Pete Coomber's Website

Welcome to my new super-improved webpages. I have finally left the 20th Century behind. The steam-powered html has gone and in its place are rinky-dinky stylesheets that are clinically proven to provide you with a 400% more enjoyable browsing experience (at least, that is what it said in the instruction book).

Although these pages contain no fancy videos of dancing penguins or cute furry animals, they do contain a collection of music, photographs and other images, stories (including details of my published ebooks - free and otherwise) and other general fluff, which you may or may not enjoy.

One way to find out is to read on and/or select one of the links above or below.

Music: Play SwimFish1

About Me:

True fact: I was once stared at on a bus by Windy Miller - one of the stars of the 1960's t.v. programme Camberwick Green.
Influences: Alcohol, nothing stronger.
My purpose in life: I send radio waves out into the World and the World hears: "Crackle, crackle."
My ambitions: One of my ambitions is for my short story collections to outsell Tom Hanks' book. Obviously, I have no chance of winning an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor - Turner & Hooch (1989). Only kidding, Tom...
My advice to the World (other than "crackle, crackle"): Enjoy life. The alternative is not funny.
Favourite holidays: Bungalow Farm, Greatworth, Northants; (Netherlands/Belgium a close second).
Another true fact: Larry Lloyd, the famous, twice European Cup winning footballer, once stood on my left foot in his crowded pub - and he didn't notice a thing.
Further points of interest: I spend most of my time chasing marine iguanas on a volcanic island in the Pacific Ocean, and when I am not doing that I relax, happily hanging upside-down from a yaruma tree, munching on leaves in the Brazilian rain forest. I am 106 years old and share the good looks of that famous film star: Elmer Fudd.

...And I make up stories.

Windy Miller

The day I was stared at by Windy Miller of Camberwick Green

One morning, I boarded a bus and sat towards the back of it. As the bus set off I noticed - out of the corner of my eye - that someone on a seat behind me and across the aisle was looking at me. He was staring at me: staring in a rude way. He had a big stupid grin on his face and it seemed to me that he was silently laughing at me. This made me angry. I didn't react; I ignored him and looked out the window on my right at the houses and fields that passed by. During the journey, when I turned my head a little towards the front of the bus, I could see him out of the corner of my eye. Sure enough, he was still staring at me with that same big silly grin on his face. For twenty minutes on the bus, I stayed calm - although still angry. When the bus pulled up at the bus station, I got up and turned to see who this rude man was.

It was Windy Miller. A giant cartoon transfer of Windy Miller stuck on the side window of the bus...

A Forty Year Confusion

How, at the age of forty-nine, I confronted an apparant fact

Each Easter I would strain my tiny, little brain over this puzzle. For forty-odd years I got no nearer to the truth until I had a REVELATION of Damascene proportions. At the age of forty-nine I realised that 'without' is just another word for 'outside'. All became clear...

'There is a green hill far away, outside a city wall...'

Haiku

School

Phytoplankton

TB

Sakura

Peanmeanmach

Lord George Gordon Byron

Apollo Thirteen

Japanese Woodcutter

Ernest Hemingway

Dolphins - My Green Credentials

I've always had that element of 'green-ness' about me, and holidays in the wilds of Scotland when I was a child gave me an appreciation of the marvels and wonders of nature. So last year, in between the first lock-down and the post-relaxation second lock-down, I cycled over to the Welsh coast and spent a long week-end sleeping out on the beach, eating seaweed cooked over a self-sustainable wood campfire, listening to the waves and watching the seabirds in their plastic strewn nests on the cliffs above.

In the Green Lentil Café the locals told me about Shifty, a lone dolphin that could be seen in the sandy bay. He was friendly and would swim right up to you, they said. So I went for a dip in the sea, and sure enough a dark grey fin cut the water towards me and a long beak broke the water beside me, clicking furiously.

So I punched it just below the blow hole.

"Stop eating tuna!" I shouted.

Dolphins! - they're the reason the fish stocks are dwindling around the World.

Read this in Spanish

Ten Rules For Writing A Better Story

1. Give it an exciting ending - Finish your story off with a 'bang'. Put an earthquake in there or an exploding volcano. Even if it is set in Croydon or it's a Mills And Boon style romance. There's nothing better than reading about a loving couple gently whispering sweet nothings to each other - as hot molten lava flows towards them down Croydon High Street. And always put THE END right at the very end; never in the middle or at the beginning.
2. Don't worry about punctuation - Punctuation is not important. Should a comma go there, or a semi-colon; or – should it be a dash? Worry too much about punctuation and you'll never get to finish your eight-hundred and fifty page blockbuster novel. Just put in a full stop. Once. In. A. While. Just to show your words: Who. Is. Boss.
3. Check your spelling - Spelling is important. Get the spelling right and people will be impressed – they will think you are a university professor. Get it wrong and people will be laughing at your eight-hundred and fifty page blockbuster novel for all of the wrong reasons. Use a dictionary. Make sure that you cross your 't's and dot your 'i's, otherwise people will think you are a right lwal. If you can't use a dictionary, disguise your inability to spell by making everything dialogue: “The top ov his hed started to peal in the brite son.” People will think you are Shakespeare.
4. Remove unnecessary words - If you don't want your blockbuster novel to overrun its eight-hundred and fifty pages then you will need to cut out all wasteful, irrelevant, unnecessary, extraneous words. Not only will these words slow down the flow of your story, they will make people think that you can't spell and are using a thesaurus - as well as a dictionary. As an example: Saturday. Egdon Heath. Getting dark. is clearly far superior to: A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight, and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath embrowned itself moment by moment.
5. Give your work an 'inner voice' - Your story must speak with an inner voice. This is what sets your story apart from other novelists' tales. Although, don't let your inner voice tell the reader what you are really thinking: 'That window needs cleaning' or 'I wish I could get rid of the itchiness down below.'
6. Use other works to inspire you - This is called cheating - but don't let that put you off. Use other authors' works as a basis for your eight-hundred page blockbuster novel. Change every third word. Obviously, if the original work doesn't have the required wordage then you will need to repeat sections of it in order to fill it out. Or you could slip in some poetry to bulk it up. Anything, as long as it rhymes.
7. Keep descriptions down to a minimum - This is the same rule as Rule 4. Pare your work back. Remove all adjectives, adverbs and all nouns, verbs, determiners, conjunctions, and any mention of root vegetables. Do this and what are you left with? The tightest eight-hundred and fifty blockbuster novel ever written.
8. Give your story authenticity - Write about true things. Obviously, if you are re-writing The Hobbit (see Rule 6), then you must explain to the reader that hobbits don't actually exist, elves don't actually have pointy ears, and dragons cannot really fly or breath fire.
9. Make the beginning 'catchy' - A good beginning catches the eye of the reader:
   The shark, a hundred-million years of sleek efficient design, watched the poorly-evolved, former-monkey floundering in the shallow waters in its bathing trunks and thought: 'Dinner.'
10. Enjoy - If you find yourself contemplating pushing the person in front of you down the steep, moving escalator in the shopping mall then stop writing. Take up flower-arranging instead.
11. Don't follow any rules - Ignore all the rules you have read, or have yet to read, from countless authors, about how to write a novel. They have no idea. And neither do I. Just use Rule 10.