I've just received an email from Jenny (skinner_jennifer) which she's asked me to post on her behalf. Let's hope she soon feels well enough to come back to ABCTales:

Story and Poem of the Week, with Inspiration Point posted by di-hard As darkness comes earlier each night, and storms swirl, what better time could there be for sharing spooky stories and poems? AND thanks to SoulFire's very generous offer, if you post them before October 30th (with /frankenplot next to the title), ABCTales will receive $5 for every one! Here is the link, I hope it inspires you : https://www.abctales.com/blog/...

Filed by Fletcher Moody — Literary Correspondent In the spring of 1819 all of London was reading a vampire, and the vampire belonged to Lord Byron. That was the line on the magazine. The New Monthly had run a story that April called "The Vampyre," a tale by Lord Byron , and it went through the drawing rooms like a low fever through a boarding house. Every mouth that praised it praised Byron. It was the sort of success a man can build a decade on...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p09fs2x4/time-series-1-episode-1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0g5k1zt/time-series-2-episode-1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00316gl/time-series-3-episode-1 Jimmy McGovern is a writer. Helen Black and Samuel Bailey are writers too. But if Black and Bailey had approached the BBC with an idea about a drama series focusing on life inside a men’s, women’s and young offender’s institution with...

A Journey through Halloween Last weekend the M5 was closed in both directions at Gloucester. This was something of a dilemma as I had planned to see my lad for his birthday in Stratford-Upon-Avon. Everything turned out well as I took an alternative route across country from Junction 18 at the M4 through Cirencester and some wonderfully named locations including Moreton-in-Marsh. In one of the many fields along the way, I saw my first pumpkin...

Live readings can be a hit or miss affair. Apart from the nerves of reading out your work, the potential for stumbling, stalling - ‘dead air’ , or missing your place is enormous. Your aim is to promote, generate interest and hopefully avoid the crowd nodding off or scrolling. I was invited to do a reading at The Murder One Crime Writing Festival in the Lexicon Library in the beautiful seaside town of Dun Laoghaire in South County Dublin. So I...

The scream came from the left bank. It was a woman's scream. It went up high and long, ragged at the top, the sound of someone who has just seen something she can't stand to see, and it broke off. He held still. The tube turned slowly on the current until he was facing the bank. The phone light didn't reach it. There was only the black wall of the trees. The scream came again, closer to the water. "Hello?" he said. Then, louder, "Ma'am? You okay...

Filed by Fletcher Moody — Literary Correspondent I went down to Bournemouth in the last week of 1885 to ask after something that had already been thrown away. I had it on fair authority that a writer living there had set a story down in the autumn, fast, and then got rid of it, and that the thing he got rid of was better than the thing he meant to print in its place. My editors were always sending me on that sort of errand, and I was always fool...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00327nr/the-substance I don’t know if there is a word ‘hokumy’ but somehow watchable? Algorithms are pushers. You’ll end up bleeding from the nose like a writer/director on a cocaine binge or Sue (Margaret Qualley) after watching The Substance . Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) plays an aging Hollywood actress and fitness guru that had me thinking that looks like Demi Moore, but I’d never seen her in those...

Heroes can be as boring as superheroes. There have been a slew of programmes with names like Who Dares Wins? Some recount the lost glory of figures that fought and never foundered during the early days of the second world war. Men a bit apart from the ordinary soldier. That’s Jason (Foxy) Fox. Joined the marines at the impossibly young age of sixteen and soldering was his life. The army was always there for him. And he was a natural leader with...