Blogs

As always, some wonderful writing on the site this week, a very welcome antidote to the winter weather. Story of the Week is Simon Barget's 'Us and Them'. There's a lot of snappy answers being offered to things going on in the world at the moment, but this piece offers thoughts on the heartbreaking complexity, nuances and stumbling humanity of it all. The deep sadness of the final paragraph stayed with me for a long time. Thanks to Simon for...

Write what you know. Megan Nolan writes about Waterford, where she was brought up. And London where she moved to. But it’s London 1990. Nolan would be a toddler. A child has been reported missing and later found dead. ‘Down below in Skyler Square the trouble was passing quickly from door to door, mothers telling mothers, not speaking aloud but somehow saying : baby gone, bad man, wild animal. ’ James Bulger 1993 is the classic case. But google...

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/utama/on-demand/75755-001 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utama Virgino (José Calcina) gets up early to tend his llamas in Altiplano, the arid high plateau of the Andes with its mixture of cold and heat. His wife Sisa (Luisa Quispe) takes two metal buckets and walks into town for water. But the annual monsoon didn’t come. It hasn’t rained for a year. The weather is sick, says one of the villagers. Virgino is...

My favorite room? My favorite room is wherever I sleep the most. In our home, I primarily sleep in two rooms: our bedroom and my man cave. The man cave is the safer of the two. I nap in the man cave. I sleep in our bedroom.Both locations are fortified with giant teevee screens. This brings up the age old question, which is preferable sleeping or napping. Well, napping is a luxury while sleeping is a necessity. Although if pod people or Freddie...

As usual our members made this the most difficult task of the week. Story of the Week Mark Burrow’s WIP continues to convince with a strong narrative voice. I look forward to seeing it in print one day. The latest instalment is here I enjoyed Marandina’s short about a family tragedy. This, too, benefits from a strong and believable narrative voice. ‘Those We Leave Behind’ is here This week’s Story of the Week goes to a tale by one of the most...

Don't wanna hold your hand Don't wanna kiss you on the mouth the throat behind your ears Don't wanna breathe against the back of your neck Don't wanna leave you naked a wreck Just wanna hold your hand while my aching head rests in your lap Aww fuck forget about me or not perhaps

There's been a delay in the publishing process. I thought the book was finished. I thought I'd stop osting on abc tales for awhile and concentrated on promoting and marketin Fullfilled. The problem is, I can't stop writing. It's a habit. The Inspiration Point section of ABC has in fact inspired further engineering which now must be taken into consideration in regards to the editing, sturcturing and sequencing of the finished product...