Blogs

The Investing Game

$5K - 52 Weeks - 20 Penny Stocks One Winner!! Current Status ( -$3,377.97 ) Week - 35 Things That Go Bump in My Head! ------------- I wear a hard hat on the jobsite to avoid things that go bump on my head! --------------------------------- Dirt. There is value in dirt. Someone once told me real estate is the only commodity no one is making more of! We may assume therefore that most things of value extracted from said real estate are equally...

Storyville: Raising a School shooter, BBC 4, BBC iPlayer. Series editor Mandy Chang.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000xnzx/storyville-raising-a-scho... Since 1970, 1677 school shootings in the US, ranging from pre-school to high schools. 528 deaths and 1626 injuries. Sue Klebold (Colorado). Tom, there’s a shooting going on at Columbine. They think that Dylan may be one of the shooters. I heard through the window them saying that there was 25 dead. And if Dylan was hurting people, in the way I thought he was, I prayed he...

Story and Poem of the Week and Inspiration Point 15th October 2021

This is more difficult every week, in my experience. Story of the Week among some stiff competiton is Celticman's 'Vermin', a powerful piece leavened by some of Jack's deft comic touches. https://www.abctales.com/story/celticman/vermin Poem of the Week goes to Gothicman's 'The Senile Neurologist.' Best read aloud to appreciate its scansion and flowing rhymes, it is both funny and sad at the same time, which is no bad thing. https://www.abctales...

Story and Poem of the Week and Inspiration Point 15th October 2021

This is more difficult every week, in my experience. Story of the Week among some stiff competiton is Celticman's 'Vermin', a powerful piece leavened by some of Jack's deft comic touches. https://www.abctales.com/story/celticman/vermin Poem of the Week goes to Gothicman's 'The Senile Neurologist.' Best read aloud to appreciate its scansion and flowing rhymes, it is both funny and sad at the same time, which is no bad thing. https://www.abctales...

The Investing Game

$5K - 52 Weeks - 20 Penny Stocks One Winner!! Current Status ( -$3,396.55 ) Week - 34 Things That Annoy Me! ------------- Drivers who stop at the end of the on ramp, People who drink lite beer, Cowboy’s fans! --------------------------------- Trying to think of all that is annoying in life can be a time consuming endeavor. I drive frequently so many of my favorite annoyances are travel related. I drove ride share for a couple of years before the...

So now you've published your book - what next?

Books are like the stock market, sales rise and fall over your title’s shelf life. At the mercy of fickle readership, your publication in many ways is no longer art, but a commodity, a product for sale. The trick is to bring your buyers to the stall and at least look it over. For my novel, A Kind of Drowning , I planned for the year, with one eye on the summer market and the end view of Christmas sales I marked out a calendar into three blocks...

Heather Morris (2020) Stories of Hope: Finding Inspiration in Everyday Lives.

Heather Morris’s debut novel, The Tattooist of Auschwitz , sold around six million copies. I think I even had two copies floating about in my house at one time. I’ve still got one. The stories in the title. Lale Sokolov (he changed his surname, years earlier to make it sound less Jewish) was transported to Auschwitz from Bratislava with his family. His sister Goldie survived. He did too. His job as a tattooist, inking all those consecutive...

Savile: Portrait of a Predator, ITV, STV 9pm, ITV Hub

https://www.itv.com/hub/savile-portrait-of-a-predator/10a1253a0001 https://www.abctales.com/story/celticman/jimmy-savile-and-me Ten years ago, Sir Jimmy Savile died. His funeral was an event that featured on the news. The great and the good appeared, in sombre tones, mourning our loss. People lined the streets to pay their respects. Sir Keith Stammer was Director of Public Prosecutions. Operation Yewtree was set up in London in 2012 to...

Story and Poem of the Week and Inspiration Point

So many things to choose from as usual - particularly poetry, but my final choices are both from north of the border this week. Story of the Week goes to Peter Bennett for his two-parter Pawns which is part of his longer work in progress but you can easily read it out of context. A gritty and compelling read: https://www.abctales.com/story/peter-bennett/pawns-part-one https://www.abctales.com/story/peter-bennett/pawns-part-two Poem of the Week...

Alexander Starritt (2020) We Germans.

Alexander Starritt’s name can be added to the list of great Scottish writers. (He’s written another book I’ve not yet read, The Beast. ) I, initially, thought We Germans was a translation like Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front and The Road Home . The format is simple. A grandfather writing to his Scottish grandson, Callum. And his grandson replying. Oberkanonier Meissner was in the Wehrmacht. Six-foot-two and broad shouldered...

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