{"id":21972,"date":"2025-12-19T21:37:55","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T21:37:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/?p=21972"},"modified":"2025-12-21T08:40:19","modified_gmt":"2025-12-21T08:40:19","slug":"in-the-darkness-shineth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/?p=21972","title":{"rendered":"In the Darkness Shineth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-21973\" src=\"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/treeIMGP0001.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/treeIMGP0001.jpg 600w, https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/treeIMGP0001-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 984px) 61vw, (max-width: 1362px) 45vw, 600px\" \/>Our Christmas tree is up at last and festooned with coloured lights instead of the normal plain ones.<br \/>\nA1 is reading <em>What the Dark Whispers<\/em>* by MJ Lee. If I was a publisher&#8217;s reader and this was a first novel, I might say &#8220;Shows some promise, but needs work. Reject with encouragement.&#8221; But MJL has published 30 crime novels in the last ten years and really should have sorted out his plotting. (Example: An apparent suicide pays for self-immolation petrol with his own credit card, and the baffled cops are unable to identify him.) And the book badly needs a proofreader.<br \/>\nA2, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2025\/dec\/18\/sickness-britain-novel-20-years-ago-jg-ballard\">inspired by an article by Aditya Chakrabortty<\/a>, is rereading <em>Kingdom Come<\/em> by JG Ballard. In an imaginary future, suburban blokes string St George&#8217;s flags from lamp-posts, trash Asian shops and try to burn down asylum hostels. Couldn&#8217;t happen here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our Christmas tree is up at last and festooned with coloured lights instead of the normal plain ones. A1 is reading What the Dark Whispers* by MJ Lee. If I was a publisher&#8217;s reader and this was a first novel, I might say &#8220;Shows some promise, but needs work. Reject with encouragement.&#8221; But MJL has &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/?p=21972\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;In the Darkness Shineth&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[32,8],"tags":[19,20],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21972"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21972"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21983,"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21972\/revisions\/21983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}