Blogs

Question Twenty-Five - What do you wish others understood more?

Question Twenty Five – What do you wish dating &/ married couples understood, or were more sensitive about with regards to interacting with their single status friends? Point to note on biological birth stats: for 2022, in South Africa: Females constituted 51,5% of the total population, while 48,5% were males, out of 62 million people. AND There are 33.61 million males, and 34.35 million females in the United Kingdom. AND about 168 million...

Question Twenty-Four - Who's walking the journey with you?

Question Twenty Four – How have you gone about forming a support group or ‘tribe’ of people to walk the ‘single’ chapter of your story with you? Donna I didn't do anything really, it just seemed to fall into place. Alyss Interestingly, a lot of my school friends are still single, so the group has ‘grown’ up together and stayed a group of single women, so I didn’t have to do anything there. In new environments, however, it seems to be the case...

Who's Aldo 99p kindle promo

Hey everyone, For a brief time the kindle version of my novel Who's Aldo is availble for the bargain price of 99p. The book has been widely labelled 'laugh out loud funny' There never been a better time to 'meet' Edinburgh's number one anti-hero. Grab a bargain while you can Cheers Link to kindle version Who's Aldo? eBook : Burnett, Colin: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

Callum McSorley (2023) Squeaky Clean

Callum McSorley (2023) Squeaky Clean. Not many people read the Acknowledgements. They’re on page 383, at the end of a book, I read in one go. It’s one of those books I read and think I could write—and have written versions of it. Working class people having a shite life. I read a review on Peter Turns the Page and knew this would have been the kind of book I like because it’s about people like me. The author’s job is to make their shite life...

Have Scientists Disproved God?

Science has neither proved or disproved God. Whatever we believe about science, it is always possible to say that that is simply way that God does things. When Edmund Gosse was a botanist in the 1850s his wife would look down the microscope and say, 'How marvellous are thy doings!' How wonderful are the things that you do, oh God. Many Christians would simply see the big bang theory and evolution as an explanation of how God created the universe...

Anne Michaels (2023) Held.

I read every day. Less than 1% of what I read is poetry. And Ann Michaels Held isn’t a poetry book. But it’s got that feel about it. I checked the number of pages. 220. Because I also write, I’d estimate that’s between 60 000 to 80 000 words. I’d like to be more precise. It’s been a couple of days since I finished it (meaning to review it) and had to look at the Contents page. Now we’re getting somewhere. The first six chapters are labelled...

Story and Poem of the Week and Inspiration Point

Posted by airyfairy. Our Story of the Week is Tipp Hex's brilliant 'The Missing'. A splendid piece of really taut noir, with a hint of something darker still, it gripped me from the first word to the last, and left a very distinct chill up my spine: The Missing | ABCtales Poem of the Week is Schubert's dark, wry and funny 'Six Thirty-Two'. A truly inspired response to last week's Inspiration Point! Six Thirty-Two | ABCtales This week's...

Story and Poem of the Month

Our Story and Poem of the Month for March, very kindly chosen by onemorething: Reading what’s posted on the site for a month really does give you a sense of the huge range of wonderful writing on ABCtales. And this makes it very hard indeed to choose just one Poem and Story for Pick of the Month. Our Story of the Month is Sooz006’s The Book. Sooz006 has been posting chapters throughout the month, luckily for us. It’s gripping, chilling and...

Drew Gummerson (2025) Saltburn

Drew Gummerson would be high on the list of books that need to be banned and burned in the good old US of A by the followers of the moron’s moron cult and stealer of elections he, apparently, never stole. Short stories that become longer stories. Fey wee folk that become fucking big folk that catch up with their shopping with their dead sister who gets stroppy about what you’re buying. (It happens.) A young boy, Ginny, with a massive wanger that...

Polly Tonybee (2023) An Uneasy Inheritance. My Family and Other Radicals.

Polly Tonybee is an author who writes regularly for The Guardian and Observer . You’ve probably guessed by that she’s left-leaning and middle class. An Uneasy Inheritance shows that doing good is not the same as being good. Her family includes the leading intellectuals of their day, including Arnold Tonybee, the economic historian and social reformer who charted the miserable conditions of how the working class lived in the late nineteen century...

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