Blogs

Some may have seen me mention Tales from the Shadow Booth in the past. These were anthologies of speculative fiction (very good ones too), but are no longer taking submissions and haven't been for a while. However, Dan Coxon was the man behind them and, as he says over on twitter, he has had an idea for a new anthology. I suggest any spec fic types on here keep an eye out for what he comes up with.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000rgnx/all-the-presidents-men This is an old film, with impossibly young actors. But the same old story of corruption and cover-up, we’re more familiar with now. The 45 th Un-United States President could say with some justification that he could ‘stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and not lose any votes’. He was partly right, and always wrong. Let’s leave the twice impeached President...

Two stunning picks for you today - big congratulations to mark_say for 'The Wet Afternoon of Ravilious' which is our Story of the Week, and to Kilb50 for his exceptionally moving 'To a Lone Sailor' which gets my pick for Poem of the Week: https://www.abctales.com/story/marksay/wet-afternoon-ravilious https://www.abctales.com/story/kilb50/lone-sailor Last week's Inspiration Point was such a success I'm going to leave it up for another week - here...

Very pleased to announce the publication of No Good Deed by ABCtales’ very own Ewan Lawrie. With no preview copy, he kept us on tenterhooks to the last, so those of us who pre-ordered are mostly where Tony Cook is: ‘Ewan Lawrie's new book 'No Good Deed' arrived through my letter box yesterday. It's the follow up to the excellent Gibbous House, a Gothic romp of mind blowing proportions. I can't wait to get stuck into it to find out what Moffat...

No, they haven't been locked up (yet!) My two hapless Undertakers have their latest collection of stories, Grave Expectations, available FREE for one day only (Thursday, 21st January, 2021) and, as many people on ABCtales have been kind enough to read their stories and comment on them, I thought you might appreciate a 'heads up' as our transatlantic cousins insist on saying :-) Even when it's not free, it's just the ridiculous price of 99p but,...

"Publishing is a business, not a charity." went Kenneth (not his real name) on a phone call recently. Through lockdown 2020, I completed my latest novel. And I decided after six years of independent publishing to try my hand at pitching it via the conventional route. Carefully selecting the agents who handle this genre (crime), I began to follow the submissions process and track each submission on a spreadsheet. The first thing that became...

'SILENCE IS GOLDEN'

"Polly Wants A Cracker'