My current best Writers on AbcTales November 2025 5. celticman – Paul 4. rhiannonw – Rhiannon 3. Maxine Jasmin-Green 2. GlosKat 1. Turlough – Terence Mullan I wish all our members and readers a happy and peaceful festive season! Nolan & Do not drink and drive. “God bless us, every one!”

This is not a novel. It is a well-lit corridor in a collapsing institution.

I’m having a break from fiction writing. Maybe these random thoughts will serve as a substitute until – if - inspiration should return. Just tell me to stop, if I should …. There’s a column in the MetroTalk page of the Metro, the free newspaper given away on tubes and trains. It doesn’t have an actual headline, but it could I suppose be called ‘Brief Encounter’ or, more prosaically, the Letch Corner. Here are some typical entries from a few...

‘Drill baby drill’. That’s been the response of the moron’s moron Trump and his followers. It makes meetings of heads of states COP 25, COP 26…meaningless. Short-term thinking. Extinction Rebellion has lost its lustre. All around the world, eco activists have been reclassified as terrorists. Chief Seattle, ‘The Earth is our mother. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself’...

This book almost didn’t happen. I could put it down to writer’s block or in the words of John Lennon: ‘Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans’ , but by March this year, the book was stalled. Frozen. Part of the problem I realised was the journals and notebooks were becoming an albatross around my neck. Instead of them being a map or a guide, they became a convenient go-to crutch. I had two notebooks filled with notes,...

The Bible tells us not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought to. Romans 12:3-8. There is nothing we can do to impress God. Anything good that we have in ourselves has come from him. If I am a good writer or a good preacher I must realise that God has given me those abilities. I may say that writing Christian articles on websites and preaching is my ministry but I must remember that all Christians have a ministry. The Bible says that we...

Release date 01.24.26 The Payout Game is an Irish crime thriller featuring Garda Inspector P.J. Crowe — a flawed but dediicated detective living in the small coastal town of Roscarrig that keeps giving him big-city problems. Crowe is hoping for a quiet Christmas in Roscarrig, but during a charity regatta, a body washes up on the rocks beneath a lighthouse — a man known across Ireland: a celebrity bookmaker with deep connections to high-stakes...

Most of us know who Kathy Burke is. She’s kinda famous. Famous enough to have a major publisher publish her autobiography, A Mind of My Own . I like her because she always comes across as that rarest of breeds, a working-class actress made good. Working-class actor if we’re being politically correct. I loved her retort to Helena Bonham Carter when she opined that there weren’t enough roles for her because she was too pretty. Let me remind you...

The cherry blossoms still bloom...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct6stl People I know have started voting with their body. I attended a Catholic funeral on Friday. A girl I used to know. Bernie Porter that’s no longer a girl. No longer anything. Her mum was my godmother. Both are dead. Both received Roman Catholic funeral rites. Mass and the bit at the end, where her coffin is carried out of the church, by her ex-husband and son. Her coffin is put in the ground. Ashes to...