Daisy Ashford

 

I am not the first Ashford to be a writer. My ancestor Daisy Ashford was born on Tuesday 7^th April 1881. She left us on Saturday 15^th January 1972.

Following on from my blog post PAPERBACK WRITER let me tell you of something I have been working on across the month of August which will soon be finished and be my first work within Dave's Wrtite In

Daisy was an English writer who is most famous for writing The Young Visiters, a novella concerning the upper class society of late 19th century England, when she was just nine years old. The novella was published in 1919, preserving her juvenile spelling and punctuation.

When I was writing my book THE BRIDGE HOUSE between 2016 and 2018 I felt I had Daisy looking over my shoulder.

The Bridge House is a love story spanning ninety years beginning in the year of the death of Queen Victoria. The two central characters come from working class and landed gentry but love has no recognition of class as existed in the late Victorian and Edwardian ages.

Daisy later wrote a book The Hangman’s Daughter which she claimed was her best work. I found a copy on e-bay and splashed out a few pounds to

add it to my collection of family items. I never did get round to reading it and now as I am working in my current prohect I am deliberately not opening its cover.

Over many years I have studied cases where lives were ended with the hangman’s rope. I am old enough to remember when capital punishment was in use in our country. I met someone my father knew who was a high court judge, it was he who had pronounced the death sentence on many a convicted murderer, including John Reginald Christie the 10 Rillington Place killer. I discuss the rights and wrongs of capital punishment in my book BEHIND THE NOOSE OR KNOT.  (It features in my collection THE ENID FACTOR)  Daisy is now tapping me on the shoulder telling me to write a book drawing from her title. 

On Thursday 11th August I began writing my own story THE HANGMAN'S GRANDSON. On that first day I tapped out 463 words, At the start of today, Tuesday 30th August 2022 the word total stands at 38,799 words. Another two or three days and I will be submitting it to Amazon for publication. It will then become the first in my Dave's Write In project supporting children who are sick in hospital, sending love to their

families and thanking our NHS staff who are caring for them.

When it is published will you read my story ? It's a slightly eccentric time travel adventure, I am not sure that adventure is the right word, taking people out of celebrated criminal cases and turning them into real people.

I will tell you more later.

For now please check out my Amazon Bookshelf.

Paperback Writer

As a teenager I was not a great fan of the Beatles. I went to an all-boys school, it was the girls who screamed and pulled their hair out at the Fab Four, for we lads that was not cool.

I was fifteen years old when The Beatles had a hit with Paperback Writer. At the age of fifteen that song inspired me to become a paperback writer and launched me on an addiction for story writing which today, now approaching my seventy-second birthday, sees me as one of, if not the, most prolific writers on Amazon. If you go to my Amazon Bookshelf – www.maxrobinsonwriter.com you will find I have 114 publications available.

I AM A PAPERBACK WRITER

I often say this but I did indeed begin writing as a teenager. I had many an article published in my local newspaper which back then was The Sutton Coldfield News. In the 1980;s I had my own weekly feature page in The Milton Keynes Citizen for which I was quite generously paid. Sadly, technology, rolling twenty-four hour news and the dumbo stupid smart-phone have destroyed such media.

It was in 1992 that my very first book was published. Then in 2016 Amazon accepted me as

one of its authors. Technology has harmed our society but not so Amazon technology which has completely revolutionised writing.

Barbra Cartland officially holds the world record for publishing the greatest number of books in a single year. Unoficcially I hold that record.

In 2021 with the pandemic and lock down having given us 2020 THE YEAR THAT NEVER

WAS I spent so much of my time writing. Amazon accepted 15 books, essays, short stories and e-books from me in 2020 but that number exploded to SIXTY FIVE.  I did not seek to claim the title Barbra Cartland had, I could not cope with the media attention but belive at that point I became the most prolific Amazon author.

If you go to my Amazon Bookshelf – www.maxrobinsonwriter.com you will find I have, as of 26th August 2021, 114 publications available.

From 1^st September 2022 every time Amazon accepts a new work from me I will personally donate £10 to University Hospital Milton Keynes to support children who are sick in its wards, to send love to their families and to thank our NHS staff who are caring for them. YOU can encourage me and inspire me to write more and more by adding your donation at: https://mkhcharity.enthuse.com/donate#!/ Will you become part of my Write-In ?

I promise to publish a minimum of one book a month. 2022 for me has been a bad year medically as I have stumbled from one illness to another, twice I have been to A & E, once in Milton Keynes and once in York. Within this old age illness I have received such love from our NHS, our NHS does NOT treat patients but cares for them, cares with love. At times I have wondered if I will actually make it to my seventy-second birthday but my family has a long history across the generations of longevity so I probably have around twenty, perhaps twenty-five years of writing yet to go. Do the Maths: 25 years x a minimum of 12 books X £10 minimum for each = £3,000 + your supporting donations.

Prolific yes, best-selling no. The top one hundred Amazon Authors receive a monthly bonus of £250,000 !  That is on top of royalties. I am not a best selling writer, I am probably at position 100 in the bottom selling 1000 authors !

ALL of the royalties I receive, every penny, is spent on our SMILE card project. Support does not always mean money but it does always mean love.

Every month personalised SMILE cards are sent to:

RONALD MCDONALD HOUSES ATTACHED TO CHILDRENS HOSPITALS IN:

CALGARY – Canada   DUBLIN – Ireland   MUMBAI – India

NASHVILLE – USA  AUCKLAND – New Zealand

LOS ANGELES – USA  NEW YORK – USA

BIRMINGHAM – England  CANBERRA – Australia   

CARDIFF - Wales  JOHANNESESBURG – South Africa

UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL MILTON KEYNES: A & E Unit   Childrens A & E Unit   Renal Ward and Clinic Fracture Clinic   Wards 21a & 21b

STOKE MANDERVILLE HOSPITAL: AMU Department

CHILTERN KIDNEY UNIT  WHALLEY DRIVE CLINIC

 Personalised SMILE cards to patients and to staff who are caring for them, caring with LOVE

Every three months SMILE cards are sent to:

 Blood Donor Team – Christ The Cornerstone Central Milton Keynes

The hospital receiving my donated blood

I am an old man living on a pension, my Amazon royalties fall well short of the costs sending 2,000+ SMILE cards a month to special people around the world. Just imagine what could be achieved supporting these beautiful people: patients, families and staff caring for them if I could sell more copies of my writing.

I am NOT some here today, forgotten all about it tomorrow happy-clappy media puppet the like of which we saw during the pandemic. I have been a supporter of our NHS for almost four decades and with this Write-In am here promising support for the rest of my life.

I LOVE people but what is the point of loving people if we are destroying the planet on which these people live ?

In 1973 to replace trees lost to Dutch Elm Disease the government launched a project PLANT A TREE ‘TIL 73 and then followed this with PLANT SOME MORE IN ’74.

In November 2021 I made a promise to support our National Trust (Of which I have been a member for 40 years) Tree Planting Ambition to plant twenty million new saplings by the year 2030.  Every week I fund a tree to be planted and dedicate each tree to someone within the SMILE project.

I am saying that I will plant a tree every week until my seventy-third birthday and then more to my seventy-fourth birthday, indeed all the way until the National Trust’s tree planting ambition is complete. And then some.

So that’s my plan. Do you think it will work ?  Will you help me make it work ?  

DAVID: dashford566@gmail.com

maxrobinsonwriter.com

THE SUNSHINE SMILE CREW

Loving our NHS - Come to my garden party

ONE WEEK TO GO:

One week today and it will be our Garden Party – are you coming ? CLICK HERE FOR FULL DETAILS

I am hoping friends from as wide an area of our community as possible will be able to drop by. I have deliberately widely set timings from 10am to 4pm so we can have a constant flow of friends and not be overcrowded. THAT SAID PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD AND INVITE AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE TO JOIN US. I have a big garden

9 Humber Way  Bletchley  MK3 7PH

When you arrive you will be met by a pathway of SMILES leading you through the front garden, down the side of my home and into the garden at the rear. When you arrive you will

be met with a stack of gifts made by Jollyes staff and customers for PETS IN NEED. Please pick up a tin and take it through to where you will be met by a box of SMILE stickers, take one and put it on the tin. Wrap the tin in your love than add it to the TOWER OF TINS for Milton Keynes Foodbank. In these terrible times of austerity let’s give our amazing Foodbank LOVE and support as the even more now vital work they do is undertaken.

Time goes by very quickly when you are old !  It is now three weeks since I became ill. I ended up being sent to A & E where I was given prompt, loving care then discharged to a clinic. There the loving care of our NHS continued. I am now almost better, the garden party for me will be a personal celebration and THANK YOU to our NHS.

I deliberately set a modest target of £200 so I could honour any shortfall myself. ALL costs for running the party are coming from my own pocket and NOT taken out of donations. The JustGiving site right now has received £95 and I have £40 in cash lovely people have given to me to start off the collection buckets.

There will be 50 copies of my books which visitors are free to take in exchange for a donation thrown into one of the buckets. We are seeking to:

SUPPORT children who are sick in hospital.

SEND LOVE to their families.

THANK our NHS staff who are caring for them.

Within our SMILE programme it is so important to send love to families who are going through

such a hard and emotional time with their child is sick in hospital. We are seeing in the media reports of the passing of young Archie. The media has failed to wrap love into its reports. I remember so well, we are talking late 1980’s, how Beck made friends with the little girl in the bed adjacent to hers in Guys Hospital. I took a photograph of hem both. That little girl died and her family was devastated beyond words I can use to describe their situation. Beck took the photograph and over the little girl she wrote died. Over her own image she wrote liver.

At the garden party you will be able to sign SMILE cards of love for families who have a child sick in hospital. As well as University Hospital Milton Keynes cards will be sent to the eleven hospitals around the world we support with our project.

You can also sign cards wishing patients in a number of Milton Keynes and Stoke Manderville

wards a speedy  recovery. Each month we send cards to patients in the Chiltern Kidney Unit. These lovely people are unable to come to the party as they are all going out on a coach trip for the day. I have already sent them SMILE cards wishing them a super trip. You can sign cards THANKING our NHS staff in numerous locations. NHS staff who every minute of every day go the extra mile.

NHS = National Happy Smile.

I have taken a series of stories written over the years, including a couple I wrote while sitting at Beck’s childhood bedside in Guys Hospital London, and published them in a book STORIES FOR YOUR CHILDREN. At the party I want you to sign messages of love in a book, one each for the eleven locations around the world we support: CALGARY – Canada   DUBLIN – Ireland   MUMBAI – India   NASHVILLE – USA  AUCKLAND – New Zealand   LOS ANGELES – USA   NEW YORK – USA   BIRMINGHAM – England   CANBERRA – Australia   JOHANNESESBURG – South Africa   CARDIFF - Wales

I am going to keep you very busy so there will be lots of refreshments to help you SMILE.

I also want to share with you some ideas for future support, support for our NHS and for our

Foodbank. I want to gauge how much support there is before launching anything.

So….. Sunday 14^th August 10am to 4pm 9 Humber Way Bletchley MK3 7PH drop by any time, tell you friends to come by. EVERYONE bring your love and SMILE.

A SMILE is the vaccination for sadness. Come and help with our vaccination programme.

 

David