Dickimaw Books Blog 
Ongoing Email Issues on Website 🔗
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. You can still post bug reports, but you will encounter an error message when the site attempts to email me that a new report has been posted. The report will be saved in the database, but (unless your account is permitted to bypass the reviewing system) it won’t show up in the bug tracker until its status has been changed from Pending to Open. Similarly for comments, feature requests, and other notifications. I will pick up the error messages in the server’s log file, which will include the email message, but there will be a delay as it’s not something I can constantly monitor.
I will update this post when I have further information.
Update 2022-10-08: the problem with reporting this issue to the web hosting company was quite frustrating. They had removed their telephone support number, the online chat wasn’t available, and whenever I tried to open a ticket I got an access denied error message (even though I was logged in and could access the rest of the site’s dashboard). It turned out that in order to use the online chat I had to delete all cookies and then accept them all (which wasn’t particularly intuitive, but I should’ve thought of it sooner as that seems to be an increasingly common problem with websites). The ticket system still wasn’t working, but it’s possible I had to log out and in again, and maybe shutdown, reboot, switch things off and back on again, and perhaps count to 10 or whatever. Anyway, the chat operator has logged the issue and with a bit of luck it will be fixed soon. I’m sorry for any inconvenience this has been causing.
I’ve re-enabled the contact form in eager anticipation of the issue being fixed soon. If you get an error about the failure to send an email, don’t worry. Your message will be logged and I’ll find it in the log file, but there will likely be a delay of up to 24 hours before then.
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Once 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.
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Once 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.
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The book launch for the anthology Tales for Our Times, written by Norfolk writing group Ex-Cathedra and published by Smokehouse Press, took place in the Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library at noon on World Homeless Day (10th October 2024). All profits from the sale of this book will be used to help raise funds to support Norwich-based St Martins Housing Trust in their work to help the homeless into independent living. The book launch included a talk from Dr Jan Sheldon, SEO of St Martins, two readings by authors of the book, and a presentation to the library.
Tales for Our Times is an anthology of forty stories featuring loss and hope, dreams of love and belonging, biography and science fiction and adventure. Written by Norfolk-based writing group Ex-Cathedra and published by Smokehouse Press, the book will be launched on World Homeless Day 10th October 2024 midday at the Norwich and Norfolk Millennium Library. All profits from the sale of this book will be used to help raise funds to support Norwich-based St Martins Housing Trust in their work to help the homeless into independent living.
Convinced that his secretive wife, Annie, is cheating on him, Aide meets an attractive young goth at the pub who helps him pick the lock of Annie’s briefcase to search for incriminating evidence. 
Evelyn, a CCTV operator, sees too much information while she monitors a store’s self-service checkout tills in this cybercrime short story about identity theft.
The 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?The 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?Search Blog
📂 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
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- 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
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- Alternative History
- Sub-genre of speculative fiction, alternative history is “what if?” fiction.
- book samples
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- A part of the creative writing process, conservation of detail essentially means that only significant information should be added to a work of fiction.
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- Dialect
- Regional dialects, in particular the Norfolk dialect.
- Docker
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- Ex-Cathedra
- A Norfolk-based writing group.
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- 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
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- Posts about the website migration.
- Muirgealia
- A fantasy novel. See the book’s main page for further details.
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- Quack, Quack, Quack. Give My Hat Back!
- Information about the illustrated children’s book. See the book’s main page for further details.
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- 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.
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- Smile for the Camera
- A cybercrime short story about CCTV operator monitoring a store’s self-service tills who sees too much information.
- Story creation
- The process of creating stories.
- TeX Live
- The Briefcase
- A crime fiction short story (available as an ebook). See the story’s main page for further details.
- 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.
- World Homeless Day
- World Homeless Day is marked every year on 10 October to draw attention to the needs of people experiencing homelessness.