Blogs

The Prologue starts with a mystery, who is this man and what’s he doing? At first light on a late summer morning, a man in a hooded sweatshirt moved softly and slowly along an ordinary looking street in South London…Pepys Road.’ He posts cards through people’s door: I WANT WHAT YOU HAVE. Here’s the message Lanchester is trying to get across (without being didactic) houses by late 2007 were no longer just a place where people lived, but an...

Congrats go to the Other Terrence Oblong and samhenig this week - and the IP is something very different. Give it a go! http://www.abctales.com/story/other-terrence-oblong/pope-problem http://www.abctales.com/story/samhennig/city http://www.abctales.com/inspiration-point-ip Cheers, Tony

Live on Channel 5

http://www.itv.com/hub/the-aberfan-young-wives-club/2a4601a0001 The Aberfan Young Wives youngest member is sixty-one and its oldest members in their nineties. The joke was that the group voted to remove the ‘Young’ part from the group title, but there’s not a lot to laugh at here. The Young Wives Club meets every week and was formed almost 50 years ago in the Welsh mining village of Pantglas after around one-hundred tonnes of coal slurry from...

It is with a heavy heart that I have to inform you all that if no one is found to take over ABCtales then it will close on December 31st. Costs, especially after Brexit (our server is in the USA and is paid for in dollars), have risen whilst donations have dipped - and it is now running at a loss that I can no longer sustain. There are moves afoot to try and take it forwards. I want no money for the site but I do want guarantees that it will be...

Closed at 10am, With customers outside, Opening at 12pm, By then the interest's died. *Sometimes I feel as a blogger, like a shopkeeper with no customers. It isn't that I want people to buy anything, but it would be nice to have a few folk wander in and browse for a while. We may not have free WiFi, but we could always just talk to each other.......

This is a stage play, a successful stage play, so successful that my mate Sharpy went to see it and he doesn’t usually go to plays, but it’s about the Old Firm and bigotry, so that’s alright then, but reading a play and seeing a play are a bit like looking out the window at midnight and wondering how cold it is outside. I read the whole book in about an hour, which includes the review of Dillon’s other books (some of which I’ve read) and the...

In Vitro Electric by MJG and The Box Room by Canonette get my vote this week - both brilliant pieces - do read them if you haven't already: http://www.abctales.com/story/mjg/vitro-electric http://www.abctales.com/story/canonette/box-room The Inspiration Point is here: http://www.abctales.com/inspiration-point-ip Finally, do take a look at Vera's new Poetry Monthly theme and have a go if you can - everyone welcome. I hope you have a great weekend!

I didn’t know Janice, nor her son Gary junior, nor her daughter Linzi, or grandson Jack, so it can seem a bit silly that I attended her funeral. But I do know her husband Gary. I shook his hand in O’Donnell’s pub afterwards and offered the usual platitude, ‘that at least there’d been a lot of folk there’. The kind of no consolation, but a consolation prize of a gazoo. I was there because I like Gary and always have. I got to know him quite well...

As the light dims it feels natural to turn back to writing where summer's inspiration can be hammered in to something sensational. I look forward to seeing your creativity darken readers this month in all its rich shades. Remember to make full use of peer critiques to improve your work and also, please do share poetry monthly via social networking and word of mouth - not only for new participants but to encourage old friends to rejoin us. Satire...