Rick Brindle

  Charlie Scudsen, An American President , my latest novel, is now live on Amazon as ebook and paperback. Hardcover to follow soon. It’s November 2022, and the American people have chosen their next president. For over two centuries, that immovable four-yearly tradition has held. And because of it, American democracy is lauded around the world as a dependable, balanced and controlled institution. And with the innate politeness that characterised American politics, even when one side disagreed with the other, everything was done in a civilised way. There was always a peaceful transfer of power, and once the election was done, the whole nation got behind their president. The whole world knew it, and the whole world admired it. Until Charlie Scudsen won The White House, and then everything changed. Charlie Scudsen, a serial adulterer and failed businessman who couldn’t even keep his driving licence. A chain-smoking, homophobic womaniser, who saw the whole world through a lens of fifti...

  Cold Steel on the Rocks , the first novel in the Cold Steel series, is free to download from Amazon for a limited 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 hunt. Aga...

  Coming soon, Charlie Scudsen, An American President, a light hearted story about what might happen if the wrong person ever landed the top job. I'm doing a final read-thorough, following excellent editorial advice from @thewrite_advice and am aiming to publish in July 2026. All artwork credits go to Candescent Press. It’s November 2022, and the American people have chosen their next president. For over two centuries, that immovable four-yearly tradition has held. And because of it, American democracy is lauded around the world as a dependable, balanced and controlled institution.  And with the innate politeness that characterised American politics, even when one side disagreed with the other, everything was done in a civilised way. There was always a peaceful transfer of power, and once the election was done, the whole nation got behind their president. The whole world knew it, and the whole world admired it. Until Charlie Scudsen won The White House, and then everything ch...

  There'd be a  bloody sight less wars, and that would make everyone better off. I mean, yes, Thatcher was a bit of a warlord and loved the old gung ho thing, but in fairness (and I actually couldn’t stand her), she didn’t start the Falklands War, or initiate the Iranian Embassy siege, or plant the bomb in the Grand Hotel. But let’s face it, women have a less testosterone to contend with, no inferiority complexes, don’t have to think with their b*lls, they’re less confrontational, they’re better communicators, they’ve got more empathy, are arguably a lot less selfish and definitely safer drivers. You may accuse me of generalising there, but I’ll take that any day of the week over the blokes. Sister Alex   Cold Steel on the Rocks   We Are Cold Steel   Cold Steel and the Underground Boneyard   It's Not For Everyone

  Sister Alex , my post-apocalyptic novel about a trans-woman surviving the Berkshire wilderness, is free to download from Amazon for a limited time. 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 w...

  Potentially. Rhodesia’s military was hampered by a serious lack of resource and manpower. They were the camouflaged epitome of make do and mend, and Fireforce was a direct manifestation of the need to use what they had to create an absolutely badass solution to the tactical realities facing them. After Portugal pulled out of Mozambique in 1974, and with the exception of the short border with South Africa, Rhodesia was literally surrounded on all sides by hostile countries, with insurgents crossing the border almost at will. Outside of any natural obstacles, there simply wasn’t the manpower or money to create an impenetrable barrier. The closest modern parallel would be Israel and maybe, but not quite the same, Ukraine. Insurgent attacks and ambushes could happen across a very wide area, and Fireforce was designed to meet that threat. It was essentially an airborne rapid response unit, tailored to be delivered with the air assets available to Rhodesia, and honed to an exact degree...

Okay, so I’m going to include all of the singers who recorded and released songs with Black Sabbath. Dave Donato, Dave Walker, Ron Keel, Ray Gillen and Rob Halford…well, they’re all excluded, if for no other reason than I never heard what they sounded like as Black Sabbath singers. The first thing I’d like to say before trying to put them into some kind of weird, and actually pretty meaningless scale, is that I’m a huge Black Sabbath fan, and I love all of their line-ups. In number five, it’s Ian Gillan. I loved the Born Again Album, but it was the only one Ian Gillan ever made with Sabbath, and I think that was always his plan, but not necessarily the band’s plan, or at least not Tony Iommi’s plan. Let’s face it, by this point, and probably even earlier, Tony was definitely the boss. Gillan still had the scream, but it was a lot more grainy than it was with Deep Purple ten years earlier. I’d have liked a few more albums from the Gillan era, but I guess you can’t have everything. The f...