Blogs

I'm very pleased to announce that this is out now on Amazon - by ABCTaler Penny4athought! Here's a link if you want to order from Amazon Uk: https://tinyurl.com/wyzm6fx and here's the link from the US site: https://tinyurl.com/s9jhqyq Very big congratulations on your first book from us all!

What I’m feeling seeing my book in print is hard to describe...I’m both amazed and scared that it’s out there, elated that I had the courage to self-publish it, but worried I’ve made a mistake. On the mundane fears, I hope I’ve corrected all typos, and on a little higher concern, I hope someone reads it…even one review would be nice to see…but either way, I do like that I can order an author’s copy - wow author …that’s me? Yes, I suppose it is...

At over a thousand pages Robert A.Caro’s biography of Lyndon B. Johnson is a hefty wedge of American history. We know power corrupts, but Caro also argues ‘power reveals’. We’re aware of that iconic picture of Jackie Kennedy standing with the former Vice President of the United States and now President, Lyndon Johnson. Power reveals. (But that was later, volume 4, the new Senator John F. Kennedy only makes a brief appearance, in volume 3, his...

Gilead was winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. I’m sure I’ve read it before. And I keep picking it up and re-reading bits because I don’t know where I left off reading. It’s a story in which nothing much happens but life. A dying man writing a letter to his young son, who’s is young enough to be his great-grandson. It’s 1956 and the narrator is pondering whether he should vote for Eisenhower. And in recalling how his life didn’t amount to...

As you would expect from all the talent on here, we've had some great pieces reflecting on the current situation, some with sadness, some with anger, and some with humour. We have writers from all over the world, so wherever you are, I do hope that you and yours are staying safe. Please keep posting on here - on a selfish note, we will worry about you if you're not around! This week's Picks are not Covid-19 related - they're two very contrasting...

When we talk about the coronavirus it’s the virus part we need to pay attention to. Corona, from the Latin, means crown and is associated with the aurora that surrounds the sun, moon and stars. We also get the word coronary from corona, a constriction of the arteries around the heart. But here Covid-19, coronavirus, is a simple nametag to differentiate it from other viruses, in the same way that ship number 736 in John Brown’s yard was later...

If I didn't/don't have the virus than I came/come real close. I'vd been sniffling, coughing, malaising and sleeping for almost two weeks now. Maybe I got lucky and it was/is only pneumonia cuz only pneumonia knows the way I feel tonight. I got flu shots and pnuemonia shots at the beginning of the season so whatever I had/have could have been worse without those shots which is a frightening thought. I don't think it's the Corona because I got it...

I write under the camouflage of a pen name in order to make it easier to tell lies about myself which is the great truth of autobiography. So whomever I choose to be I can forego vanity in order to relate embellished crimes and punishments that I confess to the public. Since I am no longer myself but rather the shadow of myself, I can no longer write for myself. I write for my readers and if it appears that I am occasionally writing for myself...

Miriam’s Big Fat Adventure, BBC 2, 9pm, BBC IPlayer, producer and director Simon Draper. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000g6qt/miriams-big-fat-adventure-series-1-episode-1 Miriam Margoyles is elderly (78-years old), she’s fat, she’s Jewish, she’s gay-ish and she used to be an actress. I remember her painted green as Grotbags in a witch’s cap. She’s invisibility squared. But she’s BBC’s documentary crew’s go-to-pensioner. The female...

The question today is: Should I self publish my work? But to self publish is not as easy as the power points would have you presume. Recently, I’ve been contemplating uploading some of my work to the (KDP) Amazon’s kindle site, but as I researched this, I found a lot of different information about what you might want to, or need to, do first. Apparently, there are many areas I hadn’t thought about, for example: Is it wise to be a sole proprietor...