Everyone has a story—seen it, been it, done it. Agents and booksellers need a hook line or in marketing jargon, unique selling point. Something to reel in book buyers. Jackie Malton’s is in the title. Jackie Malton had a middle class upbringing. She couldn’t do maths, which meant she couldn’t go to university (which currently affects tens of thousands of others for much the same reason). Her parents thought her a bit thick. University was out of...

This Is Your Own Time You’re Wasting by Lee and Adam Parkinson — Manchester Primary school teachers and brothers. The duo behind the podcast Two Mr Ps, which has been listened to over four million times and authors of Put a Wet Paper Towel On It a Sunday Times bestseller. There are around 600 000 teachers in the UK (Scotland 53 400) which provide an audience for classroom mayhem and a ready pool of stories which involve shit, sick, sexual...

‘Freeconomic’ is a made-up word. We get it. Although few of us buy into it. Mark Boyle’s goal was quite simple. He outlines it in the Prologue. I wasn’t aware there was a ‘Buy Nothing Day’. Most of the days of my week are buy nothing days. But I’d be stretching it a bit to manage 365 days. Mark Boyle on Buy Nothing Day, 28 th November 2008, decided he wouldn’t spend a penny for a year. Ironically, he provoked a media feeding frenzy. ‘Be the...

Maureen Myant, like most writers, was a writer in search of a publisher. I’ve read the first and her latest, The Fallen , in her four book, South-side of Glasgow, police-procedural published by Hobeck Books. I also read a fair bit of her reissued first book, The Search . The Confession , which kicks off the crime series, is her best. The point of view shifted in her first Southside novel. Mostly the story was told from the point of view of DI...

Maureen Myant is on a roll four or five of the same books (around 80 000 words a year) same characters, Glasgow Southside Series. I read around a quarter of her first novel, The Search , which I take was her doctoral dissertation in Creative Writing from Glasgow Uni. It was set in Poland, 1942. OKish, I won’t finish reading it. Habeas corpus , you shall have the body. Police procedural centred on (the story being told mainly from point of view)...

Nadia Dalbuono (2015) The American The American is one of a series of books featuring Detective Leone Scamarcio. Daluono’s book was published before the election of the moron’s moron Trump, when the idea of destabilising society—with false-flag operations—and saving democracy by appointing a dictator belonged in Roman History and not current affairs. The CIA has been at work at home and abroad assassinating presidents and asset-stripping...

My current best Writers on AbcTales September 2025 5. mcscraic – Paul McCann 4. rhiannonw – Rhiannon 3. luigi_pagano – Luigi 2. valiswaverider – Rob Wheeldon 1. queen beatle – Morwenna A very optimistic newcomer, Sir Loin with three stories.

I read some books. Pick others up and start reading them. Think that’s interesting and realise I’ve read it before. I was going to say something about grief. But don’t really know what I’m talking about, which isn’t unusual. I couldn’t, for example, make a podcast about it, as Rachel Wilson did, The Grief Network. Or write this book. Here (more or less) is her mission statement. ‘When my mother died, I took it for granted a group tailored to...

I’m not sure who Adam Rutherford is. Professor Hannah Fry has presented a couple of quirky programmes for the BBC. She’s a model scientist and role model for those girls that think science is just for boys. Science matters they tell us. But is also, like everything else, biased. Their Complete Guide to Absolutely Everything is tongue-in-cheek. Because anyone and everyone knows that the complete guide to absolutely everything is on your phone...

A new kind of church is coming. A church that can meet anywhere, homes, cafes, or even surfing together by the sea. A church that has no pastors or preachers. A church that is based on the first churches in the Bible with less emphasis on preaching and a greater sense of the miraculous. The first churches met in people's homes. Acts 2:46,47. They continued daily in the temple and breaking bread from house to house. The first Christians were all...