and the way that there is an overriding presumption of guilt that pervades every aspect of life.

When I was a boy, I started carrying a penknife with me from the age of about nine. I cut myself many times, and learned to be more circumspect in the way I handled knives, and when I was (once) stopped by police as a teenager, my reason for owning the lock-bladed knife in my pocket was accepted by the officers involved – I used it to clean my pipe. Yes, even then I was a rebel and preferred a pipe to cigarettes.

In recent years, the number of stabbings has increased. Therefore, the government has made it illegal to carry knives with blades longer than three inches. Even folding penknives with locking blades are now illegal unless you can show you need it for work, or some similar excuse. I think it’s nonsense, but it does at least have the benefit of some logic. Knives can hurt people, so stop people carrying knives.

But the new laws don’t stop there. Now all adults, especially males, are looked upon as paedophiles in waiting. We are all suspects. And that is why I am fuming here as I write.

Because Caerphilly is cancelled, not because of anything I have said or done, nor because of Bernard – but because the Council has a “Corporate Policy” of demanding that all performers have a CRB check.

So now, CRB checks are to be used to prevent authors from going on a stage in front of consenting adults.

Well, it’ll leave the field open to a number of other authors, because I for one will not agree to paying for someone to go through my records and keep yet another reference to me on a database for no purpose.

Angry? Moi?

Get your criminology degree online.

An interesting question from a reader last week – and I’ve been intending to get round to answering. Today I did, but it makes a good topic for the blog, because it is something I’m asked fairly often nowadays. There seems to be a belief among readers that every attitude in my books must reflect my own. Well, no, they don’t. My job is to get inside the heads of other people and explain their thoughts and motives. In the same way that I don’t have to experience the joys of killing other people to write crime,

Why do I have so much misbehaviour in my books?

Because it’s what happened. Seriously.

I’m very happy with the church generally. I’m proud to be able to call the Rector of Crediton a friend. And, in my defence, you have to bear in mind that in my books I use characters like Peter Clifford, Abbot Champeaux, Bishop Walter II, the Dean of Exeter, and God knows how many others who are all decent enough guys. The bad ones tend to be a rarity, really. If you add up all the good monks, the pleasant clerics, the recorders and clerks, you’ll find plenty of amiable, patient fellows.

However, you have to bear in mind that when an organisation directly or indirectly employs somewhere in the region of a third of the total male workforce of the country, there will be some bad apples.

The cases I use are generally from documents.

So the Parson of Quantoxhead is genuine;   the Exeter Canon who broke into a house and stole goods is genuine (John Dyrewyn);   as is the case of the priest ( John de Thorntone) who kidnapped a woman, raped her, ransomed her, and then kept both woman and ransom without making restitution.  The case of the eleven who broke open St Buryen Church and beat the Dean and attendants so harshly that their lives were feared of was true, as was that of the three priests of Crediton guilty of gross immorality. As was the story of Stapledon breaking into the Dominicans; the misbehaviour of the nuns at Belstone (culled from the cases at two other Devon convents recorded in Bishop Grandisson’s rolls); the robberies, the extortion, all the cases I’ve given are from the records. As is the story of the Mad Monk of Gidleigh – except he was called the Mad Monk of Haldon Hill in the court records.

And in case you think Devon folk were uniquely venal, don’t forget that it was at this time that the Crown Jewels were moved from Westminster Abbey to the Tower of London because the monks at the abbey were complicit in a theft of the jewels in 1303!

I do see my job as being moderately impartial. I like to show how things really were, not either as a rosy-tinted view of ye olde England, nor as a repellent neo-Marxist tale of grim, unrelenting misery. I try always to tell it as it is.

Unfortunately (or, rather, fortunately since I’m a crime writer!) there are just a vast number of cases of misbehaving nuns and monks and clerks and priests and all the rest of them!

It’s why Medieval England was such fun!

DSC_0094, originally uploaded by michael_jecks.

Idyllic picture. Taken on the Friday morning of our last day on the moors. Beautiful morning, made slightly better by the fact that the rain-filled stream did not quite rise high enough to engulf us. It rose above its banks and headed west towards Keith’s tent, but didn’t make it the full five feet – it stopped two feet short. He was lucky.

However, there is a tale about this picture. You see that hill in the background? The big one? Yes? There’s a bit of my bloody watch up there!

On all that walk, I had only a few stumbles. Three times into a boggy patch sticks in my memory somewhat. But that pales into insignificance beside tripping over a lump of granite on that hill.

The little tracks on the moor can be very sunken, with shoulder-high furze all around, and a path that’s six inches wide and eight deep; OK usually, but when tired . . . There was this rock in the middle of the track – and I just didn’t see it. So I tripped, put out my hand, and clobbered the little rock’s bigger brother. There was a crunch. It hurt. The nail on my thumb was ripped back. That hurt. So much, in fact, I didn’t notice the other pain on my wrist, where my watch had been. It had been wrenched from my wrist, and dangled floppily. The stainless steel bracelet had been broken, with a tiny piece of metal, less than an inch long, yanked off.

So today I phoned around for quotations. FIrst of all I asked for the cost of the bracelet. Hahahahaha. No. Then I restricted the quotes to only the clasp. And it STILL hurts as much as having my thumbnail ripped off!

Still, it was a fun walk!

It is terrible to hear about the guys shot at Fort Hood. I’ve no idea why the man decided to murder his own colleagues. It seems inexplicable that in an organisation built on mutual trust and support, a man could go berserk against his own kind.

It’s been suggested on the BBC that he was a moslem himself, that he has railed against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and had just heard he was going to be sent to Afghanistan.

I am sure that the BBC is regurgitating information being given in good faith – but whether this story’s true or not, is irrelevant. If the man wanted to make a protest, he could have refused to go as a conscientious objector. He’d have been dishonoured, but no more than he has been. More to the point, if he wanted to punish someone, the people to punish are those in government, especially the ones who have profited by contracts on security, rebuilding and others in which they have an interest.

The only guys entirely innocent in this are the poor fellows this madman killed. They had nothing to do with it. They were to be sent there, like him. It’s shocking to think that a trained soldier/doctor could do such a terrible thing and my thoughts go out to the families of the soldiers killed  – or wounded – in this week before Armistice Day.

Last week I was happy to be able to write about the delightful gentleman who wrote on Facebook to enquire whether I was related to an unhappy Mr Jecks who had died a little while ago, and perhaps I was the heir to his millions. Sadly, I felt I should decline his generous offer to send me the money.

Today I’ve been working moderately hard, and YES I FINISHED THE DARNED THING!

At 150,000 words, it means my estimate of 120,000 was slightly out – but the story needed the extra length, I am afraid. Some big topics in this one. Still, I was lucky enough to be saved from terminal time-dislocation by the arrival of several nice little emails.

They’re private, so keep them secret, won’t you?

First was from a very helpful lady, Amanda Mcclain (sic), of Parcel@dhl-usa.com. She had to ask me to collect my parcel personally, by printing the label at the bottom of the email in the handy Zip file attached. I didn’t feel I had time to look further.

Then, there was the nice Mr Ibru Valentine, who had to send me a FINAL NOTIFICATION, and asked me to contact Mrs Anita Dada immediately. Mr Idi Amin Dada’s widow, perhaps? I was intrigued. But no. Apparently, I am a “Friend”, and my ATM card has been deposited with “below courier company for safe keep”. The company was Del Courier Service, and they sounded very reputable. Where are they? Bp 1009 Ste ceciles carreffour, Cotonou Republic of Benin. Well, I’d like to contact her, to supply her with “more information’s/clearification”, but I did have the book still to finish. Ach, shame, but decided against. There was something about Mr Valentine’s email that put me off. It was mribru@ekolay.net. Don’t fancy food poisoning via mail, thankyou.

I worked on, and a little later, there was another email. This was sure to be good. Third time lucky, after all. It was from Bruce Jacobs. Hmm. Don’t remember him.

This one was really good. It said, “Congratulations Beneficiary”. A good opening, I thought. And you know what? Wow! The United Nations Organization (UNO) has selected 3000 lucky individuals from the 30 member countries . . .” Hold on. I don’t remember any part of the UN’s mandate as authorizing a lottery from their recent “economic empowerment programme”. Still, it was for “Six Hundred And Fifty Thousand Five Hundred Great British Pound Sterlings each”. I liked that.

What was really nice was, my mail came from the “United Nations Trust Funds, United Kingdom Department of Humanitarian Affairs, Baley House, Har RoadSutton, Greater London SM1 4te.

I think this should have read Bailey House, Harrow Road. Oh, and there is no lower case in a post code, but hey – they live over here, so . . . oh, hold on. They want me to respond to their “corresponding office in the (AU) African Union”. Oh. And another Oh. They want my name, address, date & place of birth, phone numbers, next of kin, sex, occupation, marital status, nationality, and, just in case, a copy of my ID card and passport.

I think I can give that one a miss, too.

Which leads me to wonder just how successful Africa could be, if these fraudsters, scammers, crooks, liars and thieves would actually spend a little time trying to make a living by working rather than trying to thieve my hard-earned dosh.

I wonder who’ll be writing to me tomorrow, though!