philwhiteland's blog

I'm delighted to be able to tell you that the stories I've featured here on ABCtales about Rohan and India, the two dogs at TURN Education, have now been collected together into a book in time for Christmas. The collection also includes two brand new stories, not previously published, which round off their first year together. Here's the blurb: A year in the life of the dogs (and other animals) at TURN Education. Beginning with the first...

One year ago this month we lost this chap, leaving a huge Chocolate Labrador-shaped hole in the hearts of everyone who knew and loved him. Ironically, we were just about to publish the first collection of stories about Packham, and his companion India, as a paperback to raise funds for TURN Education. Caroline, TURN's founder, decided we should go ahead, in Packham's memory. The original idea was to sell these at Open Days etc. but the pandemic...

I've tried multiple times over the past few days to upload a story but I keep getting the incomprehensible error message below. I've sent pleading messages via the Contact Us section of the web page but to no avail! I would really like to upload this story but may have to abandon the effort if this goes on :-( Any ideas? PDOException : SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 1366 Incorrect string value: '\xF0\x9F\x98\x8A</...' for column 'body_value...

I completely forgot to mention here (and this is why I'll never become a literary colossus!) that 'The Chronicles of a Young Lady (and her Maid)' which started out as a serial here on ABCtales, is FREE as a Kindle e-book this Bank Holiday weekend (29th & 30th May). An entertaining and undemanding read for an unusually pleasant Bank Holiday Here's the blurb: "When a young noble lady's betrothed rides off to battle, she has high hopes of his...

A while ago, I had a bit of dialogue running through my head and I've learned, through bitter experience, that sooner or later I would have to commit it to writing before it drove me completely crackers! So, I did, and it became a short story called 'She Who Would Valiant Be!' here on ABCtales. It was totally unlike anything I'd ever written before but I was rather taken with the characters and wanted to see what might happen to them next, so I...

A story that sprang from a fragment of dialogue that was going around in my head (and simply demanded to be written down) has now, to my surprise, generated seven episodes, to date, and looks likely to provide quite a few more, before I'm done! Therefore, in an effort to try and tidy things up, I've collected all of the stories about Aefelthrith and Gwladys together in a 'collection' and sequentially numbered the various episodes. If you haven't...

No, they haven't been locked up (yet!) My two hapless Undertakers have their latest collection of stories, Grave Expectations, available FREE for one day only (Thursday, 21st January, 2021) and, as many people on ABCtales have been kind enough to read their stories and comment on them, I thought you might appreciate a 'heads up' as our transatlantic cousins insist on saying :-) Even when it's not free, it's just the ridiculous price of 99p but,...

FREE TODAY (Tuesday, 8th December) my e-book collection of Christmas stories, including a number originally published on this site such as The Undertakers at Christmas and my alternative version of the Nativity. Get it here: A Christmas Cracker

For the past year or so, I have, from time to time, been posting stories on ABCtales about the two dogs at TURN Education, Packham and India and seeing the world from their perspective. My thanks to everyone here who kindly read the stories and commented. I've now gathered alll of these stories together, plus a few new ones especially written, in a paperback book for children released in time for Christmas. I think the best thing I can do is...