Blogs

As some of you will know, my first novel, “Gibbous House” began life here on ABCTales many moons ago and was published by Unbound in January of last year. Unbound have agreed to take on the sequel, “No Good Deed”, which was also developed on ABCTales, subject to reaching its crowd-funding target. I know many ABCtalers are not rich - neither am I, if I’m honest – but if any of you do feel able to pre-order/pledge/become a patron of No Good Deed,...

Introducing Sophie Walls, our 6 th grandchild. Born to daughter Karen and her partner Kev on 23 March 2018. Weighing in at 4lbs 2ozs, she was only a little tiddler, though long for a newborn of that weight. She didn’t appear to be putting on much weight over the last couple of months due to complications, so Karen’s pregnancy was closely monitored over this period with twice-weekly scans and suchlike. Sophie arrived a month early after an...

Ten Years Ago

Leggings – Conversations in the Dark. Well life has a hum when you let things develop and try not to take too much offense. Events spiral on, with prostitution, sex changes, and people in odd places saying odd things being a recurrent dilemma. The families are all represented, and the only decent speaker - although he too offends - is the one who insists on his sex change, in following his father's footsteps. The churches from Easton &...

Story and Poem of the Month for March very kindly chosen by hudsonmoon: T. S. Elliott was wrong. March is the cruellest month. At least for me. These monthly picks are not easy. There is so much to choose from. But I had to go with the ones that stuck in my head. The tale Sunrise by Richard Dobbs was moving and well written. I always seem to find myself drawn to stories of war. The brutal doings affect us all. And,the horrible truth is, we never...

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The librarian said you’re going to love this book. It’s exactly how young girls behave when they go on holiday. She was buzzed about it and even smiled. And it was longlisted for the Man Brooker Prize in 2010. But any good stories got a BUT, I use them a lot. The laws of diminishing returns apply here. I did love Morvern Caller , Alan Warner’s debut novel. The Sopranos was great, six eighteen-year old girls from a Catholic school and a wee town...

I've come to the party late. I don't read much fantasy. IMO it has its work cut out matching the greatness of Beowulf and The Odyssey. It's an unfair fight- modern genre fantasy against the BIG realities of the Old Days. In truth the only reason I picked up a copy of American Gods was that I was in a hostel in Portugal and it was the only English book on the shelf. And .... It's brilliant! Neil Gaiman has a deft hand with the Gods. He managed to...

BBC 2, BBC iPlayer http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09wfrk0 Hatred has no country. Ironically, I watched this programme on BBC Catch-up on Easter Sunday in memory of the resurrection. I read in The Observer about Israeli snipers on Good Friday shooting Palestinian demonstrators, or terrorists, depending on how those shot are defined. Around 16 dead. Hospitals in Gaza report 284 injured people, the majority with bullet wounds. 70 wounded,...

Poetry Monthly - April As usual, you lovely people at ABCtales rose to the challenge and came up with some fantastic writing on the theme of Heart Songs. If you’d like a reading treat, here are three to go back to: https://www.abctales.com/story/torscot/heart-songs-poetry-monthly https://www.abctales.com/story/alice-hamilton/affair https://www.abctales.com/story/dihard/hearth-song April’s theme is Mamihlapinatapai! It’s from the Yaghan language...