Fun worksheets on the TES website

Space Dog Alfred - three worksheets - one cloze exercise, one discussion starter and two wordsearches. Suitable for year (grade) 6 or 7  but you can decide for yourself.

Click here to download

#spacedogalfred

Space Dog Alfred is now available from Amazon, paperback and Kindle

Click here to see details

Kindle is cheaper but harder to wrap up and put under the tree. The library is your cheapest option. The ISBN is  978-1517351182

 

 

 

 

2019

This year I published twelve short stories together in Darkness in Durrington which is the third book in the Durrington Detective Agency trilogy. I do not know if I will produce another book and turn it into a tetralogy. I have written one more Durrington Detective Agency story since Darkness in Durrington.

I have written reviews of books, TV programmes and films for The Socialist. One result was that I was expelled from the Labour Party. I asked Worthing West Labour Party to point to a single sentence that I had written which was anti-Labour. I was told that the content was "irrelevant". No writer wants to hear that!

My review of Tombland was also published in Printed Words magazine and I didn't get expelled from anything for that.

I have had work published in Alternative History Fiction, the Tall Tales and Short stories anthology and in Page and Spine in America. I was going to include a story in The Moon but I checked and that was actually December 2017. How time flies.

The blog http://worthingflash.blogspot.com has been successful with over 45 contributors and 10000 visitors. 

                                Author page of Amazon

Wikipedia defends Blair

Wikipedia has blocked any editing on the page of mass-murdering war criminal Tony Blair. If anybody thinks he can whitewash his disgraceful history they are wrong.

The BBC use Blair to attack Jeremy Corbyn. We will see how well (or hopefully otherwise) his sock puppets will do in Labour’s leadership election.

Derek McMillan's Author Page on Amazon

Ten years of Tories

If the BBC had a shred of honesty they would revisit the people they interviewed before the election who said they were Labour voters but would vote Conservative. They would ask them if they voted for ten years of Tory austerity (ten years of cuts, ten years of lies etc).

The Tories shut down Parliament because it wouldn't do their bidding. They aim to shut down elections too in case the electorate tire of them.

Johnson intends to revoke the fixed term Parliament Act with the intention of ten years of Tory rule. He might as well elect himself dictator for life and have done with it.

The BBC and Channel Four have had thinly veiled threats from the Tories that they will either toe the party line or their funding will be cut.

Prior to the election the broadcasters and the gutter press focussed on convincing Labour voters it was OK to vote Tory just this once to "Get Brexit Done". The horrifying reality of ten years with the horror clown in number ten will gradually dawn on them. All the promises of more money for schools and the NHS will vanish like the mist.

Greta Thunberg praises other activists

“It’s really about them,” Thunberg said of the young activists from developing countries already facing the effects of climate change, including violent storms, droughts and rising sea levels. “We talk about our future, they talk about their present.”

The gutter press has derided and bullied Greta Thunberg and it has done nothing to stop the tide of protest about the climate emergency.

Vote with your conscience

You might think Sir Peter Bottomley is an honourable man. I couldn't possibly comment on that. 

However, if you vote for him you will be voting for five years with a Prime Minister who lies as frequently as he breathes. An article in the i newspaper detailed a number of Johnson's greatest lies in 2018. He has lied many times since then. Most notably he lied over proroguing parliament when he lied to the Queen, he lied to Parliament and he lied to the public. Whenever he talks about trust in politics on TV the audience burst into laughter.

He was such a liar even the Tory "Times" sacked him. It would be no bad thing if the electorate did the same.

You will be voting for five more years of Tory cuts. The Tory promises on spending almost make up for the amount they have cut but not quite. And they are empty promises. They promised to get rid of fracking. That solemn pledge lasted three days. How long will these promises last?

You will be voting for the infantile and dishonest pledge to "get Brexit done" this year, next year. sometime. The only purpose of the slogan is to distract attention from the disastrous consequences of austerity. 

Nicky Morgan MP said on the Today program that if you do not trust a politician the thing to do is to vote against them. She said it twice. Boris Johnson cannot have been pleased.

I will be voting for the victims of austerity.
I will be voting for those who save lives.
I will be voting for the teachers.
I will be voting Labour.
I am not a Labour Party member (I was expelled) but I can only vote with my conscience.

Derek McMillan author page

Beyond the Hemingway App

You can buy the Hemingway app but it is also free to try at http://bit.ly/2OKlX6Y. It is a tool for writers. It is very valuable for flash fiction and for writing for children and young adults. It seeks out long sentences which you can break up into shorter sentences. It can help you to drop complex vocabulary and reduce the use of the passive voice. It declares war on adverbs. It also has a word count.

Writers ought to use it in the same way as a cyclist uses stabilisers. Use the app by all means but you must be able to do these things for yourself. One great writer who never used the Hemingway App was Ernest Hemingway.

Remember to send your masterpiece of flash fiction to worthingflash@gmail.com (85 to 1000 words. So every word has to count.

Derek McMillan author page