Rick Brindle

  They’re here to stay, and they are the future. I’ve had my Renault Zoe for about 8 months now, and there’s no way I’d ever go back to petrol, or even a hybrid. Admittedly, not everyone can, bit if you can fit a home charger, then running costs are insanely cheap. I’ve never paid more than three quid for an overnight charge, and seven for a day time charge. and sure, charging points cost more, but it’s still way less than petrol, and lot less volatile, both in price and global safety. Retail parks are an ideal fallback position. Plug in, do your shopping , get a bite to eat, and come back to a fully charged motor. Thanks to a legion of apps, you can find charging points right across the country, so if you’ve got a long journey to make, all you need to do is plan your pitstops. I’d still advise retail parks over motorway stops, cheaper to charge, better facilities, more reliable, in my experience. And of course there’s the eco thing. You’re not polluting the atmosphere, you’re not ...

  Cold Steel on the Rocks,  the first novel in the Cold Steel trilogy is free to download from Amazon for a short time. Get your free copy now!  When the pirate, Blackbeard, buried his treasure, he could never have imagined that it would fall to the heavy metal band, Cold Steel, to come looking for it. Cold Steel, high-octane British rockers who came close to legendary status, until the release of their fourth album, when their excesses send them spiralling into terminal decline. Struggling small-time band manager Johnny Faslane, in the right place at the right time, lands the dream job of managing Cold Steel, and then has the seemingly impossible mission of turning the band around. Cold Steel’s singer, Maxwell Diabolo, claims to have a treasure map that he thinks will lead him to Blackbeard’s lost riches. With the band bent on a terrifying path of self-destruction, Johnny wonders if they will even complete the tour, much less get to the Caribbean to embark on a treasure ...

I joined the RAF Regiment in 1989, and back then, the answer was a resounding yes. Bad treatment of recruits was always in the news, and there were always anecdotal stories about how back in the day, Basics was really hard, how all sorts of bad stuff happened to recruits, and how the current crop were wimps and that standards had dropped, largely because it was suddenly against the regs to beat up recruits. It’s a thing in Russia, no shocks there. I remember one of my Corporals saying that he regularly got twatted by his instructors when he went through Basics. Whether it ever happened in the British military, I have no idea, but in 1989 it most certainly didn’t. Sure, there were isolated incidents. Always have been, always will be, but they were very much unofficial, and usually (and quite rightly so), career ending for the perpetrator. Kicked out of the army for forcing recruits to strip naked and box each other. Basics was very closely monitored, and so it was always the safest plac...

  Sister Alex  gets its first Amazon rating, five stars! Berkshire, England, and it’s no longer the promised land. Ever since a species-wide illness wiped out nearly every human being, the home counties have become a gender-based battlefield. The women stick together as a single, cohesive community, but only as long as you’re a woman. And it’s the same for the men, although they haven’t quite got the same group thing going, choosing instead to range as lone threats, taking what they want. Sometimes they team up and run in pairs, but only as long as you’re a man. They’re separate tribes, and they hate each other on sight. Pick your gender, pick your side. And then there’s Alex, born as a man, identifies as a woman, and thanks to a stash of scavenged hormones, she’s stuck somewhere between the two, lost in the middle and hated by them all. But she’s survived, and if what’s left of the world won’t leave her alone, maybe she can teach what’s left of the world to accept her. Maybe....

  Sister Alex , my latest novel about a trans woman surviving in post-apocalyptic Berkshire, England, is free to download on Amazon for a limited time. Get your free copy now! Berkshire, England, and it’s no longer the promised land. Ever since a species-wide illness wiped out nearly every human being, the home counties have become a gender-based battlefield. The women stick together as a single, cohesive community, but only as long as you’re a woman. And it’s the same for the men, although they haven’t quite got the same group thing going, choosing instead to range as lone threats, taking what they want. Sometimes they team up and run in pairs, but only as long as you’re a man. They’re separate tribes, and they hate each other on sight. Pick your gender, pick your side. And then there’s Alex, born as a man, identifies as a woman, and thanks to a stash of scavenged hormones, she’s stuck somewhere between the two, lost in the middle and hated by them all. But she’s survived, and if ...

  Joan Jett live is the absolute dog’s bollocks Which is British for really good! I’ve only ever seen Joan Jett play live once…so far. That was at Wembley Arena, November 17, 2007, where, alongside Motorhead, they supported Alice Cooper. Pure entertainment line ups don’t get much better than that. No way can I remember the setlist, but I Love Rock ’n’ Roll, and I Hate Myself for Loving You were definitely played. It was rock with attitude, really entertaining, really good. I remember the drummer having a tiny, tiny drum kit, but he definitely made it work. In fact the whole band made it work. Joan Jett and the Blackhearts don’t get over to the UK very often, but I’d definitely want to see them play again. Not sure I could say the same about Cold Steel. Cold Steel on the Rocks We Are Cold Steel Cold Steel and the Underground Boneyard It's Not For Everyone Sister Alex

  Well, the good news is that people  would  survive. It’s important to remember that for most of the time that humans have existed, they managed pretty well without electricity, internet and all the rest of that stuff. Empires rose and fell long before electricity was discovered. After the apocalypse, any apocalypse, people would find shelter pretty quickly. Instincts would also take over, maybe not in a linear way, and sure, mistakes would be made. Finding food and water would be discovered, and learning to make fire would be up at the top of the list. Of course, rather then learning everything from scratch, a lot of legacy bits and bobs will still be hanging around. And unless there’s a global amnesia type apocalypse going on, like the one that I imagined up, people will remember things, and that will be a big help. In short, people would survive, how they do that is as varied as the human condition itself. Sister Alex It's Not For Everyone Cold Steel on the Rocks We A...