Dickimaw Books Blog: Search Results

47 posts found. Showing 1–47.

image of dickimaw parrot with cookies in cloudsOnce upon a time, a little parrot decided to migrate across the vast ocean to the cloud lands, with nothing more than a handful of cookies. The Dickimaw Books site has migrated to a new web hosting provider and this is the story of its journey.
Nicola Talbot 2019-09-15 📂 Site 🔖 Migration
image of dickimaw parrot with cookies in cloudsOnce upon a time, a little parrot decided to migrate across the vast ocean to the cloud lands, with nothing more than a handful of cookies. The Dickimaw Books site has migrated to a new web hosting provider and this is the continuing story of its journey.
Nicola Talbot 2019-09-17 📂 Site 🔖 Migration
image of dickimaw parrot with cookies in cloudsSo many websites have cookies. What exactly are cookies, and what do they do?
Nicola Talbot 2019-09-20 (updated 2021-06-05) 📂 Site 🔖 Cookies Migration
Image of Dickimaw parrot in clouds with some cookies and a hamburgerA guide to the Dickimaw Books site settings.
Nicola Talbot 2019-09-28 (updated 2023-05-05) 📂 Site 🔖 Cookies Site settings
image of sign fastened to postThere are some interesting little curiosities in our village and the surrounding area, such as the Foxhole bus stop at the end of Long Lane that has “No bus services currently operate in this area” displayed on it."
Nicola Talbot 2019-10-05 📂 Norfolk 🔖 Re-published
Image of rough seaWhen I was a child, my family used to go out for walks at the weekend, usually after Sunday lunch. Seaford Head, Hope Gap, the Cuckmere, Friston Forest and on the other side towards Newhaven, the Tide Mills."
book cover of The Foolish HedgehogThis is the story of how I came to write the book given that my primary emphasis has been on writing text books and adult crime/thriller/speculative fiction rather than children’s books.
I’ve been wondering what’s my all-time favourite book. My tastes have changed over the years.
Living languages have an interesting fluidity. They evolve with the people who continually use them.
Nicola Talbot 2019-10-19 📂 Language 🔖 Re-published
Exploring the South Norfolk countryside. I’m not lost, honest!
Nicola Talbot 2019-10-21 📂 Norfolk 🔖 Re-published
Writing a first draft is hard.
The problem with the twenty-first century is that when technology fails we can be in a worse state than we might’ve been in when that technology didn’t exist or only existed in a primitive state.
Nicola Talbot 2019-10-21 📂 Norfolk 🔖 Re-published
Novel beginnings are hard to write.
Image of pocket violin with a hippo headpieceThe story of the creation of an unusual wedding anniversary gift.
Where do you get your imagination from?
Image of an open windowWhat’s the significance of an open window?
Book cover (double spread) of “Quack, Quack, Quack. Give My Hat Back!”The story behind the illustrated children’s book “Quack, Quack, Quack. Give My Hat Back!”
image of crime story book coversThe inspirations and other information about my crime and SF works.
map of Norfolk and surrounding areas © OpenStreetMap contributorsThe Private Enemy is a crime fiction novel set in the county of Norfolk in East Anglia.
The Fourth Protectorate is an alternative history novel where the principle point of departure is the Brighton bomb in 1984.
Image of Turbot and Sir Quackalot ducksI had an interesting encounter with a couple of children as I was heading back into the village after walking around the muddy footpaths and byways around the area.
Image of arara with Broad Norfolk outputAn application that supports localisation is one that is designed to allow textual information to be displayed in different languages, and (where necessary) to format certain elements, such as dates or currency, according to a particular region.
The current secondary education system discriminates against students on the Autistic Spectrum, who may have a wide vocabulary, good spelling, punctuation and a firm understanding of grammar, but because they can’t understand sub-text, emotional responses and non-literal phrases they fail the English Language GCSE.
I’ve been using TeX Live on Fedora for years, but today I encountered an odd error when trying to perform the usual sudo tlmgr update package.
Nicola Talbot 2019-11-23 📂 (La)TeX 🔖 Linux TeX Live
There are a number of RSS feeds and other notifications available on the Dickimaw Books site.
Nicola Talbot 2019-12-05 📂 Site 🔖 News Notifications
Image of ebook coversIn response to the current Coronavirus situation that is leaving people housebound, authors are providing their ebooks at a discounted price or free.
UK mobile networks are sending a “stay at home” message to everyone in response to the current nationwide lockdown. While the link in that specific message is safe, don’t click on links in text messages. It’s very easy for scammers to fake that message and replace the safe link with their own nasty version.
Nicola Talbot 2020-03-24 📂 Security 🔖 News
Image of sample page with navigational iconsThe Dickimaw Books site now has a new book samples area. This provides a selection of sample images taken from pages of the selected paperback book with an accompanying audio track.
Image of ebook coversThe DRM-free ebook retailer SmashWords has a sale from 18th December 2020 to 1st January 2021. My crime novel “The Private Enemy” has a 75% discount and my crime fiction short story “I’ve Heard the Mermaid Sing” has a 100% discount (i.e. free!) for the duration of the sale. Did you know that you can gift ebooks on SmashWords? If you’re stuck for a present for a book lover this provides a cheap and convenient option, especially if they’re far away or isolating.
Image of two paperback books with saddle stitch binding.Ingram (the parent company of Lightning Source, who print and distribute paperback titles published by Dickimaw Books) have announced that their saddle stitch format is being retired on 1st March 2021 because the software and equipment used to print that format have become obsolete. This means that the first editions of “The Foolish Hedgehog” and “Quack, Quack, Quack, Give My Hat Back!” will be going out of print on that date.
March 7-13 2021. Open the door to your next adventure. Read an Ebook Week 2021.Crime novel “The Private Enemy” has a 75% discount and crime fiction short story “I’ve Heard the Mermaid Sing” has a 100% discount (i.e. free!) for the duration of Read an Ebook Week, 7-13th March 2021.
image of dickimaw parrot with cookies in cloudsIn the first post of this blog, I wrote about my decision to migrate to a new web hosting provider back in 2019. Last week, the site migrated again, but this time I stayed with the same web hosting provider. I moved from the cloud hosting platform (which uses a server cluster) to a newer single server platform.
Nicola Talbot 2021-05-26 📂 Site 🔖 Migration
Main navigation bar showing Account highlightedIf you are a regular visitor to the site, you may have noticed that there’s a new “Account” link in the navigation bar (situated below the title banner). That page provides access to the main site account where you can manage your notifications and keep track of any bug reports, feature requests, comments or typo reports that you have submitted.
Nicola Talbot 2021-06-05 (updated 2023-05-06) 📂 Security Site 🔖 Account Cookies Notifications
Image of ebook coversThe SmashWords annual Summer/Winter book sale is back again from 1st July to 31st July 2021. My crime/SF novel “The Private Enemy” has a 75% discount and my crime fiction short story “I’ve Heard the Mermaid Sing” has a 100% discount (i.e. free!) for the duration of the sale.
Image of two robot heads the first has a slightly smiling mouth and white eyes the second has slightly downturned mouth and red eyesYou’ve probably come across websites that want you to prove that you’re human and not a robot. This may come in the form of a picture challenge (for example, select all the squares with bicycles) or it may simply require you to check a box to assert that you’re not a robot. Perhaps you’re wondering why you need to do this. Why is the website so concerned about being visited by robots? Alternatively, perhaps you’re a website developer and are determined to find a way to keep out all bots.
Nicola Talbot 2021-07-08 (updated 2023-05-23) 📂 Security 🔖 Bots
Image of a row of lever switches with a row of binary digits below them.The TeX distribution comes with a mixture of binary files and text files. The source code for your document is written in a text file and you need a text editor to create and modify it, but you need to make sure the file (or input) encoding is correct otherwise you can end up with error messages, warnings and strange characters in your PDF file.
Nicola Talbot 2021-08-04 📂 (La)TeX 🔖 File formats
Over the past few years there have been a number of major changes to the LaTeX kernel that have unfortunately broken code in old packages, classes and documents. The changes are beneficial to new documents and packages, but before the introduction of the new kernel features it was necessary for packages to hack the old kernel internal commands in order to achieve the desired result and, for the most part, the instabilities come from these hacks.
Nicola Talbot 2021-09-06 📂 (La)TeX 🔖 Docker TeX Live
Golden circlet floating in the sky with flare coming from gem.In a world of swords, sorcery and temporal magic, Luciana and Rupert are caught up in events that span five hundred years as two rival lost civilisations seek to restore their homelands.
Image of ebook covers.The 13th annual Smashwords Read an Ebook Week Sale is now on from Sunday 6th March 2022 to Saturday 12th March 2022. My crime/SF novel The Private Enemy has a 50% discount and my crime fiction short story I’ve Heard the Mermaid Sing has a 100% discount (i.e. free!) for the duration of the sale.
The Dickimaw Books store has unfortunately closed until further notice. The reason for this is because PayPal has removed support for encryption with its PayPal Payments Standard option.
For some weeks now, the forms on this site, such as the contact page, have been unable to send an email. It seems to be caused by an SSL issue outside of my control. All support channels to the web hosting company used by this site are down, which means I can’t even report the issue, let alone get it fixed.
Nicola Talbot 2022-08-28 (updated 2022-10-08) 📂 Site 🔖 News
The Foolish Hedgehog Cover Image.The Foolish Hedgehog is back in print as an ebook. If you’re looking for a short illustrated story for young children to keep them entertained over the holiday, have a read of the preview on SmashWords and buy it while it’s half-price!
Unsocial Media book cover.Greg has unwisely accepted a friend request from “Natalie”, a stranger who starts to stalk him after failing to hook him in a scam but, unknown to either of them, Greg’s wife (the narrator) is quietly investigating Natalie, following the trail from online into the real world.
Image of magnifying glass over a green bug.I was recently informed that dickimaw-books.com had a medium severity reflected cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in the version of cPanel this website was using at the time. I solved the problem by moving to a new web-hosting provider that didn’t have the issue. The security researcher used a non-invasive probe. No data was compromised.
Nicola Talbot 2023-05-22 (updated 2023-06-17) 📂 Security Site 🔖 Migration News Online Store
Book coversThe DRM-free ebook retailer SmashWords has a sale from 1st – 31st July 2023. My crime novel “The Private Enemy” and children’s illustrated story “The Foolish Hedgehog” both have a 50% discount and my crime fiction short story “I’ve Heard the Mermaid Sing” and cybercrime fiction short story “Unsocial Media” both have a 100% discount (i.e. free!) for the duration of the sale. Did you know that you can gift ebooks on SmashWords?
Book coversThe DRM-free ebook retailer SmashWords has their end of year sale from 15th December 2023 to 1st January 2024. My crime novel “The Private Enemy” and children’s illustrated story “The Foolish Hedgehog” both have a 50% discount and my crime fiction short story “I’ve Heard the Mermaid Sing” and cybercrime fiction short story “Unsocial Media” both have a 100% discount (i.e. free!) for the duration of the sale. Did you know that you can gift ebooks on SmashWords?
Ebook coversThe DRM-free ebook retailer SmashWords “Read an Ebook Week” Sale is on from 3rd–9th March 2024. My crime novel “The Private Enemy” and children’s illustrated story “The Foolish Hedgehog” both have a 50% discount and my crime fiction short story “I’ve Heard the Mermaid Sing” and cybercrime fiction short story “Unsocial Media” both have a 100% discount (i.e. free!) for the duration of the sale. Did you know that you can gift ebooks on SmashWords?
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📂 Categories

Autism
Books
Children’s Illustrated Fiction
Illustrated fiction for young children: The Foolish Hedgehog and Quack, Quack, Quack. Give My Hat Back!
Creative Writing
The art of writing fiction, inspiration and themes.
Crime Fiction
The crime fiction category covers the crime novels The Private Enemy and The Fourth Protectorate and also the crime short stories I’ve Heard the Mermaid Sing and I’ve Heard the Mermaid Sing.
Fiction
Fiction books and other stories.
Language
Natural languages including regional dialects.
(La)TeX
The TeX typesetting system in general or the LaTeX format in particular.
Music
Norfolk
This category is about the county of Norfolk in East Anglia (the eastern bulgy bit of England). It’s where The Private Enemy is set and is also where the author lives.
Security
Site
Information about the Dickimaw Books site.
Speculative Fiction
The speculative fiction category includes the novel The Private Enemy (set in the future), the alternative history novel The Fourth Protectorate, and the fantasy novel Muirgealia.

🔖 Tags

Account
Alternative History
Sub-genre of speculative fiction, alternative history is “what if?” fiction.
book samples
Bots
Conservation of Detail
A part of the creative writing process, conservation of detail essentially means that only significant information should be added to a work of fiction.
Cookies
Information about the site cookies.
Dialect
Regional dialects, in particular the Norfolk dialect.
Docker
Education
The education system.
Fantasy
Sub-genre of speculative fiction involving magical elements.
File formats
Hippochette
A pochette (pocket violin) with a hippo headpiece.
I’ve Heard the Mermaid Sing
A crime fiction short story (available as an ebook) set in the late 1920s on the RMS Aquitania. See the story’s main page for further details.
Inspirations
The little things that inspired the author’s stories.
Linux
Migration
Posts about the website migration.
Muirgealia
A fantasy novel. See the book’s main page for further details.
News
Notifications
Online Store
Posts about the Dickimaw Books store.
Quack, Quack, Quack. Give My Hat Back!
Information about the illustrated children’s book. See the book’s main page for further details.
Re-published
Articles that were previously published elsewhere and reproduced on this blog in order to collect them all together in one place.
Sale
Posts about sales that are running or are pending at the time of the post.
Site settings
Information about the site settings.
Story creation
The process of creating stories.
TeX Live
The Foolish Hedgehog
Information about the illustrated children’s book. See the book’s main page for further details.
The Fourth Protectorate
Alternative history novel set in 1980s/90s London. See the book’s main page for further details.
The Private Enemy
A crime/speculative fiction novel set in a future Norfolk run by gangsters. See the book’s main page for further details.
Unsocial Media
A cybercrime fiction short story (available as an ebook). See the story’s main page for further details.
World Book Day
World Book Day (UK and Ireland) is an annual charity event held in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland on the first Thursday in March. It’s a local version of the global UNESCO World Book Day.