STORYWORLD

While preparing my new episodic novel SEARCHING FOR ROBERT P for publication, I had a long time to reflect on how much things have changed in the forty years (is it that long?!!!) since the mid-seventies . I also discovered that some things don't change, regardless  of the era. Here are a few observations: Long haired men were sexy: In contrast to the carefully groomed/shaved hairdos of   today's young men, sexy seventies guys had long hair and lots of it. Check out these pics of seventies icons, Robert Plant and Ted Nugent: Too bad "mullets" were already making an appearance on the scene. Check out Paul McCartney's 70's "do" Smoking was "Glam": Unfortunately in the 70's, smoking was part of a "cool" image. That meant restaurants, nightclubs and pubs were smoke-filled dens. After a night on the town - even if you were a non-smoker - you'd inhaled the smoke from a thousand other people&

The "Inimitable" as the great Charles Dickens was fondly referred to by his friends, family and adoring public, really gained his popularity and enormous following by publishing his works in serialized form. Over the course of his long and distinguished career, he oversaw the publication of several weekly journals that featured his own work as well as some of his famous contemporaries such as Wilkie Collins ( The Woman in White) and   Elizabeth Gaskell ( North and South). Well-loved stories like David Copperfield, Pickwick Papers, Great Expectations, Bleak House to name but a few, were serialized in 20 monthly instalments. The monthly plan made Dickens' work accessible to many more people who were able to afford the one shilling outlay for a copy of the monthly journal, rather than the one guinea for the full novel. Household Words then All Year Round were the two publications featuring Dickens major works.   In some ways you could say this trend was