Blogs

Let’s take trip to sunset boulevard and the city of stars… I sang, pressing play, spending my evening with Joe Gillis, the narrator, a man who suspends his writing career to pen a script for a former star, a dying star, and ends up being less of writer and more of her pet along the way. But that’s okay, because if you ask Joe he’ll tell you at least his making a living, especially in the day and age when talent didn’t or wasn’t paying the bills...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0006wg1/the-bleeder Sometimes you just hit upon a movie you know you’re going to love. Here it is. As surely as any movie written or starring Simon Pegg (or even an actor that looks like Pegg) is going to be a going to be a stinker, The Bleeder is a knock-out. I’m not a big boxing fan. Yeh, sure I remember the Rumble in the Jungle and Ali v’s Frazier. I watched them on BBC in the same way that I later...

As I'm getting my book ready for the designer, I've been on quite a roll. I keep adding new material but soon, I'm gonna have to shoot the engineer, if I want to get this thing published on schedule. It's been great fun to sprint to the finish like this. I'm not getting a lot of readers but I'm kinda beyond that now. I'm in a groove. I know it and it's a good one.

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Our Story and Poem of the Month for July have been chosen by Mark Say: Story of the month Top story goes to Poking a Snake by amavisti, best described as a slightly sleazy love story. It conveys the way some couples maintain a strong emotional bond and a sense of loyalty to each other despite immoderate behaviour and keeping secrets. I suspect a lot of marriages survive because of the moral in the story. https://www.abctales.com/story/amavisti/...

Dusk is setting in and the low light of sunset is blanketing the grass with shadows and patches of last light…Day is ending and night is falling and in this moment between light and dark…I sit in quiet contemplation… reflecting on all the issues of my day….but I don’t battle the problems…I let them simmer…pausing to see what answers may come. I have always been a night bird…the pace of morning exhausts me with rush hour and work day demands and...

All writing is an act of faith. I come from a long line of dead people and bar-room prophets, all saying the same things. We’re going to hell in a handcart. We’ve had the fall of the Berlin Wall and Francis Fukuyama proposing The End of History . Karen Armstrong posits The Death of God. The time frame is opaque. But in places like Britain it seems more clear-cut, less than fourteen percent of people attend regular worship (Anglican or otherwise...

What a week for ranting - i'm in a particularly ranty mood myself so took great pleasure in the green calm of Di Hard's delectable and thought-provoking poem https://www.abctales.com/story/dihard/grassjuly - it's our poem of the week. I really enjoyed the discussion of the possible reading of this poem too - it would be wonderful to hear our writers reading their work. I would love to hear Hudson Moon reading his story aloud too: https://www...