Latest Articles from The Vandal AKA Derek Haines

I Am An Award Winning Bestselling Author

Of course, I am a bestselling author Why? Because I sell ebooks. Well, let’s get a little bit real here. I do sell books and ebooks, but not in the thousands, or even hundreds. In the tens would be closer to the truth. But will this stop me blowing my trumpet on social media? Certainly not! Making an impression on social media is the main game now for authors, so I have decided to compete and compete with gusto. Ok, so let me list my bestselling and award-winning achievements for you, so you can judge for yourself as to my credentials. I’ll start with the bestselling bit I have had numerous

Luckily, The Grammar Police Are Always Watching

I love the Grammar Police The Grammar Police are ever vigilant and frightfully quick on the draw whenever the tiniest of grammatical error, or erroneous spelling mistake hits the ether of the Internet. So fast are they, that I have to say that I may forget about doing the tedious proofreading of my blog posts from now on, and simply wait for the Grammar Police to do it for me. And it’s free! So how does this devious plan work? I stumbled upon the idea a couple of days ago when I made a clumsy error. I wrote a new blog post, and as it was well after midnight by the

The Coolest Verb

The English Phrasal Verb English has one of the coolest and at the same time most mysterious of verbs. Verbs to me are the motors that drive phrases and sentences. Normally, as in most languages, these verbs are one word. But in English, we have the special and totally cool phrasal verb. Sometimes now called the multi-word verb. They are normally two words, but sometimes can be longer. For example, to put up with, to look down on or to get on with. Common two-word verbs are give up, get over, take up or get by. All very cool, and should need no thought or consideration when writing. Except! Well,

74 Great Ways To Die In Fiction

There is nothing like a terrific death in a work of fiction. But 74 great ways is better. Of course there are always a plethora of shootings and bomb blasts in fiction that bring about the final demise of both the good and bad guys, but thanks to an article I stumbled upon in The Telegraph, I can now share a graphic of the many and varied ways that William Shakespeare artistically killed off his characters. While mundane stabbing accounts for almost half, I was attracted to being baked in a pie as one means of death that really had appeal. This reminded me immediately of an 80’s movie, Eating Raul,