A good grey day. How I love a cloudy, sun blocked, clouds rolling in, grey day. I am lazy personified on a typical sun drenched day with the heat melting my rubber soles…but give me a good storm brewing and suddenly I am pulsing with energy and racing thoughts. At the first clap of thunder, I find a window and watch the clouds roll in. I thrill to the sway of the trees and the teaming rain…I am in heaven with the artistic dance of lightning. I...

Our next ABCtales reading event is bound for Nottingham... tomorrow night! Do join us on Saturday 5 th September at 7pm, The Cross Keys, 15 Byard Lane, Nottingham, NG1 2GJ for prose and poetry in a splendid city. It’s a vibrant reading line up, including Blackjack Davey, Johnshade, Philip Sidney, airy fairy, Bear, Scratch, London Calling, Luigi Pagano, Denzella, Lisa H. If you’d like to read, there are still a couple of slots, so drop me an...

It is such a pleasure to read all the new submissions that appear on ABCtales each week. Long-standing members still provide a plethora of top-flight writing but it's true that they have to constantly strive to keep up with the steady influx of all the many new talented members that the site has aquired over the last 12 months. One of the 'newbies' takes this week's story slot. It's David Martin with his artistically drawn Relic. It really is...

HOME no one leaves home unless
 home is the mouth of a shark
 you only run for the border
 when you see the whole city running as well your neighbors running faster than you breath bloody in their throats the boy you went to school with who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory is holding a gun bigger than his body you only leave home when home won’t let you stay. no one leaves home unless home chases you fire under feet hot blood in your...

One of our most dedicated and talented writer/editors contacted me earlier this evening and it is with great pleasure that I can share the following announcement on their behalf. Poem of the Month, 'running in the rain' by Accidentallyexisting: running in the rain This poem has a wonderful sense of rejuvenation. It is refreshing and energising, a celebration of the physical that still tingles as a memory or, as in my case, the imagined. Story of...

I hope the sun glowed down on you this summer. I spent most of August in Cornwall’s limpet pools and became obsessed with photographing mussels on sliding perilous rocks. Thanks to Canonette, her psychegeographic theme inspired me to write about a beach I’ve visited for years in a sinister new way. This month your poetry tore up the map and dug up old haunts, you explored new places and reinvented settings with daring. The strongest poems tended...

I had never heard of Richard Flanagan until I watched Imagine on BBC 1 that celebrated the writer and his work. I bought a few of his books and started in on the 2014 winner of the Man Booker Prize. I expected great things and I was not disappointed. The Narrow Road to the Deep North is a metonym for a place and time on the Line, a railway built by an estimated 250 000 Burmese and Chinese coolies and 60 000 prisoners of war though impenetrable...

Announcement due soon.

This week saw the launch party for the publication of Ex - Laurie Avadis' stunning debut novel which started here on ABCTales and was snapped up by Unbound. It's now available on Amazon and if you can leave a review it would be wonderfully helpful. We're currently on the lookout for others to follow in his footsteps, so if you have any suggestions please send them to us! Two blistering pieces for you today: Poem of the Week goes to...