What If . . . essential writing prompts

Here’s another selection to inspire you – what can you do with these?

What if . . .

1. London was somewhere else?

2. the speed of light was a billion times faster?

3. the speed of light was much slower?

4. sound travelled slower than you could walk?

5. countries and continents drifted about rapidly and unpredictably, and you never knew where you might be when you woke up each morning?

6. it was the day of the revolution?

7. it was time to meet your maker?

8. your child beat you at something for the first time?

9. you forgot to go to bed?

10. you hadn’t done enough to prepare yourself?

If you like What Ifs, you’ll love The Fastest Way to Get Ideas – 4,400 Essential What Ifs for Writers.

Instant inspiration for your short stories, novels, articles, characters, plots, settings and more! Fully categorised and alphabetical for easy reference.

256-page e-book (PDF) available now – just £7.95.
Immediate download after payment.

Click here for full details

Dave Haslett, www.ideas4writers.co.uk

Forthcoming historic anniversaries, Apr 2010

You may wish to write about the following historical events. Dates are given 6 months in advance to allow you time for research and writing.

We have painstakingly cross-checked every entry, but you are advised to check all facts again as part of your research – just in case! Please let us know of any errors you find.

A greatly expanded list of anniversaries for this month (more than twice as many as listed here) is available in  The Date-A-Base Book 2010, which covers the whole of 2010. More details below.

400 years ago (22 Apr 1610)
Birth of Pope Alexander VIII

300 years ago (26 Apr 1710)
Birth of Thomas Reid, Scottish philosopher who espoused common sense

300 years ago (28 Apr 1710)
Death of Thomas Betterton, British actor and writer, the leading English actor of the Restoration period

200 years ago (11 Apr 1810)
Birth of Henry Rawlinson, British soldier, linguist and diplomat who deciphered Mesopotamian cuneiform and greatly expanded knowledge of the ancient Middle East

200 years ago (19 Apr 1810)
Venezuela declared its independence from Spain and ejected its Spanish Colonial leaders from power

150 years ago (3 Apr 1860)
The Pony Express began operating between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California, USA

150 years ago (6 Apr 1860)
Birth of René Lalique, French jeweller and glassmaker

150 years ago (7 Apr 1860)
Birth of W.K. Kellogg, American breakfast cereal manufacturer

100 years ago (19 Apr 1910)
German medical scientist Paul Ehrlich announced the discovery of a cure for syphilis (a drug later called Salvarsan) at the Congress for Internal Medicine, Wiesbaden

100 years ago (21 Apr 1910)
Death of Mark Twain, American writer, humorist and journalist (‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’, ‘Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’)

100 years ago (23 Apr 1910)
Birth of Simone Simon, French film actress

100 years ago (26 Apr 1910)
Death of Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, Norwegian poet, writer, journalist and theatre director, winner of the 1903 Nobel Prize for Literature, wrote the words of the Norwegian national anthem

90 years ago (23 Apr 1920)
The Turkish Grand National Assembly was established in Ankara, founding modern Turkey and divorcing it from its Ottoman past

80 years ago (21 Apr 1930)
Death of Robert Bridges, British poet laureate (1913–30)

75 years ago (6 Apr 1935)
Death of Edwin Arlington Robinson, Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet

75 years ago (8 Apr 1935)
US Congress approved the Works Progress Administration (WPA) to relieve the economic hardship of the Great Depression

75 years ago (14 Apr 1935)
‘Black Sunday’ – the worst dust storm of the Dust Bowl occurred in Kansas, USA

75 years ago (19 Apr 1935)
Birth of Dudley Moore, British actor, comedian, musician and composer

75 years ago (23 Apr 1935)
A new Polish Constitution (the ‘April Constitution’) was passed

70 years ago (9 Apr 1940)
World War II: Germany invaded Denmark and Norway

70 years ago (20 Apr 1940)
RCA gave the first public demonstration of a scanning electron microscope, in Philadelphia, USA

60 years ago (3 Apr 1950)
Death of Kurt Weill, German-born American composer

60 years ago (8 Apr 1950)
Death of Vaslav Nijinsky, legendary Russian ballet dancer

60 years ago (27 Apr 1950)
Apartheid in South Africa. The Group Areas Act was passed, formally segregating races and barring people from living, operating businesses or owning land outside the areas designated for their race

50 years ago (1 Apr 1960)
The USA launched the world’s first weather satellite, Tiros I

50 years ago (11 Apr 1960)
Death of Sir Archibald McIndoe, pioneering New Zealand-born plastic surgeon who greatly improved the treatment and rehabilitation of badly burned aircrew in World War II

50 years ago (17 Apr 1960)
Death of Eddie Cochran, American rock and roll musician (‘C’mon Everybody’, ‘Summertime Blues’, ‘Three Steps to Heaven’)

50 years ago (21 Apr 1960)
Brasilia became the capital of Brazil, replacing Rio do Janeiro

50 years ago (27 Apr 1960)
French Togoland became independent as the Republic of Togo

40 years ago (1 Apr 1970)
US President Richard Nixon signed the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act into law, requiring health warnings on tobacco products and banning cigarette advertisements on TV and radio from 1st January 1971

40 years ago (10 Apr 1970)
British rock musician Paul McCartney announced that he had left The Beatles and the band would never perform together again

40 years ago (13 Apr 1970)
An oxygen tank exploded onboard Apollo 13 as it neared the Moon, crippling the spacecraft and putting the lives of the crew at risk. The mission was abandoned and the crew returned safely on 17th April

40 years ago (22 Apr 1970)
The first Earth Day was observed

40 years ago (24 Apr 1970)
Gambia became an independent republic within the British Commonwealth

40 years ago (24 Apr 1970)
China launched its first satellite – Dong Fang Hong I (also called China 1)

40 years ago (30 Apr 1970)
Vietnam War: US President Richard Nixon announced that the USA was sending troops into Cambodia to hunt Viet Cong, sparking widespread protests

30 years ago (7 Apr 1980)
US President Jimmy Carter announced that the USA had severed diplomatic relations with Iran and blocked all US exports to Iran, following the taking of American hostages on 4th November 1979

30 years ago (12 Apr 1980)
Military coup in Liberia – President William R. Tolbert, Jr. was shot dead and the government ousted. Thirteen other senior government officials were publicly executed on 22nd April

30 years ago (15 Apr 1980)
Death of Jean-Paul Sartre, French novelist, playwright and philosopher, awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize for Literature, but he declined it

30 years ago (18 Apr 1980)
Southern Rhodesia became the independent nation of Zimbabwe

30 years ago (24 Apr 1980)
‘Operation Eagle Claw’, a top-secret attempt by the USA to free 52 American hostages in Iran, ended in failure. 8 soldiers were killed. US Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who had opposed the mission, resigned on 28th April

30 years ago (26 Apr 1980)
Death of Dame Cicely Courtneidge, British actress and comedienne

30 years ago (29 Apr 1980)
Death of Alfred Hitchcock, British-born American film producer (‘The Thirty-Nine Steps’, ‘Vertigo’, ‘Dial M for Murder’ and many others)

30 years ago (30 Apr 1980)
Queen Juliana of the Netherlands abdicated and was succeeded by her daughter, Beatrix

25 years ago (11 Apr 1985)
Death of Enver Hoxha, Albanian Communist dictator

25 years ago (23 Apr 1985)
The Coca-Cola Company announced that it was changing the secret formula for Coke. Negative public reaction forced it to resume selling the original version in July 1985

20 years ago (11 Apr 1990)
British Customs officers announced that they had seized what they believed to be the barrel of a massive ’supergun’ on a ship bound for Iraq

20 years ago (19 Apr 1990)
The Nicaraguan civil war ended when the Contra guerrillas, leftist Sandinistas, and the government called a truce

20 years ago (24 Apr 1990)
The Hubble Space Telescope was launched, aboard space shuttle Discovery

15 years ago (19 Apr 1995)
Oklahoma City bombing: a truck bomb exploded outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, USA, killing 168 people and injuring 500.

10 years ago (1 Apr 2000)
A rare Enigma machine, used by the Germans to encrypt messages in WWII, was stolen from Bletchley Park, UK. (Returned October 2000)

10 years ago (5 Apr 2000)
Death of Lee Petty, American NASCAR racing driver

10 years ago (10 Apr 2000)
Death of Peter Jones, British actor, playwright and broadcaster, best known as the narrator and voice of The Book in ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’, and for his lead role in the TV series ‘The Rag Trade’

10 years ago (15 Apr 2000)
Death of Edward Gorey, American writer, illustrator and designer, noted for his macabre illustrated books

10 years ago (25 Apr 2000)
Death of David Merrick, American theatrical producer

10 years ago (28 Apr 2000)
Death of Penelope Fitzgerald, British novelist and biographer

For more historic anniversaries see The Date-A-Base Book 2010, which covers the whole of 2010 and contains over 1,600 forthcoming anniversaries – more than twice as many entries per month than our standard lists featured above. Over the course of the year you’ll get to hear about hundreds of significant forthcoming anniversaries that other writers just won’t know about – giving you a huge advantage!

The Date-A-Base Book 2010 is an excellent source of ideas for all writers, journalists, film-makers, editors, researchers, producers, teachers, students, speakers and event planners. Just one article sale will pay for your copy many (many!) times over.

Dave Haslett, www.ideas4writers.co.uk

What If . . . essential writing prompts

Here’s another selection to inspire you – what can you do with these?

What if . . .

1. you hired a lookalike?

2. you had a “get out of jail free” card?

3. humans reproduced by coughing over each other?

4. our eyes could see the entire electromagnetic spectrum?

5. you found out that your phone was bugged?

6. your neighbours had been spying and eavesdropping on you ever since you/they moved in?

7. the characters in your favourite movie had been played by different actors?

8. your child was secretly digging a tunnel in his bedroom?

9. someone hypnotised you without you realising it?

10. someone put a curse on you?

If you like What Ifs, you’ll love The Fastest Way to Get Ideas – 4,400 Essential What Ifs for Writers.

Instant inspiration for your short stories, novels, articles, characters, plots, settings and more! Fully categorised and alphabetical.

256-page e-book (PDF) available now – just £7.95.
Immediate download after payment.

Click here for full details

Dave Haslett, www.ideas4writers.co.uk

you hired a lookalike

Forthcoming historic anniversaries, Mar 2010

You may wish to write about the following historical events. Dates are given 6 months in advance to allow you time for research and writing.

We have painstakingly cross-checked every entry, but you are advised to check all facts again as part of your research – just in case! Please let us know of any errors you find.

A greatly expanded list of anniversaries for this month (more than twice as many as listed here) is available in  The Date-A-Base Book 2010, which covers the whole of 2010. More details below.

300 years ago (12 Mar 1710)
Birth of Thomas Arne, British composer who wrote ‘Rule Britannia’

250 years ago (20 Mar 1760)
The Great Fire of Boston, Massachusetts, USA, destroyed 349 buildings

200 years ago (1 Mar 1810)
Birth of Frédéric Chopin, Polish-French composer and pianist

200 years ago (2 Mar 1810)
Birth of Pope Leo XIII

125 years ago (3 Mar 1885)
The American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) was founded

125 years ago (14 Mar 1885)
Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera ‘The Mikado’ was first performed at the Savoy Theatre, London

100 years ago (5 Mar 1910)
Birth of Konstantin Sergeyev, Russian ballet dancer, director, and chief choreographer of the Mariinsky Ballet

100 years ago (8 Mar 1910)
John Moore-Brabazon became the first person in the UK to qualify as a pilot, and was awarded the Royal Aero Club Flying Certificate number 1

100 years ago (14 Mar 1910)
Lakeview Gusher, the largest US oil well gusher, vented to atmosphere near Bakersfield, California

100 years ago (17 Mar 1910)
The Camp Fire Girls (now called Camp Fire USA) was founded in Lake Sebago, Maine

100 years ago (21 Mar 1910)
Death of Nadar, French photographer, caricaturist and writer, who also took the world’s first aerial photograph

100 years ago (21 Mar 1910)
Birth of Julio Gallo, American vintner

100 years ago (28 Mar 1910)
The first successful take-off of a seaplane from water, at Martinque, France, piloted by its inventor, Henri Fabre

100 years ago (28 Mar 1910)
Birth of Queen Ingrid of Denmark

90 years ago (19 Mar 1920)
The US Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles and American membership of the League of Nations

90 years ago (25 Mar 1920)
The British special constables known as the ‘Black and Tans’ (officially the Royal Irish Constabulary Reserve Force) arrived in Ireland to suppress revolution and target the IRA

80 years ago (6 Mar 1930)
Clarence Birdseye’s first frozen foods went on sale in Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, in a (successful) marketing test

80 years ago (12 Mar 1930)
Indian political and spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi led 78 activists and followers on a 23-day ’salt march’ to protest against a British tax on salt and British rule in India

80 years ago (13 Mar 1930)
The discovery of the dwarf planet Pluto by American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh was announced to the public. (Discovered 18th February)

80 years ago (28 Mar 1930)
The cities of Angora and Constantinople in Turkey changed their names to Ankara and Istanbul respectively

75 years ago (16 Mar 1935)
Adolf Hitler ordered the re-arming of Germany, violating of the Treaty of Versailles

75 years ago (16 Mar 1935)
Death of J.J.R. Macleod, Scottish physician and physiologist, joint winner of the 1923 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of insulin in the treatment of diabetes

75 years ago (21 Mar 1935)
Persia was renamed Iran

70 years ago (18 Mar 1940)
Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini met at Brenner Pass in the Alps. The Italian dictator agreed to join Germany’s war against France and Britain

60 years ago (1 Mar 1950)
German-born nuclear physicist Klaus Fuchs was sentenced to 14 years in prison for passing vital American and British atomic research secrets to the Soviet Union

60 years ago (14 Mar 1950)
The FBI published their first list of the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives

50 years ago (5 Mar 1960)
Rock and roll singer Elvis Presley was officially discharged from the US Army after completing his two years’ service

50 years ago (21 Mar 1960)
Sharpeville Massacre, South Africa. Police opened fire on a group of black anti-Apartheid demonstrators, killing 69 and wounding 180

50 years ago (21 Mar 1960)
Birth of Ayrton Senna, Brazilian racing driver

50 years ago (22 Mar 1960)
The first laser was patented by American physicists Arthur Schawlow and Charles Townes

40 years ago (2 Mar 1970)
Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) proclaimed itself a republic

40 years ago (5 Mar 1970)
The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons came into effect, having been ratified by 43 nations

30 years ago (4 Mar 1980)
Robert Mugabe was elected as Zimbabwe’s first black prime minister

30 years ago (21 Mar 1980)
US President Jimmy Carter announced that the USA would boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan

25 years ago (2 Mar 1985)
The US government approved a screening test for AIDS, allowing contaminated blood to be excluded from blood transfusions

25 years ago (3 Mar 1985)
British miners voted to return to work after a year-long strike over pit closures and job losses

25 years ago (10 Mar 1985)
Death of Konstantin Chernenko, leader of the Soviet Union (1984-85)

25 years ago (11 Mar 1985)
Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union

25 years ago (16 Mar 1985)
American journalist Terry Anderson, chief Middle East correspondent for Associated Press, was kidnapped in Beirut (released December 1991)

25 years ago (21 Mar 1985)
Death of Sir Michael Redgrave, British stage and film actor

25 years ago (23 Mar 1985)
Death of Dr Richard Beeching, Chairman of British Railways, who axed thousands of miles of British railway lines in the 1960s

25 years ago (28 Mar 1985)
Death of Marc Chagall, Belorussian-born French artist and designer

25 years ago (29 Mar 1985)
Death of Jeanine Deckers, Belgian nun, also known as ‘The Singing Nun’

20 years ago (11 Mar 1990)
Lithuania declared its independence from the USSR

20 years ago (24 Mar 1990)
Death of An Wang, Chinese-born American electronics engineer and computer entrepreneur, inventor of the magnetic memory core, widely used in computers before the advent of the microchip

20 years ago (31 Mar 1990)
Poll tax riots in London

15 years ago (1 Mar 1995)
Internet search company Yahoo! was founded

15 years ago (2 Mar 1995)
British ‘rogue trader’ Nick Leeson was arrested for his role in the collapse of Barings Bank

10 years ago (26 Mar 2000)
Vladimir Putin was elected President of the Russian Federation

10 years ago (26 Mar 2000)
Death of Alex Comfort, British author (‘The Joy of Sex’, etc)

10 years ago (27 Mar 2000)
Death of Ian Dury, British singer, songwriter and actor

For more historic anniversaries see The Date-A-Base Book 2010, which covers the whole of 2010 and contains over 1,600 forthcoming anniversaries – more than twice as many entries per month than our standard lists featured above. Over the course of the year you’ll get to hear about hundreds of significant forthcoming anniversaries that other writers just won’t know about – giving you a huge advantage!

The Date-A-Base Book 2010 is an excellent source of ideas for all writers, journalists, film-makers, editors, researchers, producers, teachers, students, speakers and event planners. Just one article sale will pay for your copy many (many!) times over.

Dave Haslett, www.ideas4writers.co.uk

What If . . . essential writing prompts

Here’s another selection to inspire you – what can you do with these?

What if . . .

1. you had a relationship with a colleague, which was against the rules, so one of you had to leave?

2. you tricked your colleague(s) into resigning?

3. you had more customers than you could handle?

4. anyone could do your job?

5. you deliberately swore at your boss?

6. you had no way of getting home from work?

7. you were trapped at work due to bad weather?

8. someone you hated was commissioned to write your biography?

9. you won a major writing award?

10. someone liked you for the wrong reasons?

If you like What Ifs, you’ll love our new book The Fastest Way to Get Ideas – 4,400 Essential What Ifs for Writers.

Instant inspiration for your short stories, novels, characters, plots, settings and more!

E-book (PDF) available now – just £7.95.

Click here for full details

Dave Haslett, www.ideas4writers.co.uk

Forthcoming historic anniversaries, Feb 2010

Monday, 17 August 2009 by Dave Haslett

You may wish to write about the following historical events. Dates are given 6 months in advance to allow you time for research and writing.

We have painstakingly cross-checked every entry, but you are advised to check all facts again as part of your research – just in case! Please let us know of any errors you find.

A greatly expanded list of anniversaries (over 100 per month) is available in  The Date-A-Base Book 2010, which covers the whole of 2010. More details below.

300 years ago (15 Feb 1710)
Birth of King Louis XV of France

200 years ago (24 Feb 1810)
Death of Henry Cavendish, British chemist and physicist who discovered hydrogen and calculated the weight of the Earth

150 years ago (29 Feb 1860)
Birth of Herman Hollerith, American statistician who invented a tabulating machine, a forerunner of the modern computer

100 years ago (8 Feb 1910)
The Boy Scouts of America was founded in Washington, DC

100 years ago (13 Feb 1910)
Birth of William Shockley, American engineer and teacher, joint winner of the 1956 Nobel Prize for Physics for developing the transistor

100 years ago (21 Feb 1910)
Birth of Douglas Bader, British fighter pilot during WWII

100 years ago (25 Feb 1910)
Birth of Millicent Fenwick, American fashion editor and politician

100 years ago (27 Feb 1910)
Birth of Joan Bennett, American film actress

100 years ago (27 Feb 1910)
Birth of Kelly Johnson, American aircraft designer and engineer

100 years ago (27 Feb 1910)
Birth of Peter De Vries, American editor and novelist

90 years ago (1 Feb 1920)
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police was founded

90 years ago (24 Feb 1920 or 1 Apr 1920)
The National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi Party) was established, changing its name from the German Worker’s Party and holding its first mass rally in Munich

80 years ago (18 Feb 1930)
American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovered the dwarf planet Pluto

75 years ago (2 Feb 1935)
The polygraph (lie detector) machine was tested for the first time, in an experiment conducted by Leonarde Keeler in Portage, Wisconsin, USA

75 years ago (8 Feb 1935)
Death of Max Liebermann, German artist and printmaker, the foremost proponent of Impressionism in Germany

75 years ago (11 Feb 1935)
Birth of Gene Vincent, American rock and roll singer

75 years ago (12 Feb 1935)
Death of Auguste Escoffier, French chef, known as ‘the king of chefs and the chef of kings’

75 years ago (16 Feb 1935)
Birth of Sonny Bono, American entertainer and politician

75 years ago (26 Feb 1935)
Scottish physicist Robert Watson-Watt gave the first demonstration of radar at Daventry, England

75 years ago (26 Feb 1935)
Adolf Hitler ordered Hermann Göring to establish the Luftwaffe, contravening the Treaty of Versailles, which banned German military aviation

75 years ago (28 Feb 1935)
Nylon was first produced by a team led by Wallace Carothers at DuPont Laboratories in Wilmington, Delaware, USA

60 years ago (9 Feb 1950)
Joseph McCarthy, a Republican senator from Wisconsin, announced that 205 communists had infiltrated the US State Department

50 years ago (8 Feb 1960)
Queen Elizabeth II issued an Order-in-Council stating that she and her family would be known as the House of Windsor, and that her descendants would use the surname Mountbatten-Windsor

50 years ago (8 Feb 1960)
Death of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, British architect (Battersea Power Station, Liverpool Cathedral, Britain’s red telephone boxes, etc)

50 years ago (9 Feb 1960)
American actress Joanne Woodward received the first star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

50 years ago (13 Feb 1960)
France tested its first atomic bomb in the Sahara desert

50 years ago (29 Feb 1960)
The city of Agadir in southern Morocco was devastated by an earthquake that killed 12,000 people

50 years ago (29 Feb 1960)
The first Playboy Club opened in Chicago, Illinois, USA

40 years ago (23 Feb 1970)
Guyana became an independent republic within the British Commonwealth

40 years ago (24 Feb 1970)
National Public Radio was founded in the USA

25 years ago (4 Feb 1985)
Representatives from 20 countries within the United Nations signed the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment

25 years ago (6 Feb 1985)
Death of James Hadley Chase, British writer

25 years ago (7 Feb 1985)
New York City chose ‘New York, New York’ as its official anthem

25 years ago (7 Feb 1985)
Death of Matt Monro, British singer

25 years ago (8 Feb 1985)
Death of William Lyons, British engineer and car manufacturer, founder of Jaguar Cars

25 years ago (11 Feb 1985)
Death of Henry Hathaway, American director and producer of Western movies (‘True Grit’, ‘How the West Was Won’, and many others)

25 years ago (16 Feb 1985)
Hezbollah – a Shi’a Islamic political and paramilitary organisation – was founded in Lebanon

25 years ago (19 Feb 1985)
The BBC broadcast the first episode of the soap opera ‘EastEnders’

25 years ago (19 Feb 1985)
American heart patient William J. Schroeder became the first person to leave hospital with a permanent artificial heart. (He lived for 620 days)

25 years ago (20 Feb 1985)
The Irish government voted to allow the sale of contraceptives, in defiance of the Catholic Church

25 years ago (20 Feb 1985)
Death of Clarence Nash, American voice actor (‘Donald Duck’)

25 years ago (27 Feb 1985)
Death of Henry Cabot Lodge, American politician and diplomat

25 years ago (28 Feb 1985)
Death of Ray Ellington, British jazz singer, drummer and bandleader

20 years ago (2 Feb 1990)
South African President FW de Klerk lifted a ban on the African National Congress (ANC) and promised to free Nelson Mandela from prison

20 years ago (7 Feb 1990)
The Soviet Union’s ruling Communist Party agreed to let other political parties stand for election, thereby giving up its monopoly on power

20 years ago (11 Feb 1990)
South African ANC leader, political activist and anti-apartheid campaigner Nelson Mandela was released from prison after 27 years

20 years ago (24 Feb 1990)
Death of Malcolm Forbes, American publisher of ‘Forbes’ magazine

20 years ago (24 Feb 1990)
Death of Johnnie Ray, American singer, songwriter and pianist

15 years ago (26 Feb 1995)
Barings, Britain’s oldest merchant bank, declared bankruptcy after their chief trader in Singapore, Nick Leeson, lost approximately £625 million on unauthorised transactions

10 years ago (4 Feb 2000)
Death of Doris Coley, American pop singer (‘The Shirelles’)

10 years ago (7 Feb 2000)
Death of Doug Henning, Canadian magician

10 years ago (11 Feb 2000)
The British government suspended Northern Ireland’s power-sharing Assembly over the IRA’s refusal to disarm

10 years ago (12 Feb 2000)
Death of Charles M. Schulz, American comic strip artist (‘Peanuts’)

10 years ago (12 Feb 2000)
Death of Tom Landry, American football coach (Dallas Cowboys)

10 years ago (23 Feb 2000)
Death of Ofra Haza, Israeli singer

10 years ago (23 Feb 2000)
Death of Stanley Matthews, British footballer

For more historic anniversaries see The Date-A-Base Book 2010, which covers the whole of 2010 and contains over 1,600 forthcoming anniversaries – more than twice as many entries per month than our standard lists featured above. Over the course of the year you’ll get to hear about hundreds of significant forthcoming anniversaries that other writers just won’t know about – giving you a huge advantage!

The Date-A-Base Book 2010 is an excellent source of ideas for all writers, journalists, film-makers, editors, researchers, producers, teachers, students, speakers and event planners. Just one article sale will pay for your copy many (many!) times over.

Dave Haslett, www.ideas4writers.co.uk

Happy birthday ideas4writers!

Thursday, 13 August 2009 by Dave Haslett

ideas4writers is 7 years old today. Happy birthday to us!

7 years ago . . .

. . . the ideas4writers website was launched, and looked more or less the same as it does today. We’ll probably give it a revamp sometime next year though. We’ll be adding a lot of new products (all created by us), so at the very least we’re going to need a shopping cart. We actually started work on the website in October 2001. It took around 9 months to develop because there’s a lot of complex programming behind our writing engines (they automatically generate stories and characters for you). The engines may look simple, but there’s a lot going on behind the scenes – and they generate fantastic stories and characters!

. . . there were less than 100 ideas, rather than the 5,000+ that we have now.

. . . we only had 3 members, rather than the 1,000+ that we have now. (Member #1 is myself of course. Strangely, Kate is member #16, not #2.)

. . . membership cost £29.95 a year. It’s currently free if you buy The Fastest Way to Write your Book. But not for much longer as we’re going back to charging a fee for membership shortly. (Though it will be a one-off charge rather than an annual subscription – it will remain free for existing members.) Free membership vouchers will be removed from the next print run of the book. (So if you want one you’ll need to be quick.)

. . . we had a monthly newsletter (free) and ezine (fee-based). But due to the near impossibility of actually delivering them to you, we replaced them both with this blog a couple of years ago. That made things much easier.

. . . we didn’t have any books to sell. We now have The Fastest Way to Write Your Book, The Fastest Way to Get Ideas – 4,400 Essential What Ifs for Writers, and the Date-A-Base Book series that lists forthcoming historic anniversaries for you to write about. And there are lots more coming soon – we’re working hard on those right now (and several other exciting things), which is why we’ve been a bit quiet of late.

. . . we hadn’t published any books for anyone else. Then, by popular request from our members, we launched our ethical publishing service. We now have Geoff Anderson’s The Legend Of Aranrhod, Marion Athorne’s Wizard’s Woe, Katherine Reynolds’s Born to Dance, and the follow-up Safe for Life which is due out in October.

. . . we were entirely a subscription based ideas service for writers. After a few years we ditched the subscription and became a publisher and publishing service, while continuing to provide an ideas service as a free bonus to those who bought our book.

From next year we’ll be both a publisher and a fee-based ideas service. Things are sort of going in a circle, but in a slighly different way!

As for the publishing service part, well we might bring that back one day . . . if we ever run out of books to write. We’re continuing to publish books by our current authors, but we aren’t taking on any new authors – we don’t have the time at the moment, sorry.

Anyway, if you have any thoughts or comments please post a comment beneath this message on our blog. Do you have any interesting memories of the early days of ideas4writers? Have you met us? Do you have any photos? Did you have any big successes from using our ideas? Did you make any friends in our forums? We’d love to hear from you. Go on, say something, even if it’s just ‘Hello’ or ‘Thanks’ or ‘You suck!’ – we rarely hear a word from most of you.

(By the way, we’ll be deleting any messages that say we suck. We work extremely hard and we do our very best for you, and everyone who meets us says we’re very nice – so keep it positive please. After all, it’s our birthday!)

Dave Haslett, ideas4writers, www.ideas4writers.co.uk

What If . . . essential writing prompts

Saturday, 1 August 2009 by Dave Haslett

Here’s another selection to inspire you – what can you do with these?

What if . . .

1. you had an arranged marriage?

2. you met your partner for the first time on your wedding day?

3. your partner wasn’t at your wedding, but it went ahead anyway?

4. you didn’t know who had won?

5. you knew you couldn’t lose?

6. you knew you couldn’t win?

7. someone offered you a job?

8. your boss told you to work harder?

9. you didn’t know who your boss was?

10. you fell in love with a colleague?

If you like What Ifs, you’ll love our new book The Fastest Way to Get Ideas – 4,400 Essential What Ifs for Writers.

Instant inspiration for your short stories, novels, characters, plots, settings and more!

E-book (PDF) available now – just £7.95.

Click here for full details

Dave Haslett, www.ideas4writers.co.uk

1. you had an arranged marriage

Members’ News – July 2009

None of you have told us about anything you’ve been up to for the last few weeks.

But we know you’ve been having plenty of successes in secret.

For example, having had a quick flick through the latest issue of Writers’ News we can see that no less than 5 ideas4writers members were shortlisted in one of their recent short story competitions.

That’s rather impressive. But apparently you’d rather keep things like that to yourselves. So we won’t name any names. (But well done anyway.)

I’ll leave you alone and get back to writing books now.

But if you have any interesting news to share with your fellow members, do please let us know. Then we can mention it here next month.

Dave Haslett, ideas4writers, www.ideas4writers.co.uk

The Date-A-Base Book 2011 – due October

We’re receiving a lot of enquiries about when The Date-A-Base Book 2011 will be available.

We’ve only just started work on the 2011 edition, and it takes us around 3 months to compile and cross-check all the entries. So we expect to have it finished by the end of October.

The e-book version will then go on sale immediately, with the printed version available around 3 to 4 weeks later.

We will of course let you know as soon as it’s on sale, and everyone who has bought the 2010 edition will receive an email from us.

By popular demand we’re also going bring our Date-A-Base Book publishing cycle forward by several months. Which means that the 2012 edition should be on sale by April/May 2010.

Dave Haslett, ideas4writers, www.ideas4writers.co.uk