Blogs

ABCtales Critiquing Service - good reports!

Posted by tcook on Mon, 26 Mar 2012

Over the years many of you have asked for a critiquing service and it has taken a long time to find (a) someone good enough to do it well and (b) someone who will charge what we regard as a reasonable fee. Finally, we've done it! Lorraine Mace is a freelance writer, columnist and tutor for the Writers Bureau. Winner of the Petra Kenney International Poetry Competition (comic verse category), Lorraine's fiction, features and humour have appeared...

Storyville, Under the Wire, BBCiPlayer

Posted by celticman on Mon, 18 Feb 2019

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0002k62/storyville-under-the-wire Unhappy is the land that needs heroes Bertolt Brecht. A Private War directed by Matthew Heinemann and staring Rosamund Pike as the heroic shambles that was Marie Colvin is in cinemas now. I see no need to see it. It’s all here in Under the Wire . Based on a book by Paul Conroy and his experience in the massacres at Homs. Here we are at the last stand. 13 th February 2012,...

Alan Parks (2017) Bloody January

Posted by celticman on Sat, 16 Feb 2019

I read the review of Bloody February in The Observer and it’s like deja-fuck-you, somebody had wrote the song that you wrote and sings it better. Set in Glasgow, in the 1970s. My turf and my time and my subject matter. This book fucking scared me big time. I was scared this book would be everything I was not. Leading writers of Scottish noir praise Bloody January on the cover. Ian Rankin, Alex Gray, Peter May and Louise Welsh, ‘Bloody and...

New In, and first out...

Posted by maisie on Sat, 16 Feb 2019

I had a walk out today, after a week nearly of anti-biotics and rest, my legs are weak, and ache. Yet Spring is on the way, and the weather struck me as more temperate than usual and I ventured out in a linen jacket, a long (on me) gor-ray skirt, and a blue satin blouse. I finished the outfit with a blue leather bag, and a pair of blue, very feminine, court style, extra width shoes from Lotus. The Norwich store was busy, in each department, and...

We Told Six Lies

Posted by helix888 on Sat, 16 Feb 2019

Ever heard the song Held by Natalie Grant? My mind had it on replay as I went through We Told Six Lies by Victoria Scott. By the way, if you call the twist before the end then you're a better CSI agent than I was, and I was pleasantly surprised. The story is told from two point of views, Molly, the missing protagonist, and Cobain, the boyfriend suspected of kidnapping her. They're both compelling character's, Cobain more so than Molly (in my...

Story and Poem of the Week and Inspiration Point

Posted by Insertponceyfrenchnamehere on Fri, 15 Feb 2019

Difficult as ever to choose, but in the end Story of the Week is mikesize1's 'Elephant Nest: Chapter One'. It made me laugh, it made me flinch, it made me wonder what was coming next: https://www.abctales.com/story/mikesize1/elephant-nest-chapter-one Poem of the Week was even harder. Eventually I went for Di_Hard's 'driverless', but with a more than honourable mention for the poem that inspired it, Jane Hyphen's 'Drivers'. Please do read both:...

Story and Poem of the Week and Inspiration Point

Posted by airyfairy on Fri, 15 Feb 2019

Difficult as ever to choose, but in the end Story of the Week is mikesize1's 'Elephant Nest: Chapter One'. It made me laugh, it made me flinch, it made me wonder what was coming next: https://www.abctales.com/story/mikesize1/elephant-nest-chapter-one Poem of the Week was even harder. Eventually I went for Di_Hard's 'driverless', but with a more than honourable mention for the poem that inspired it, Jane Hyphen's 'Drivers'. Please do read both:...

Happiness is a warm keyboard=I live to and love to write

Posted by Penny4athought on Tue, 12 Feb 2019

I have taken the very difficult step of sending my work out to publishers – a big change for me…and now I am playing the waiting game…and I realized...although I am usually very optimistic in much of my life I'm not very optimistic in this part of me. I do love to write…and I will always love to write but to think it could be published??? Not sure about that…and now I wonder…should I have sent my story in at all? Was it ready? Maybe I should...

Safe Harbour, BBC 4, BBC iPlayer, written by Belinda Chayko and directed by Glendyn Ivin

Posted by celticman on Sun, 10 Feb 2019

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m0002j52 This four-part Australian drama is a big budget production. A morality play, a kind of J.B. Priestly An Inspector Calls set in Brisbane and the Timor Sea. There’s lots of angst and gnashing of teeth. In An Inspector Calls class is the card played. Here it’s class and race, and religion in a toxic mix, as wealthy westerners in a yacht meet immigrants in a sinking ship on the Timor sea. Safe Harbour...

Charles Bukowski (2009 [1971]) Post Office

Posted by celticman on Sat, 09 Feb 2019

Let’s start at the end: In the morning and I was still alive. Maybe, I’ll write a novel, I thought. And then I did. The largely autobiographical novel Charles Bukowski wrote in 1969 was a short book, Post Office, which sold over one million copies and gives all us other fifty-year-old bums that do a bit of writing a bit of hope. Somebody took a chance on Bukowski and it’s the classic rags-to-riches story, which is so fucking depressing, because...

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