start the cold new year with a warming book: like a kid's book by author Zsolt Kerekes Take
a stroll into the magical woods of the English countryside (logs included) by
listening to a free sample of my audiobook ($2.99 on Apple books)
Jamie
and the Tree Troll: a new legend of the South Downs in Sussex - which is
also available in print and ebook formats from leading bookstores worldwide.
...click
here to see book description and more buying links |
January 3, 2026 Hi
- I'm
Zsolt Kerekes and this
is my author site. After 30 years as the founding editor of various computing
technology publications I have retired from all that high tech jazz and I'm
writing slow. In 2023 I published 4 books for kids which had earlier appeared as web pages here on goblinsearch (in the period from 2001 to 2022). These new rewritten print books, audiobooks and ebooks are influenced by the magic of the English countryside where I lived when I wrote them. | ||||
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| I have been told by some
readers that my books above may appeal as much to adults as to kids. This
makes placing them in book listings problematic. are kids books only for kids? - a literary diversion Rules about what books are suitable for reading by whom (gender) and when (age) are marketing questions beyond my ability or inclination to discuss. It can be fun (although at times exhausting) to exercise the freedom to decide for yourself. My view is that these book genre guidelines, while useful at times as signposts in the hunt for the next new books to read, can also double as fences which limit your reading pleasure. In times of trouble it can be comforting to read a safe, clean kids book. Most often adults return to something from their past to fulfill that need. Depending on the book and how old you are their contents may seem archaic today and fail to stretch your mind in the way you remembered from childhood. I was surprised myself how much I enjoyed reading a new series of YA books called the The Time Travel Chronicles by Australian author Paulene Turner as they each appeared in my twitter feed in 2023, and 2024. The clever proposition - here today, erased tomorrow - on the cover page of the first book in her series hooked me in and I became a fan. Take a look at her Secrets of the Nile which begins the series. And as with all books, ignore the cover graphics and try reading a sample of the words. update on my next book  I
don't want to be remembered only as a writer of kids books. That's what I said to myself in 2001 - when I published the first Alexander goblins story here on goblinsearch.com, already anticipating at that time that this bedtime story and the follow up pirates novel which I began to serialise here would outlast in reader interest whatever I had written before or would write in future in my day job as a chronicler and evangelist of computer design and the revolutions reshaping digital architecture. Old computer design problems - I reckoned - would be about as interesting to the general reading public as the design of steam engines. Perhaps less so. I must write a story for adults too! And so it was in late 2001 I wrote the first 4 words and then the first four pages of a draft story which I thought would do the job. In 2005 I got as far as completing a draft of it as a short story which I shared with a group of friends. Make it longer - they said. We'd like to know what happened before, what comes after, and more about that world. OK - I will. But I had other priorities. I had already spent over 23 years thinking about it when, in November 2024, I made myself a promise that I would return to that 16,000 word short story and rewrite it. Now it's December 2025, and the Last Book (as it is now called) is already over 175,000 words long (twice as long as a typical novel) and will be 200,000 words (about 800 print pages) when it is published in 2026. I have no doubt that will change the way that readers will think about me. And how I think about about myself. But had it not been for those delightful kids stories I wouldn't have started it. It's funny how the writing life goes. In parts as plans and other parts as reactions to what has been written before. what have I been reading recently? During the days leading up to Christmas 2025 and the week after these are the books I've been reading. Gravity was the first book I've read from Tess Gerritsen.- gruesome serial killer stuff, and not my main kind of read, except I was curious enough to then read her first novel The Surgeon, which led onto...me now reading another of her books The Spy Coast which all goes to show that when someone tells you they don't read that kind of thing, it simply means that reading 3 books by the same author in the space of 10 days didn't figure in that calculation. In between those above I reread two non fiction books. I reread Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the launch of the world's first digital weapon by Kim Zetter - which I had read when it first came out. Having discussed it over Christmas I thought I'd reread it and see if it was as useful in informing me about the state of the art as I remembered. Yes. Another non fiction book I bought after Christmas and finished yesterday was Book of Lives - the new autobiography / memoir by Margaret Atwood - which we bought at a local bookshop Much Ado Books in Alfriston last week along with a bag of others including one I'm now reading - Wild for Austen by Devoney Looser. I confess I've only ever read one Jane Austen book though I've seen the films and tv series - but this new book by Devoney Looser has a playful while rigorous scholarly backed edge to it which appeals to me. Who knows what I might read next? That sums up my notes for now. Thanks for visiting. I'm going back to line edits of The Last Book, chapters 3 and 21. Oh - and I was was delighted to see that the first order in 2026 for one of my books (on January 2nd) was from a reader in the US who bought Alexander Woyte and the Goblins. |
why did I choose goblinsearch.com as the name
of my author site?
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having retired from writing about SSDs this is the official web site of East Chiltington? based author - Zsolt KerekesIn 2023 I published 4 books for kids which had appeared in earlier versions here on my fiction website from 2001 to 2019.
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Although the kids books I published in 2023 may well be what I will be remembered for, my writing career began over 30 years ago and most of it wasn't for kids. (Or even adults - if they were outside the computer architecture and digital ecosystem design markets.) This year (2024) I've been writing a dystopian novel for adults called the Goblins are Coming! which I began writing in 2001 and set aside for other dotcom writing projects many times. As you read this note my new book is nearing completion.
author news
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| Great deeds done for love of family do
not list in scrolls of wars.
Yet how best stop the tides of war return and live at ease together? Memories
fade. Can be remade. Victors write true histories whose meanings time wipes slippery. For those who can read them - words of Olden cast new warnings. The goblins are coming, 1, 2, 3. Hide in the cellar. Hide in the tree. the Last Book A novel of books past and future by Zsolt Kerekes - coming in 2025 |
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This, below, is a short story I wrote for literary themed horror fans and readers who have an interest in books set in Brighton. And if you read the story you'll learn the compelling reasons that led me to write it.
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X
news
my books for kids
do ebooks need graphical covers?
what I learned converting my first book to kindle?
The Remotea novel by Zsolt Kerekeswill be published December 2025theremote.uk |
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goblinsearch.com, concept, stories, design and text copyright © 1999 to 2024 Zsolt Kerekes |