Blogs

A day early I'm afraid as I'm off to WOMAD but two absolute crackers from two of our stalwarts. The story is quirky and funny whilst the poem is heart breaking. Enjoy! http://www.abctales.com/story/terrence-oblong/mattie-johnson http://www.abctales.com/story/veraclark/24th-july It's Tony Cook here - back for six weeks whilst Luke and Anna enjoy their honeymoon. Their wedding was a wonderful affair on the banks of the River Dart and I'm sure you...

It’s not everyday one gets a publicist. It’s a bit like a bald man going to the barbers. People just snigger behind your back (not that I’m bald, I just lack hair on selected parts of my head). I’d a meeting scheduled for 2 p.m. I’m notorious for forgetting people’s names. Last night, for example, I was talking for a couple of minutes with a guy at the bar. Usual sort of football chatter. Then he came out with it. ‘You don’t know who I am? Do...

When i published my book last year i was in such a rush that i didn 't edit it properly Now I have and added another 3000 words. If you bought the original let me know and I'll send you a copy of the latest edition. I'm not trying to push the book just trying to be fair to all who supported me here on Abc....

Visibility is a trick of the light. Invisibility is a lack of publicity. As the economist John Kenneth Galbraith suggested in the Preface to The Great Crash 1929 : ‘No author can be fully trusted when describing the quality of his own work’. I am not allowed to say buy Lily Poole because it is a really good book, or a really bad book - negative reviews also increase sales - but no reviews means stasis. It means invisibility and equilibrium...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b047zl98 I meant to watch this when it was recently on BBC 3, but the World Cup was on. There’s a joke there about some folk finding that murder, but we’ll skate over that. I won’t be giving any plots points away if I tell you Reece (played by Royce Pierreson) ends up killing Ashley (Georgina Campbell) and it’s based on a true story. I doubt the couple were so glamourous looking and well-heeled, but that’s...

Another week, another round of successes with ABC writers. More than a few ABC authors have books available this week - but there are two I wanted to flage up in particular. Laura Wilkinson's book Public Battles, Private Wars is on a free (!) promotion for Kindle and iTunes until the end of the month - so get a copy while you have the chance! Laura is an incredible author and the book delves into the mining strikes of the early '80s with the...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b049n0js The story of Agnessa Murselja (played here by Olivia Popica) a fifteen-year old refugee and pupil at Drumchapel High School that was taken with her family to be deported, in a dawn raid, and returned home to Kosovo. At home whisperings of fields unsown/ Maybe the kind old sun will know. Home is the key word here. The Home Office suggest her home was somewhere else. The Glasgow Girls, as the name suggests...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0499fb1/alan-hansen-player-and-pundit On the eve of the World Cup finals this is a hagiography of a football player and pundit. The latter is easy to deal with. He talks shite for a living. There wasn’t an aha moment. He’d been offered the Liverpool manager’s job after his mate Kenny Dalglish had left and he didn’t take it. With a wife and two kids, he contacted Sky(BSport) about commentary work and ‘fell...

A place of haunting savagery. The elements bite, sting, punish; the rocky paths cut feet, hard-pressed drovers mortally break their overloaded horses. In 'Humphy', 'in the thorn hedge, spun like lace between black spiteful bobbins, spider's webs glimmered in the low grey light'. At sea in 'The Prophet', 'the slaps became hammer blows as the wind reared up and the gathering clouds came smoking against them in long black fingers.' Spite, slaps ,...

I didn’t mean to read this book. It was a bit like having a wank, not unpleasant but plodding on and on. Harry Beck, one of the protagonists, is a writer. I’ve nothing against writers. I hold McIlvanney’s book Docherty with great affection. I remember it as a tale of a little man that is a big man, a miner that lives by his own rules. If you asked me anything else about it I’d be found out as a charlatan. The Big Man, well, that was a step down...