ATTENTION AUTHORS!!!
Author: Herbert Howard Jones
Title: The Pyewiz and the Amazing Mobile Phone
Paperback: 532 pages
Publisher: YouWriteOn
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Language: English
ISBN: 9781849230278
PURCHASE HERE!
Journey to a frozen planet to find a long lost twin. An amazing crystal phone with incredible powers. A cunning old pirate wizard who must be stopped.
Schoolboy Terry Mctrain thinks the new tenant in his parent’s guesthouse is strange. Stranger still is the reason why she is here. Then Terry learns about a twin brother he never knew he had, kidnapped by a pirate wizard years ago. Baffled by all this, Terry realizes there’s a mystery to be solved, and a secret to be uncovered. But when he discovers that the fate of the world is also in his hands, he wonders..
Could this turn into the adventure of a lifetime?
Perhaps, but unless Terry and his friend Will travel to the other side of the solar system to solve this puzzle, there’s a danger that the world would be destroyed, and his twin brother lost forever.
Herbert Howard Jones was born in London in 1955, and went to Eccles Hall, a boarding school in Norfolk. He left after a couple of years and attended IIford County High School in Barkingside where he where he met Bram Tovey, now conductor of the Vancouver Symphony orchestra, and pianist Derek Smith who later played with the Johhny Dankworth ensemble. They inspired Jones to take up music, which he still practices today.
Jones attended Lisburn college in Ireland and then worked in a wide variety of occupations. These included in law, as a porter at the BBC, in jewellery manufacture, publishing, and commercial art. As a BBC porter he was required to hump equipment between studios and could be spotted riding shotgun around London in the old green BBC vans of that time. He was eventually sacked for lateness!
He then found a job in a Hatton Garden jewellery firm in London. As an apprentice jeweller he was required to assemble twenty-two 14 carat gold gate bracelets a day. In the two years he spent in the business he had personally made nearly 12000 bracelets, which was quite a feat, but was mind numbing work, and not something he wanted to do with the rest of his life. At this stage he didn’t know what avenue to go down next.
But the clue lay in his early life. As a young boy, he showed an early interest in the arts, particularly writing, musical composition and painting, and has pursued them as interests ever since. At this time he met the daughter of the captain of the Titanic, which sank in 1912, and consequently became obsessed with the myth which surrounded the subject. Jones remembers handling Titantic artifacts in the lady’s cottage country, and thinking that they made beautiful art ornaments! They inspired Jones to start creating collages using old bric-a brac, attaching small objects to canvas and applying paint to them.
In his teens, Jones lived with the family of author Julian Branston, whose mother was a close confidant of British comic Kenneth Williams. They introduced Jones to writer and poet John Pudney, famed as the author of wartime poem ‘For Johnny’. As busy as he was, Pudney would give kindly critiques of Jones’ earlier writings, urging Jones to say ‘more with less’. Jones described his writing efforts at this time as pretentious and undisciplined, and was frankly lucky, that ‘Pudney gave him the time of day,’
Jones found John Pudney fascinating as, among other things, he knew Pablo Picasso personally, having met him as a reporter during the war. To the aspiring and awe struck Jones, this was all glamorous grist for this artistic mill. At this time he became fascinated by celebrity, which was hardly surprising considering that his benefactors frequently had prominent people down to dinner, including the Bishop of Liverpool and others.
When Jones worked for a firm of ‘showbiz’ solicitors in London, he ran errands for screen star John Mills, and composer Tony Hatch, but felt that life as a London commuter just wasn’t for him, and so he ‘dropped’ out and went to live in Deptford. Jones justified this to himself by saying this was his ‘down and out in Paris and London period’.
Jones moved around South London and finally settled in some lodgings in Lewisham which were also being occupied by the now international artist David Mabb, presently Head of Masters at Goldsmith’s college, from whom he acquired wonderful discarded art pieces. Mabb’s charismatic and confident personality had an inspiring effect on Jones who began to look at art in a new light. In Jones’ eyes, David Mabb was ‘one of the solid group of British artists who are exponents of a new kind of socially responsible art, which is dynamic and very much at the cutting edge.’ In Jones’ view, Mabb’s art not only succeeds powerfully as a room decoration, but it invokes a strong visceral response in the viewer. If Jones was going to paint, he wanted his art to be as eloquent as Mabb’s! At the time of writing, Jones is still struggling to achieve this goal. Jones cites US artist Ron English, as his other influence.
Meeting well known people and those active in the arts and entertainment industries had the effect of shaping Jones’ view of the world, and he vowed that one day, he too would make a contribution. It was only in his fifties that Jones has seriously sought publication. The Pyewiz and The Amazing Mobile Phone is his first book.
At the present time Jones is busily writing his second book and is painting. He hopes to have his first exhibition of art in London in the near future.
Jones’ most thrilling life moment: ‘being six feet away from Frank Sinatra when he came to the London Palladium!’
You can visit his website at www.science-fiction-fantasy.com.
“Ouch!” Terry McTrain screwed up his face in agony. The sharp point of the other boy’s cutlass nicked his shoulder, and blood oozed through the jagged tear in his shirt. His mum would go crazy!
The boy he was fighting was a good swordsman. If Terry wasn’t careful he would end up with another wound.
He swished his own weapon ambitiously through the air, but missed his opponent by a mile. It gave the strangely familiar boy a chance to jab him in the belly, and this time it really hurt. Terry dropped his own cutlass in shock. More blood, even redder than before, oozed through his shirt.
Shaking, he reached down to unbutton it, but found himself grabbing the edge of the blanket instead. With a start he sat up in bed and looked round. He had been dreaming!
Still shaking slightly, he let out a long slow relieved breath and glanced over at the clock on the desk by his bed. It was nearly seven, time to get up. Then almost against his will, his eyes came to rest on the mess of papers next to the computer. Homework! Tons of it and his form master wanted it handed in today.
But this was simply not possible, unless he did it on the bus. Unfortunately the journey to school only took twenty minutes, which was hardly enough time to think about the homework, let alone do it. Terry got out of bed, his mind pondering. He would just have to think of an excuse.
“Where is it?” said Mr Ibsen, his form master, after class had been dismissed that afternoon.
“Where’s what, sir?” said Terry playing for time and gaining three more seconds.
His form master grinned humourlessly. “Don’t be cute with me, McTrain. You know what.”
Terry was just going reply but Mr Ibsen interrupted him. “I’m afraid it will have to be detention for you, young man. This is the third time this week that you haven’t handed in any homework!”
“But Mr Ibsen, sir,” replied Terry worriedly. “I had to help my parents clear out a room in our guest house for a new tenant. I was going to do the essay on the bus this morning, but I was too tired.”
His form master glared at Terry in a most horrible way. “Did you say on the bus?”
Terry face reddened.
Mr Ibsen shook his head. “You’re not supposed to do your homework on the bus, now are you? Homework is work that you do at home. Schoolwork is work that you do at school..”
“Yes Mr Ibsen..”
“If we wanted you to do your homework on the bus, we wouldn’t call it homework, now would we?”
“No sir,”
“You had a week to do the essay on Victorian children’s classics,” continued Mr Ibsen. “And it was easy enough, to compare any two popular children’s stories of your choice. And I only wanted a page.”
Terry nodded, badly wishing he had done the essay last night, instead of watching that talent show with his best friend Will.
“You’ve got one more chance McTrain,” said Mr Ibsen rising from his desk and packing his briefcase. “I want the essay on my desk promptly at nine am tomorrow, or you’ll be kept behind to do it in your own time.”
“Yes sir, thank you sir,” said Terry.
“And what’s the matter with your left eye?” demanded his form master giving him a strange look. “You don’t wear mascara, do you?”
“Mascara, sir? No!” said Terry completely bemused by his teacher’s comment.
Mr Ibsen frowned. “Its your eye, its gone a funny colour!”
“Has it?” said Terry rubbing his eyelid.
“Go and wash it off!” said Mr Ibsen striding out of the classroom with his briefcase. “And read my lips, homework on my desk, nine o’clock tomorrow, no excuses!”
“Yes sir,” said Terry. He followed Mr Ibsen out of the class room and then went home.
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