markbrown's blog

The July 2008 edition of ABCtales Magazine is now available as a free download, featuring the cream of recent writing from ABCtales.com:

www.etribes.com/abctalesmag

'Me and Mickie James' by our very own Drew Gummerson is now out and available for purchase.

ABCtales Editor, Tony Cook, reviews it here:

For prose the prize goes to mori saltson for Just Running:

http://www.abctales.com/story/mori-saltson/just-running

For poetry the prize goes to Leonie for Bank Holiday Monday:

IF you are a spoken word artist based in the East of England who wants to develop your work then you should be applying for ESCALATOR 2008 LIVE LITERATURE.

Joe Dunthorne, our very own spack (http://www.abctales.com/user/spack) from ABCtales, has had his debut novel Submarine published by Hamish Hamilton and it has met with some great reviews.

In a bid to get more comments on our writers' work it has been requested that as a general rule we try and put a comment on the work of someone else for every story or poem that we post.

We recently passed the 15,000 member mark here on ABCtales and the 15,000th member was one Rachel Mbulwa Mang'eli, who works in a children's library in Mombassa.

I'm sorry to say that we cannot accept stories or poems in languages other than English.

Bob Young is a collaborator. As the fourth ranked entrepreneur on Silicon.com’s 2006 list that’s a bit of a surprise. Most hotshot entrepreneurs are not collaborators.

The blog on Booktribes is great for keeping you up to date with what's happening in the world of books. Just take a look at it here: http://www.booktribes.com/blog/category/news/

We've decided to publish our figures for 2006 - and they make very interesting reading. More than 58,000 people visited ABCtales more than 200 times in 2006 - which shows we have many thousands of dedicated readers who are not registered users. If you are one of those then please take the effort to register - it does help us!

The third issue of the ABCtales magazine is now available by clicking on the heading of this report...

Andreas Koumi's first novel, 'The Cypriot', is out now...

Aussie ABCtaler Anthony Jucha is filing his World Cup reports from South America - see the 'greatest show on earth' through new eyes...

News of a new poetry based website...

You have all received an email about this - possibly two! It seems like a great deal from our point of view - we wouldn't have made the offer if we didn't believe it to be so.

And in the spirit of utter transparency we have declared that if you choose to upgrade your life site and begin to pay money then we will receive a share of that cash - that's good for us and, hopefully, good for you, as it allows us to burgeon.

As of Tuesday 2nd of May 2006, Mark Brown is stepping down as editor of ABCtales.com.

"I've enjoyed the time I've spent with you all over the last three years, and certainly won't be leaving ABCtales entirely", he says.

The first prizes for books by bloggers have been announced - and we think it's time that ABCtales members featured heavily....

Many of you took part in the World Book Day 'Happy Endings' survey. Here's the findings...

One of the most exciting things about putting your writing onto ABCtales is getting feedback from your fellow users. One way that this happens is through discussion in the 'Discuss Writing From ABCtales.com' discussion forum. Another, more personal way that this happens is through contact by email.