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If you are old enough you’ll remember the teacher at school leaving a star on the page of your jotter for writing. Gold, silver, yellow and red stars. Well, Amazon do the same kind of thing. You hover over the star and there’s suggestion of how much you liked or disliked a book. If you hover over the customer reviews and click you can read what reviewers thought about the book. https://www.amazhttps://www.amazon.co.uk/Lily-Poole-Jack-ODonnell/dp...

The entries so far have been coming in thick and fast. There is just one week to go ( deadline is midnight 13th August). All details can be found on this link. http://www.abctales.com/blog/tcook/new-abctales-competition Just £2 per entry and there will be a winner for best Poetry and best Prose. The prize is a copy of The Gentle Author's "London Album" and a copy of my own book "The East End Butcher Boy". That's £30 worth of books in total. As...

Three thousand kilometres from Bram Stoker’s birth place in Clontarf and about three hours’ drive from Bucharest, along Highway DN73, towers the formidable fortress, Castle Bran, in the town of Toerzburg, Transylvania. Built by the Teutonic Knights as a defence against the Ottoman Turks, Tartars and Hungarian marauders, Castle Bran straddles the historic fault line between Western Europe and the steppes of Eastern Europe. Castle Bran is also a...

The start of a cracking tale from Kilb50 - do make sure you read the following parts - wins the Story prize this week: http://www.abctales.com/story/kilb50/ned-1 Our poetry award goes to a piece that is brilliantly well observed: http://www.abctales.com/story/veraclark/magic And we go up to Edinburgh for our inspiration: http://www.abctales.com/inspiration-point-ip Congrats to all!

I liked Charlie Sherry’s interview with Irvine Welsh, and I talked about it with him on my mobile. I’m not a great man for phones. Boy can Charlie talk. Irvine Welsh probably never got a word in. But one thing stuck with me the last few days and it’s not the Renton quote from Trainspotting, which I’ve some sympathy with, ‘It really is shite being Scottish.’ Nor is it Welsh’s upbeat message, ‘Scots now have a positive can-do attitude which bodes...

I hope your summer’s full of sun and laughter. Thank you to Blackjack Davey for last month’s brief of enchantment, there were some traditional narratives and symbolic twists emerging in your pieces. This month, let's encourage even more collaboration! Encourage your fellow writers and friends to have a crack at our monthly briefs. Share them on social media. Here’s three magic poems from July: Heavenly imagery about a parent’s love: http://www...

I knew this would be a weird week. It had started off well enough with the Indiana-Jones-style trip to my Niece’s son’s Christening yesterday, 17 th July 2016, which if so inclined you can read all about in my ‘Tale of Simple Country Folk and a Pair of London Townies’ on this website. Monday morning dawned bright and early with him indoors up at 5 to get to work at the local Nick for 6.30. I had to be in school early too to fulfil one of my...

“It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.” ~ Oscar Wilde, Lady Windemere’s Fan “I say ‘the great literature’ not because of its aura of cultural strenuousness, but simply because, in the past, there is only great literature. Only the great stands the racket of time and survives from generation to generation; the rest dies for lack of staying power.” ~ V.S. Pritchett, My Good Books (courtesy of...

You can see the shell of the La Scala from Second Avenue. I can’t remember the first X-rated movie I went to see there, but you can bet the fear on my face was real enough as I got to the turn at the top of the stairs and I expected the woman taking the tickes to eye me up and say, ‘Nah, son you look about fifteen’. Which would be about right, even though I did have a proper suit jacket on and open-necked collar to somehow make me look older,...

Huge thanks this month to Coral (seashore) who very kindly took the time to select July's Poem and Story of the Month. Congratulations to the worthy winners! Whilst reading through so many wonderful pieces for this month's picks, I had a strong sense that my late daughter Julia (Overthetop1 on Abc) was with me, and maybe influencing my final choices. I’d like to think this was the case, so my shortlist consisted of pieces that I could relate to...