Blogs

Elizabeth Strout is an internationally and critically acclaimed bestselling author of My Name is Lucy Barton. Lucy Barton, as a stock character, is also an author who writes mostly about farm life in Angash, Illinois. How her family were so desperately poor they ate scraps out of dump trucks and were shunned. The first chance she got to get away she took it. Later she became a successful writer in New York. The maxim ‘write what you know’ seems...

Again, another hard week for decisions owing to us being snowed under with brilliant stuff - basically, for prose, read the concluding parts of Milo by Talo Segura, the ongoing wonderfulness of drew_gummerson's A piece of Ass, Terrence Oblong's Island Hideaway - and this week's Story of the Week goes to artofminima's series which doesn't seem to have a name, but the latest part is called A Beautiful Truce. Poem of the Week goes to Ewan for his...

On page 402, towards the end of this second volume of the rise and rise of Lyndon Johnson, Robert A.Caro offers an insight into the former President’s personality. 'For a President to preserve as a personal memento a photograph showing the notorious Box 13 in the possession of his political allies—a photograph which by implication provides that someone was indeed in a positon to stuff it—is startling in itself. For him to display the photograph...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0535lq5/billy-connolly-portrait-of-a-lifetime Billy Connolly might well be Scotland’s greatest export after whisky. Both ITV and BBC are competing to squeeze the last dregs of life out of The Big Yin. I’ve checked, he’s not dead yet. But he does have motor- neurone disease and he’s coming up for seventy-five. He said it himself, other people’s success tend to form an inverted U-shaped curve. His success is...

Goes To Prove Character

Ready or not, we're on Amazon. Yup, Full Filler by Ice Rivers is on the market. 95% of the writing has appeared on ABCtales. Pretty sure this first volume would not exist without ABCtales. It's a weird feeling. I thought that I'd be jumpiong around and going crazy...telling everyone about the publication....marketing...checking sales results but that's not the way it's happening. First off, I'm tired again nearly fatigue tired, nearly post natal...

January has certainly felt a lot less bleak with all the brilliant stuff currently being posted on ABC Tales. Lots of splendid writing to enjoy, which makes it even harder to make the week's choices. Story of the Week goes to the first chapter of Talo Segura's series about Milo. I was instantly drawn into the story and completely absorbed by the setting and the characters. Please do go on and read the other parts as well. You definitely won't be...

Exposed: The Church’s Darkest Secret, BBC 2, BBC iPlayer, Director Ben Steele. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000dbq7/exposed-the-churchs-darkest-secret-series-1-episode-1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000dbjd/exposed-the-churchs-darkest-secret-series-1-episode-2 But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the...