Blogs

[ELEMENT OF DISTORTION] Heed, light separating from light, giving form to darkness ever co-exiting. It was once a rumbling throughout the Heavenlies. Arch-angles displays a uproar: Battle for primacy, warlords usurp estate, dominion causing an unbalance overflow. Slithering faceless. serpent, night stalkers, day walkers, midday talkers: millenniums subliminal messages, archon, aliens, Ufo; contending within a battle galactic celestial orbiting...

For more years than I care to remember, I've been using the same publicity photo for all my written work, wherever it appears. However, there comes a time when you have to accept that you're in a 'reverse Dorian Gray' situation, whereby you are getting increasingly decrepit but your photo remains the same! Don't get me wrong, I'm very fond of my publicity photo. It was taken on or around the time of my 50th birthday. We had some unused credit...

Watch Women Talking | Prime Video (amazon.co.uk) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_Talking_(film) ‘Women Talking’ is a deceptively simple title. Margaret Attwood suggested comparisons with A Handmaid’s Tale. The near-future is already here. Events that occurred between 2005 and 2009 in a remote Mennonite colony in Bolivia inspired the novel. In their close-knit religious community, it was discovered that eight men had been raping the women...

Billy Moore, a working-class Liverpudlian, was born into poverty in 1973. He doted on his mum and hated his drunken dad for beating his mum, when he was a child. He too was bullied, but learned to use his fists, gave out some beatings. Joined the group of schoolboy bullies. Matriculated in theft and drug taking and graduated to Liverpool’s Young Offenders, were ironically, he ended up a lifetime later. There are lots of books out there about...

Writers are told, never start with the weather. Paul Lynch starts with the weather in his debut novel, Red Sky in the Morning. Prophet Song, Lynch’s latest award-winning novel, starts with the night weather and a knocking on the door. ‘The night has come and she has not heard the knocking, standing at the window, looking out at the garden. How the dark gathers without sound the cherry trees. It gathers the last of the leaves and the leaves do...

If you haven't been following Turlough's wonderful account of his travels through Iran, you have been missing something really special. This series has been vivid, funny, thoughtful and, quite simply, a wonderful read. The final part, 'Cherries and Dahlia Petals, is our Story of the Week: Cherries and Dahlia Petals | ABCtales Poem of the Week was really tricky. There's been some beautiful and hopeful pieces about the coming of spring, and some...

Yellowface wowed me and as a reader (and sometimes writer) I’m not easily wowed. It offers both an insider and outsider account of the publishing industry masquerading as satire. Everyone that had hoped to have something published by the big four publishing companies, get an agent, or somehow get something published online or in print, should read Yellowface. The setup is simple. Imagine Jesus was hanging about Galilee. Judas comes visiting and...