insertponceyfrenchnamehere's blog

Posted by airyfairy on Fri, 16 Jun 2017 Even though there's been some brilliant writing on the site this week, london_calling79's 'A Letter To My New Tory MP' stood out immediately. We're not a political site and members have all sorts of different views, but the humanity, compassion and reason of this piece shine a light in times that seem to get darker and grimmer ever day: https://www.abctales.com/story/londoncalling79/letter-my-new-tory-mp...

Posted by Philip Sidney on Fri, 09 Jun 2017 It's been wonderful to see so many new writers and such a range of writing this week. I've chosen pieces that take an unusual perspective on the natural world. Markle's beautifully described, 'The Gardens', takes us somewhere slightly unsettling, I dare you to take the garden walk: https://www.abctales.com/story/markle/gardens Rosa Cruz's, 'Today birdsong is turned up loud', is full of verve, a gift to...

Picks for the month of May very kindly chosen by Sean McNulty: Story: The Green and White Dress by rosaliekempthorne https://www.abctales.com/ story/rosaliekempthorne/green- and-white-dress The Green and White Dress is a wonderful piece of writing. It feels like a timeless, classic satire – the characters and the setting could exist at any time in history. It feels so real, yet plays out like images twinkling in some fantastic magic lantern...

What a lot of great pieces this week - it's been very hard to choose just two! Big congratulations to Lille Dante for his poem ' my spectre hits the shopping mall of time' which makes me laugh each time I read it, and to love_writing for 'My Mother and I aren't Talking and Other Tales' - a finely drawn picture of a disordered childhood. If you haven't read them yet, please do! https://www.abctales.com/story/lille-dante/my-spectre-haunts-shopping...

From the brilliant Noo: After a trickle at the start, we had a near flood of poems for Poetry Monthly by the end! Thanks to everyone who put fingers to keyboards and wrote – there were many interesting and different takes on the theme, but three that particularly stood out for me were: Luigi Pagano’s warm, nostalgic ‘Beautiful Day in San Remo’ https://www.abctales.com/story/luigipagano/beautiful-day-sanremo London Calling’s wispy and wise ‘...

Edited and designed by one of my favourite poets on ABCTales, Rosa Cruz/Annest Gwylim, a new e-book/anthology for the Poetry Kit called 'Flowers in the Machine' has just been launched today, It's free to download, and contains some very good work by published authors (including Rosa) that you won't find elsewhere. It's at: https://www.poetrykit.org/pkp/flowers.pdf

Big congratulations this week to Sim for a long awaited return to Ribbentrop's Chair - some of the best life writing I've read on ABCTales, and to longrunningspatula for 'Promenade Diary' which reminded me of how much I miss the sea - especially at times like this. https://www.abctales.com/story/sim/jean-ribbentrops-chair https://www.abctales.com/story/longrunningspatula/promenade-diary I'd like to add a recommendation this week - the blogposts...

Posted by Philip Sidney on Fri, 19 May 2017 There's been a flurry of wonderful peices inspired by May's Poetry Monthly theme - out of the blue, I've even written one myself...but it's Parson Thru's touching poem that takes to the skies this week as Poem of the Week. https://www.abctales.com/story/parson-thru/4-group-raf-bomber-command Noo chose the Poetry Monthly theme, and wrote a prose piece on a similar theme - I dare you not to get teary...

Finally managed to create a shiny new YouTube channel for ABCTales, and to upload some video from last week's London Reading Night. Big thanks to Judith for the filming. We only managed to get a few readers, but I hope it'll give you all a taste of how brilliant everyone was, and next time I promise we will film the whole thing! I hope you enjoy them: https://youtu.be/iQjjUst0fwc https://youtu.be/-_X29RN_K-I https://youtu.be/-qRAG5YW9bI

Come on people, we’re half way through this month’s Poetry Monthly and the posts are not exactly flooding in. You lovely, creative lot on ABCtales need to get your blue sky thinking on and get responding to ‘into the blue’. Make of it what you want, do what you need to, but come on – get writing! I look forward to reading some more poems over the next couple of weeks. Noo