TATTERED BRITISH EMPIRE QUAKES AS FURIOUS WELSH ISLANDERS DECLARE UDI

Veteran author Ian Skidmore is a staunch believer in equal opportunity … his love-hate relationships with England and Wales are of admirable egality.

Blatant bias he reserves exclusively for pipsqueak bureaucracy, which in English he might describe as ‘codswallop’ but in Welsh as ‘lol’, coincidentally reflecting in lower-case internet upper-case LOL, newspeak for ‘Laugh Out Loud’.

And Laugh Out Loud is what his newly released BeWrite Books e-novel Island Fling is all about … sheer, rolllocking hilarity from start to fin, as Welsh islanders – in Celtic high dudgeon – cheekily challenge the might of Great Britain in an all out bid for uncompromising independence (a state which Skidmore personally enjoys and used in countless millions of words to keep readers and radio show fans in thoughts and chuckles for several decades).

In Westminster, more than tea is stirred when Daffyd takes a fling with his sling at Goliath and the ‘cachu’ (use your imagination or a Welsh-English dictionary) hits the fan. But that serves ’em right. Let them sue!

(WARNING: To avoid the attention of men in white coats, it is recommended that Island Fling not be read in waiting rooms at dentists’ or psychotherapists’ clinics. Also, for the tranquility of mind of others, please to not attempt to read Island Fling in crowded buses or in first class commuter rail carriages. Turbulence in planes can be reduced by application of duct tape over the mouth. Reading in the street could cause collapse and subsequent trip-over injury to other pedestrians. BeWrite Books’ insurance does not cover the consequences of irresponsible reading.)

So here’s what the cover notes tell us of Island Fling:

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Touchy people are lords of Welsh manors – and Huw ap Gryffydd is the touchiest of all. For him, it’s not the last straw that breaks the camel’s back, but the first.

So when the Her Majesty’s Royal Mail has the effrontery to replace the names of the tiny but proud and ancient Welsh islands of Yns Becod and Yns Tad with mere postal zip codes, enough is enough, already.

And before the hapless British Prime Minister can even make any gargling attempt to say, ‘Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch,’ ap Gryffydd whips his 2,000 colourful islanders into a Celtic frenzy.

They make a Unilateral Declaration of Independence from the mainland and vow to stand, man, woman, child and Druid against any threat to their autonomy.

Centuries earlier the Romans sensed the power and peril of the wrath of the sleeping Welsh dragon, trembled in their togas, and left well enough alone. But those in Westminster’s corridors of power are too cocky for their own good, and rather than just go home for a nice cup of tea and a lie down as Caesar did, they lay plans to force the rebel islands back into line ... and abysmally underestimate what’s in store for their task force across a short stretch of sea.

Can Squire Huw and his makeshift defence brigade of wily Welsh defeat the might of the English so that the British become two islands short of being Great Britain ever again?

Skidmore’s Island Fling rolls swiftly from giggles to laughs to side-splitting hilarity as the Islanders lay their peculiar plans ... and those at Number Ten Downing Street, London desperately try every trick in the book (and some that aren’t in the book) to recapture the two little dots on their map, save face and keep upper lips stiff.

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Author Ian Skidmore

One of Britain’s last great eccentrics, author Ian Skidmore has thirty books under his impressively lengthy belt – many of them best-sellers. He was also one of the most widely-read newspaper columnists and radio show presenters in the UK. After thirty years with BBC Wales, he was awarded by them the coveted Golden Microphone Award … and then fired a month later when BBC bureaucrats discovered he was English!

Ian Skidmore is a talent to rival Tom Sharpe. The funniest writer in Wales: Liverpool Daily Post. Hard act to follow: Wales on Sunday. Great eccentric: Western Mail. Hilarious: Anthony Hose, Director of Buxton, Beaumaris, Llandudno Festivals. Witty and erudite: Joe D Hendry, President of The Library Association. Witty and engaging. Tony Lewis Wales Tourist Board.

Skidmore’s sequel to Island Fling, The Magnificent Evan, will be released by BeWrite Books this summer. His outrageously funny Forgive us Our Press Passes about his days in newspapers is already available from BeWrite Books in OUR BOKSHOP SECTION HERE and all other major online bookstores. 

Over the coming months, BeWrite Books will be re-publishing much of Skidmore’s now out-of-print novels … and all new work, freshly produced in his NINTH decade of brightening the planet with wit, wisdom and belly laughs will now be exclusively in BeWrite Books ebooks editions. All author royalty he donates directly to charities.

And free mini-book brochures of Island Fling and Forgive Us Our Press Passes – including cover, book notes, author biography and picture, reviews and generous extract are instantly available to read right now HERE and HERE. Be sure to check into the author’s Saturday blog column at Skidmore's Island ... if you dare!

Artist John jensen

Cover art is by another revered and award-wining vet, the famously fun John Jensen, who has illustrated more than seventy books and whose brilliant cartoons – displaying wit, wisdom, art and a healthy dose of irreverence – have appeared in major newspapers and magazines all over the world for more than half a decade. Find out more about the colourful Jensen and check out some of his gallery of giggles at JOHN’S WEBSITE.

Island Fling is now available direct from the BeWrite Books BOOKSTORE, all major online retailers and in all digital formats for all electronic reading platforms from PCs and laptops, through the full range of dedicated ebook-reading devices and tablets to iPods and smart phones.

For those interested in the details ... Author: Ian Skidmore. Cover art: John Jensen. Editor: Neil Marr with invaluable proof-reading assistance in unfamiliar Welsh names and phrases from prolific author and editor Celia Skidmore. Text design, digital editions creation and distribution: Tony Szmuk. Additional input: The BeWrite Books team.

Happy Weekend, folks, and Iechyd da. Neil, Tony, Hugh, Sam et al

WEDDING BELLS COVER UP RIGHT ROYAL CLANGERS?

The latest royal wedding – set to be watched by a TV audience of billions – is staged on this of all days to draw attention from release of the first ever ebook editions of Anthony Delano’s Slip-Up ... the embarrassing story of the biggest boo-boo by Her Majesty’s Finest since Queen Victoria’s Bobbies let Jack the Ripper slip through their fingers.

Somehow, there was a leak at BeWrite Books of Slip-Up’s international release date on April 29 and the Windsors’ wise advisers plotted, behind gilded doors at Buckingham Palace, to scheme an extravagant diversion. Money was no object, and Wills and Kate received a royal command to tie the knot to coincide and present a blushing bride rather than a blushing Queen.

This is why:

In 1963 President John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Martin Luther King told racially-divided America, ‘I have a dream’, the notorious Alcatraz island prison closed, Beatlemania screaming gave the world a headache when the Fab Four from Liverpool released their first album, Please Please Me ...

And Ronnie Biggs and a masked – but unarmed – gang of jokers pulled off the biggest multi-million heist in history – the Great Train Robbery. Arguably the greatest insult to the royal family since Charles I met a sticky end on the chopping block.

Yup, they raided the Royal Mail and toted off sacks stuffed with banknotes (each carrying a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II). OK, Her Majesty’s Police eventually rounded up the gang and the Great Train Robbers were sent to jail for a long, long time. The bulk of their royal loot was never recovered.

But the fun really began when Biggs, with twenty-eight years of his sentence still to serve, staged a breath-taking break from one of Her Majesty’s most 'secure' prisons, went on the run and became the world's most wanted man. He also became a folk hero as, time and again, he gave Scotland Yard’s crack squad the slip all over the globe.

As HM's police farce gave the public mounting glee, it was crack newspaper reporters from the world press hub, London’s Fleet Street, who tracked him down in Australia and again in Brazil, returning with world scoops, while Scotland Yard’s top men returned hapless, empty-handed and red-faced to ridicule.

One would not have been amused, it is safe to assume.

For thirty-six years, ‘Biggsy’ lived high on the hog in Rio de Janeiro, laughing along with his countless millions of fans, basking in glory, and untouchable in a country with no extradition treaty. He sported beauties on his arm at lavish parties where champagne and caviar went down in celebration like tea and doughnuts at gloomy police station inquests into their failures. His smiling face was on tee-shirts – every bit the icon Che Guevara had become by then. He recorded songs and flouted his glamour-life freedom in world media ... as plodding Scotland Yard blushed and blundered.

Royal Mugs?

Anthony Delano's insider story – unique, insightful and often hilarious – is a chuckle-by-chuckle account of every slip-off by Biggs, slip-in by the press and Slip-Up by HM’s cops and the Queen’s prestigious government departments and representatives overseas.

A major BBC film of the book was hastily blocked by the man in charge of the chase – the famously infamous Slipper of the Yard (unkindly referred to in some circles as ‘Slip-Up of the Yard’) – when he threatened legal action; not because of any inaccuracy in Delano’s work, but because he claimed the actor portraying him went too far in caricaturing him as a clown.

This is the very first digital edition of the book that became Biggsy’s own favourite (that's him reading it in fun, sun and shorts below), had Biggsy fans in stitches, and is an embarrassment to The Queen’s Finest to this day. It will become your favourite, too.

And that’s why, we strongly suspect, the House of Windsor is so desperately trying to make a right royal cover-up of Slip-Up with pomp, ceremony and a bonus day-off for British workers. Factor in lost production and Weddingate will cost the country billions. Ronnie's gang's cost to the country was petty cash by comparison. And the BeWrite Books ebook edition is the price of a pint or two in real money.

Regardless of royal wrath, the ebook is today now available at all the usual ebook stores and direct from the bookstore section of the BeWrite Books website (HERE) in all popular digital formats. It is also available in paperback from Revel Barker Publishing (HERE) and at other major online bookstores.

Click on the cover at the BeWrite Books storefront and you can see more about the book and its author, read reviews and download a free chapter.

This is the second in the series of BeWrite Books' ‘hack-lit’ ebook releases in collaboration with RBP … books by ace Old School journalists with massive general and international appeal.

Next up will be The Manacled Mormon, also by Anthony Delano, in June. It’s the inside story of wickedly naughty and outrageously sexy Joyce McKinney’s world famous experiment with kidnapping and bondage. Kinky McKinney is back in the news because of a notorious movie about her sexploits. And there will be more hack-lit releases at pretty regular intervals as time goes on.

Slip-Up was written by Anthony Delano, edited by Revel Barker and produced in all BB ebook formats by Tony Szmuk.

Cheers. Neil

New Title: Bottom of the List by Steve Attridge

Paranoid recluse Adam Bittermouth’s Roebuck University makes a fortune. But as a seat of learning it gets bottom marks when money-grubbing bean counters replace professors and students become craftily manipulated cash cows.

From his opulent high-tech hermitage in a tower 500 feet above the campus, Bittermouth monitors every eccentric move of staff and students via hidden cameras ... and dreams of the day when his money-spinning institution will be free of both.

Meanwhile, far below, political corruption, monstrous egos, existential terror, corporate bullying and murder head the curriculum, along with romantic angst, constipation problems, sanity issues and bad plumbing.

In an hilarious riot of a tale that echoes an imploding real world, author Steve Attridge introduces scary security guards Baz and Dave; sex-mad failed poet Damion Dimmuck; Dr Duff with his paranoid terror of sick people; Mercedes Blonk, seducer of young men and radical theorist; and psychopathic dwarf, General Spinelli, a bloodstained South American dictator who enrols (at a price) to read (but misunderstand) classic literature.

Unlikely champions of human values are a befuddled academic whose only friends are literary characters, a weedy fantasist student addicted to list-making, and his secret love, the Rubenesque, silent and unsmiling girl with poetry in her soul and a huge cache of illicit chocolate bars under her bed.

At stake are all future generations in the western world ... will they be educated or programmed?