Anybody that knows me should by now know I’m under contract to UNITED AUTHORS PUBLISHING LIMITED trading as UNBOUND . I’ve agreed to deliver a novel currently entitled Lily Poole and it will be around 72 000 words (ahem, 84 000, but that’s word inflation for you). The Deliver Date will be 1st October 2014 or a later date agreed between the two parties, or in more simple terms – whenever. The production costs currently stand around £5 100 and I’m...

http://www.gofundme.com/hbgp1g #

The titles a bit dated; the story's timeless. Werther is a young man with an admin job who paints for a hobby. He's upperclass but not a twit,he cares about the local peasants and hangs out with them in friendly way as well as hanging out with the local snobs who snub him hurtfully when they happen to be posher than him, and he loves nature. Obsession is the problem, he falls uncontrollably in love with the attractive Lotte who is the fiance of...

Well what a wonderful week it's been on ABCtales, especially so because some members who have been suffering the dreaded 'block' have suddenly found a way to open the floodgates. Sid and blighters rock have both featured on the front page as picks of the day - well done you two! Poem of the week goes to Allen Johnson for a brilliant cameo of an impatient mole! http://www.abctales.com/story/allen-johnson-jr/bother-and-o-blow and the story of the...

I don’t mind admitting the concept of ‘poetry projects’ was something that I had only been vaguely aware of and up until last week I had not devoted much thought to what it might mean. I decided to investigate poetry projects and look at the process, production and the outcomes of them. So this last few days I have spent a little time looking into what it might mean. I found, predictably perhaps, that opinions on definition, benefit and worth in...

I think of my complicity in the age of choice, and my suspicion that there isn’t really any choice. There are usually only two things to choose from, two really big bands, two hefty paperbacks, two women, only one bankrupt ideology (since the others have lost) and yet the illusion persists. The man who leaves work on a warm summer evening and thinks I can do anything, embark on a wonderful love affair with a lollypop lady, retrain as a sumo...

This week's poetry pick was nominated by another ABC writer and I can't think of a better c hoice. Please do send us your nominations - we don't get enough! Congratulations to Scratch for his sparse, enigmatic Unknown Girl: http://www.abctales.com/story/scratch/unknown-girl Congratulations also to The Other Terrence Oblong, who just gets better and better, for his brilliantly witty piece The Work Problem: http://www.abctales.com/story/other-...

I've been a little weary of late. Life is hectic but, like a stormy autumn night, the sky clears occasionally and a perfect moon washes the landscape clean and calm. Its silver light is perhaps the most soothing of all. Soothing like the voice of James Joyce playing in my head as I read from "Dubliners" in the stillness of my room, wind whispering the trees outside. Hushed by the waves less than a mile beyond. Propped awkwardly against the...

The pen A half-decent Biro (like this BIC) costs a few scraps of change and yet has the power of contract, attorney, signs death-warrants, treaties, or can just record these thoughts. But its power is also revealed when it's stolen by someone you thought you knew. Confirmed when he does it again, but this time you point it out. The song A song can transport me. The right one always will. Maybe not at first hearing, but in time. Then I take that...

Nostalgia is good for you. Americans it seem love Downton Abbey and weep over the history they never had. Nostalgia sells. I should know that better than most. Writing is an act of nostalgia, an attempt to capture the past that’s never been, or to re-create the past as we remember it. This can be applied equally to fact or fiction. Downton Abbey is set on that golden past when everybody knew their place. The master was always right, even when he...