Blogs

Story and Poem of the Week and Inspiration Point

Posted by airyfairy. Our Story of the Week is Tipp Hex's brilliant 'The Missing'. A splendid piece of really taut noir, with a hint of something darker still, it gripped me from the first word to the last, and left a very distinct chill up my spine: The Missing | ABCtales Poem of the Week is Schubert's dark, wry and funny 'Six Thirty-Two'. A truly inspired response to last week's Inspiration Point! Six Thirty-Two | ABCtales This week's...

Story and Poem of the Month

Our Story and Poem of the Month for March, very kindly chosen by onemorething: Reading what’s posted on the site for a month really does give you a sense of the huge range of wonderful writing on ABCtales. And this makes it very hard indeed to choose just one Poem and Story for Pick of the Month. Our Story of the Month is Sooz006’s The Book. Sooz006 has been posting chapters throughout the month, luckily for us. It’s gripping, chilling and...

Drew Gummerson (2025) Saltburn

Drew Gummerson would be high on the list of books that need to be banned and burned in the good old US of A by the followers of the moron’s moron cult and stealer of elections he, apparently, never stole. Short stories that become longer stories. Fey wee folk that become fucking big folk that catch up with their shopping with their dead sister who gets stroppy about what you’re buying. (It happens.) A young boy, Ginny, with a massive wanger that...

Polly Tonybee (2023) An Uneasy Inheritance. My Family and Other Radicals.

Polly Tonybee is an author who writes regularly for The Guardian and Observer . You’ve probably guessed by that she’s left-leaning and middle class. An Uneasy Inheritance shows that doing good is not the same as being good. Her family includes the leading intellectuals of their day, including Arnold Tonybee, the economic historian and social reformer who charted the miserable conditions of how the working class lived in the late nineteen century...

God's Help for Depression, Autism or Neurodiversity.

Healing of psychiatric illness is more difficult than physical healing. Spiritually there is greater warfare. Bearing a grudge can make someone ill. The psychiatrist deals with that grudge directly. Emotional trauma can make someone ill. Barry Bennett described a woman being hit by a car. She wasn't badly injured but the trauma caused her to have severe arthritis. The psychiatrist is dealing with that trauma directly. Some psychiatrists say that...

Does God Heal Today?

One of the most controversial questions about healing is whether sickness could ever be beneficial. God uses pain and suffering to discipline and purify us all the time. None of these verses is specifically about illness but the Bible contains principles that can be applied to different situations. James 1:2-4. Consider it pure joy when you face trials of many kinds. The testing of your faith produces perseverance. James 1:12. Blessed is the man...

Help - Anyone with Amazon Kindle Experience?

Help. I realise this is unprofessional - ABCTALES, delete if you must - but I have been locked out of my Amazon Kindle Publishing Account for over 6 months, and I cannot get in or make contact with anyone at Amazon, all I receive is: "We have detected unusual activity on your account and have locked it temporarily. Please contact customer service for further assistance." "Temporarily" has been months and months and months. I have tried every...

John Boyne (2020) A Traveller at the Gates of Wisdom.

This is the third John Boyne novel I’ve read and reviewed. For a short time The Heart’s Invisible Furies had a lot of hits on my blog site (Wordpress, and by a lot I mean over two in a week). I wasn’t sure why that was. I rarely remember what I wrote. Writing is a way of keeping track of time. His novel, classified for younger readers, and told from a child’s perspective The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, which was made into a film, was, em, boring...

Question Twenty-Three - Coping Mechanisms at Work?

Question Twenty-Three – If needed, what coping mechanisms have you put in place with regards to your work space? Donna Reliance on God’s strength Alyss Coping in general, not exclusively, or inclusively, connected to my significant other status: Prayers, lots of prayer; the Psalms are great when times are tough. Bible reading in the morning is the best form of defence, cue “Men in Black” ;) Stay out of the projects and areas where challenging...

Question Twenty Two - Single in the Corporate World?

Question Twenty Two – If you have worked in the corporate field, how has your ‘single status’ impacted, or effected, your work relationships, if at all? Alyss The money-making environments are spaces of their own. Being asked to go on dates and my politely declining has taken me out of opportunities at times, and created awkward energies (for me anyway). Staff spaces have revealed things about married men that have disgusted me. Environments...

Pages