Latest Newsletter
People tell me that these sometimes get lost in their spam boxes or go to other addresses or they just don't read them in time - so here's a copy of the one that's going out now in the hope that everyone will have a chance to read it:
Dear ABCtalers,
First of all news of a special event on ABCtales and one, if it's successful, that we hope to repeat with other authors.
Richard Aronowitz, author of 'It's Just The Beating of my Heart' recently published by Flambard Press, is available to answer your questions and queries between 1300 and 1400 hrs. (that's 1 - 2 p.m.) on Friday April 9th on ABCtales. If you want to talk 'live' to Richard then go to the Discussion Forums and see the special forum set up for this event.
You can post questions in advance on there if you are not able to come along at the time.
Richard is an ABCtaler and got his book published after receiving encouragement to continue on the site. He's a fascinating man as well as a very good writer so I do ask you all to come along if you can and make it a lively and interesting session.
Richard's book received this glowing review in The Independent:
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/its-just-t...
A number of other ABCtalers have new books out too.
John Osborne, known to most of you as mcmanaman, has his second book out this week. 'The Newsagent's Window' is published by Simon and Schuster. More details are here:
http://books.simonandschuster.co.uk/Newsagent%27s-Window/John-Osborne/97...
Penny Rudge, who uses the imaginative name of pennyrudge on ABCtales, has her novel 'Foolish Lessons in Life and Love' just out from Abacus. Poet Laureate Andrew Motion calls it 'deeply impressive and highly enjoyable'.
The blurb tells us that this is: 'A warm and wonderfully funny first novel that launches a memorable new literary matriarch.
23 year-old Taras Krohe is wedged between the two women in his life: his Russian girlfriend, Katya, who is struggling to fund her way through college; and his overbearing Bukovinian mother. He is devoted to both women in different ways but then Katya leaves him for a ponytailed aesthete – and his mother, he realises, he will never be able to escape.
Ten years after an ominous scholarship took him to a top-ranking public school, the big-boned and loveable Taras and his mother now live in a small South London flat. Taras’s father died, shortly before he was born, and Mrs. Krohe went on to inherit a curious benefactress in the form of Mrs. Bartlett.
But then Mrs. Bartlett passed away and her unnerving relatives arrived at the door. With eviction looming, the terminally easy going Taras is forced to show his mother that he is a man, and uncover the secret behind his family’s descent into disaster. But she has other ideas for her little pourchi: she is determined to wrestle him away from the dangerous influences his search reveals. And it is by no means certain who will come out on top . . .'
Sounds great to me - I have ordered my copy already.
ABCtaler Daffni has recently translated Alphonse Daudet’s Lettres de Mon Moulin – Letters From My Mill. Here's the blurb: Alphonse Daudet was a journalist in Paris at the end of the 1800s and quit to go and live in an old windmill in Provence. He wrote to his colleagues on the paper describing his arrival and it was published to such acclaim that he went on sending the paper stories and this book was the first collection. I first encountered Alphonse Daudet’s Lettres de Mon Moulin at grammar school where, du to the war, I was receiving a very fragmented introduction to the French Language. It took me weeks with a dictionary to read the first chapter but I fell in love with both the book and the French language. Translating Letters From My Mill has been a long cherished dream and I finally got around to it.
Sylvie Nickels has the third book in her trilogy just released by Oriole Press. Here's the details:
Oxfordshire is the setting for much of Sylvie Nickels’ trilogy on what war does to people, and especially succeeding generations. Western Australia also features, but above all war-torn Bosnia. In the earlier books (Another Kind of Loving, 2005 and Beyond the Broken Gate, 2007) waif-like Jasminka from besieged Sarajevo is fostered by Mike and Sara Hennessey in a village in north Oxfordshire. She grows into an English schoolgirl and teenager, falls in love with a young American, returns to Sarajevo with him at the time of 9/11. She also becomes the daughter Mike has always wanted and cannot have. In this third book, Long Shadows, he has to face his true feelings for his foster daughter, now an attractive young woman and single mum, as dark shadows from his youth in the Sixties began to threaten. And Jasminka must face her true feelings for Mike as she is drawn back to Sarajevo to try and build reconciliation in the wounded city of her birth.
Book One, Another Kind of Loving: “… this hooked me, reeled me in and wouldn’t let go until … the last page” review blog, The Bookbag.co.uk
Book Two, Beyond the Broken Gate: Winner of self-published fiction award 2008. “… powerful, far-reaching…” Four Shires magazine
All three books are available from main bookshops, Amazon:, and the Oriole Press.
RRP is £7.99
During 35 years-plus as a travel writer, Sylvie Nickels visited the former Yugoslavia almost annually; she was greatly distressed by its break-up. Its story and the effects on future generations are similar to the story of the effects of war anywhere. This trilogy covers the experience of these effects arising from several wars and across the generations.
Sylvie lives in a village in north Oxfordshire very similar to Daerley Green, with her husband George Spenceley, photographer, lecturer and former adventurer. Currently she gives talks and is working on a new book.
Tony Thorne MBE, who is a long time ABCtaler, has written to me about his Tenerife Tall Tales:
The first volume of TENERIFE TALL TALES, won the top "Best SF Read on the Beach" award in the 2009 New York Book Festival Contest, and as a result, several of the linked tales selected from all three volumes are now being developed into a screenplay by a Hollywood producer/screenwriter, with the encouragement of one of the producers of LORD OF THE RINGS. It will be a character-driven adventure movie set partly in Wales, but mostly in Tenerife.
Copies of the the first book in the Tenerife trilogy can now be obtained from Amazon, WH Smith etc (just enter Books - Tony Thorne MBE in the relevant Search prompt spaces on their home pages); or from me direct, signed if requested, via my website ... www.tonythorne.com
More detailed information is available on this Link ...
http://www.tenerifemagazine.com/talking-tenerife/from-mount-teide-to-hol...
So - you can see that ABCtales is still producing great writers. Do support your fellow members and buy their books - you'd love it if it was you!
All the very best,
Tony Cook and the ABCtales team.