The Holiday Season changes with age. I’ve learned that over my decades of life. It was magical when my age was in single digits…thrilling up to and through my twenties…joyful and happy when my own children were very young and my family began some new traditions along with the old…but as time marches on… the gathering at my table has became smaller…family and friends move away…children grow up...but more difficult…loved ones pass. There is an...

Each month we ask one of our brilliant volunteer editors to take a turn at choosing the best of the best. Mr December is Parson Thru who's very kindly taken time away from his globetrotting to give us his carefully thought out opinion. Here it is: Thanks for giving me the privilege of choosing December's pick of the month. The story that I finally chose impressed me when I first read it earlier in the month and remains strong. It is "Sadie", by...

No Picks of the Week for you today, instead here's an extra special cherry for you all and a fantastic Pick of the Day. Thank you so much for all the wonderful poems and stories this year. I hope you all have a wonderful day! xxx

Beyond reason is a different country and Aljaz Cosini has walked its paths, picked it flowers, crammed his mouth full of its fruits and swam in its many seas. ‘I have been granted visions – grand, great, wild sweeping visions. My mind rattles with them as they are born to me.’ Drowning or dying is a Damascene experience few come back to tell the tale, fewer still to live and tell. As readers we always look for clues as to who the writer really...

I saw the woodpecker again this morning. Today is an awful day. Perhaps the woodpecker is husbands voice saying "it will be alright love" , "we will get through this." Today I go to register his death. I have been given a list of instructions about getting more copies of not only the death certificate but birth and marriage certificates too. It makes me afraid as well as grieved. We worried a bit about the legality of getting married on a cruise...

Apparently I was married to not only an intellectual giant of his generation, but a saint. A number of people have said how lucky I was to have had him as a husband. They didn't see the stubborn, eccentric, workaholic I knew who dropped his clothes on the floor rather than walk a few steps to put them on a chair, and collected bits of newspaper "for later" which were never re read. There were vast piles of newspaper in a number of rooms. His...

A friend came to stay last night and today we "got a lot done". We found a lovely wedding photograph of husband for the front of the order of service and the one I love from his 20s for the back of it. In both he looks very happy. In the early one he looks very beautiful indeed, a young God. That was a long time before we met but his liveliness , charm, and spirit was always there. He had a beautiful smile even in the hospice. We found readings...

ABCtales: The Book Some of the best writing from ABCtales is now available to buy in hard copy as a quality paperback. Featuring the authors: Laurie Avadis, Holly Fisher, Alex Graves, Deborah Hambrook, Joe Lawrence, Ewan Lawrie, Richard McDonough, Ian McLachlan, Rhona Millar, ‘Noo’, Jack O’Donnell, Luigi Pagano, Richard Penny, Roy Raubenheimer, Moya Rooke, Stephen Thom and Sam Thornley. Including a chapter from Laurie Avadis’s novel ‘Ex’ with an...

A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all from us at ABCtales.com. It's been a good year for us with the three Unbound books reaching their funding targets due to the enormous efforts of the authors. Laurie Avadis's 'Ex' is selling well and it deserves to do so. It's an orginal and brilliant book so if you haven't bought it, then do so now! Ewan Laurie's 'Gibbous House' and Jack O'Donnell's 'Lily Poole' are due out early in the New Year...

Someone gave me this book, perhaps knowing I’m never happier than when unhappy and wallowing in the worst of humanity, and it makes a pleasant change from Nazi death camps. Erving Goffman defined a total institution as a place that is isolated and enclosed as Carstairs Hospital obviously is, but a wider reading also acknowledges the secrecy that such places engender. My first attempt at novel writing, Huts , written around eight years ago takes...