Blogs

Books are holy relics and none more so than this love letter to the lost. The Great Patriotic War as it is sold to the Russian people by the capitalist oligarchs is something to which they can hold on to. Something to which they can be proud. Forget the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and Stalin’s deal with Hitler and the division of Eastern European countries such as Poland. Forget the millions killed in countries such as the Ukraine by Stalin’s policy...

I got to page 35 of this book and gave up. The tale of Ignatius J. Reilly who has a high opinion of himself and a low opinion of humanity and his poor, put-upon mother whom he lives with, and is dependent on, could be described as farce. Anthony Burgess on the cover describes it as ‘A Fine Funny Novel. This is the kind of book one wants to keep quoting from.’ I don’t feel any great need to do that. The story of how I and so many others came to...

Our Story and Poem for the month of February very kindly chosen by Jolono: It never gets any easier. Choosing the winners for February gave me a few headaches, and no it wasn’t the three glasses of Red wine that I had whilst going through all of them! But winners have to be picked and here they are... This month’s winner for SOTM is TFH with La Femme d’argent. https://www.abctales.com/story/tfh/la-femme-dargent A moving tale of a romantic visit...

Alicia Berenson killed her husband, they say. Brilliant artist Alicia Berenson shoots husband Gabriel five times and lives to not talk about it, so the story goes. She ends up in a psychiatry ward (the Grove) trudging on doses and prescriptions, breathing but silent, present but lost. So when new employee/ psychotherapist Theo Faber joins the Grove, he takes particular interest (or more of a desperate need) to get her to speak: “If you told me...

With a bushel of cherries to choose from this week deciding on the story and poem of the week was quite a task. There were two pieces that reached out to me though - so: story of the week goes to Linda Wigzell's intriguing and compelling piece of life writing: https://www.abctales.com/story/linda-wigzell-cress/family-connections Poem of the week goes to Jane Hyphen's evocative piece: https://www.abctales.com/story/jane-hyphen/thats-not-way-i-go...

We will soon be updating our submission details to include short story collections and novellas.

Think only of yourself. Think of your family. Martin O’Neil famously said he was leaving Celtic because his wife was ill. Fair enough. Personally, I think he knew, we all knew, Henrik had departed, Celtic needed a major revamp, the money for players was no longer available and a bloated squad –anyway- a mess he didn’t want to deal with. Maurice Johnston, the Partick Thistle striker, famously signed for Celtic, but then signed for Rangers...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000309g/la-la-land Only in LaLa land at the Oscars could LaLa Land best picture announced, could it turn out to be LaLa Land winner and LaLa Land loser, all within five minutes. It wasn’t Best Picture. But was it a good picture? Not bad. I’m not really into music. Put it this way, the director of Singin’ in the Rain Stanley Donen died and tributes poured in. Singin’ in the Rain in 1952 was a classic of the...