Actually in the photo I linked to above that's Dujon on the left, me wallaby in the middle and PaulWay dressed in a rather fetching shade of blue in the background (sorry about the poor light, you might not have seen him properly). I have met many people in the Morniverse, but not Rosie (or Dan or Dunx).
Even with my love of sub-clauses and punctuation, "With this book, you, too, can be a mystery solver!" just seems too much - especially for a back cover that is supposed to grab people's attention.
Sorry to sound harsh, but my suggestion is that you should send your two books to professional publishers, with an open and optimistic mind. Take on board their comments, because they really do know what sells, and how to sell it.
fine = 0.004 x daily income x (V2 - V2lim) with V in kph
But applying this to the ordinary geezer on £100 a day doing 130 kph in a 120 kph limit gives, coincidentally, the same £1000 as before. Maybe it's proprtional to the cube of fourth power of the speed or possibly to income above a certain level. But then if you were poor you'd have no fine at all. I can't make sense of it It's all bollocks and obviously quite beyond the innumerates at the Grauniad, a paper I read BTW.
(Duj) Of course there is and they never catch me despite a tendency to leg it. But it depends on the fine. Speeding on a motorway (say 85 mph instead of 70) is hardly arson, rape and bloody murder, except maybe in Switzerland, a very well-ordered country.
Haven't I anything better to do? Well, just tonight, no, alas.
Haven't got 'John's Stinky White Vegetables', because I can't think of a suitable literary surname, but I suspect you should be ashamed of yourself for that one.
Somewhere on my hard disk I've got a punny work-in-progress quiz a bit like this one of yours. Mine contains entries such as 'many-sized virtue' - 'paragon'. 'King's son publishes' - 'prints'. Some need more work, like that 'paragon' one. The clue doesn't fit the answer very closely.
Closing schools seems like a ludicrous overreaction, but actually it's pretty sensible. On the one hand it reduces pressure on the buses and the roads in general. On the other there is also the chance (admittedly more so in rural areas) that conditions could worsen and the kids wouldn't be able to get home and would have to stay at school overnight. This happened at my old school (albeit after I left) and it sounded like a bloody nightmare for all concerned. And, of course, teachers don't always live in the catchment areas of the school (can't afford to if it's a good one) so they'd be short-staffed as well.
But, hey, ho, as long as it allows you to hand in something late without incurring a penalty, then that's ok.
