Blogs

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...

POETRY MONTHLY

Posted by Insertponceyfrenchnamehere on Fri, 08 Feb 2019

Hi all, hope all's good where you are and big apologies for the lateness of Poetry Monthly this time! January, as usual, brought some great writing. Here are two poems to have another look at: https://www.abctales.com/story/dihard/rv-again https://www.abctales.com/story/rhiannonw/meaningless February's theme is Connect. Do what you will with this, but please think about contributing and posting on Abctales. See you next month, Noo :)

STORY AND POEM OF THE MONTH

Posted by Insertponceyfrenchnamehere on Sun, 03 Feb 2019

For January, very kindly chosen by Fatboy74: I think January is a Marmite month. For many it's the time for a fresh start, new beginnings and a chance to wipe the slate clean. For others, January's one redeeming feature, is that it's not quite as bad as November, which is universally accepted as being the worst month of the year. Whatever your feelings about January, ABCtalers have been prolific and have produced an awful lot of excellent...

Story and Poem of the Week and Inspiration Point

Posted by Insertponceyfrenchnamehere on Fri, 01 Feb 2019

Posted by Philip Sidney on Fri, 01 Feb 2019 Oh it's been hard to choose! There's so much good writing on the site this week. In the end I've gone with my heart. Story of the week is Jane Hyphen's Brooksy; a low-key piece of heartbreak that echoes with the thrum of those classic chords from Dire Straits. https://www.abctales.com/story/jane-hyphen/brooksy JupiterMoon's, imbolc, is Poem of the week. Jack Frost and the Green Man meet in this quiet...

Story and Poem of the Week and Inspiration Point.

Posted by Philip Sidney on Fri, 01 Feb 2019

Oh it's been hard to choose! There's so much good writing on the site this week. In the end I've gone with my heart. Story of the week is Jane Hyphen's Brooksy; a low-key piece of heartbreak that echoes with the thrum of those classic chords from Dire Straits. https://www.abctales.com/story/jane-hyphen/brooksy JupiterMoon's, imbolc, is Poem of the week. Jack Frost and the Green Man meet in this quiet medative piece. https://www.abctales.com/...

wilma biggin (r.i.p.)

Posted by celticman on Fri, 01 Feb 2019

There’s an old joke I tell about Brian when we get talking about fitba, and it’s Wilma was a better player than him. What I don’t tell anybody was that she once gave me a dunt and doing for being cheeky. A few of us were playing near the Gilmore’s that day. We rolled about for a bit, on the slope of grass, near the wall on Shakespeare Avenue. I let her win, of course, because I didn’t hit girls. She wasn't a better player than me. But I did let...

Son of Saul BBC 4, BBC iPlayer, directed by László Nemes and written by Clara Royer.

Posted by celticman on Mon, 28 Jan 2019

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00029kr/son-of-saul Son of Saul BBC 4, BBC iPlayer, directed by László Nemes and written by Clara Royer. This is a straightforward narrative. A Hungarian man finds the body of a young boy, he thinks is his son and he wants to give him a proper Jewish burial. To do so he needs to find a Rabbi willing to perform Mourner’s Kaddish. Transpose that scene to an unnamed Nazi death camp, (Auschwitz), running at...

Story and Poem of the Week and Inspiration Point

Posted by Insertponceyfrenchnamehere on Fri, 25 Jan 2019

As we inch our way out of winter (optimistic I know, but there should always be something to look forward to!), here are this week's wonderful picks: Story of the Week goes to celticman's wonderfully dark and funny 'Skull' and our Poem of the Week is 'Thanks in part to Louis M and William W: another love poem' by Ladle https://www.abctales.com/story/celticman/skull https://www.abctales.com/story/ladle/thanks-part-louis-m-and-william-w-a... Here'...

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