A while back, I put a chapter or so of the very old Smokescreen on ABCTales. It started out as a Nanowrimo attempt sometime before 2009 (I can't even remember which year, it was so long ago). Anyway, after Nano, I tidied it up a bit and printed it via Bubok.es, as I was living in Spain at the time. It was a first effort at self-pubbing, when it was only just a thing, really. As for Bubok.es, think KDP (Amazon's Publishing Arm) but without any of...

John Gribbin writes about physics. In modern parlance, he popularises science. As a starting point, he quotes Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes: ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth’. He offers some parameters: Our Universe about 13.8 billion years old (Milky Way galaxy a little younger). Solar System and Earth 4.5 billion years old Formation of single-cell, eukaryotic, life on...

I loved Tiffany McDaniel’s recent novel Betty . The Summer That Melted Everything was her debut novel. Poets make the best novelists, her words sing. She uses John Milton’s Paradise Lost as a framing device for each chapter. The first paragraph forewarns what has to come. Beautifully done. ‘The heat came with the devil. It was the summer of 1984, and while the devil had been invited, the heat had not. It should have been expected, though… ‘It...

As always there were hard choices to make. Story of the Week Story of the week is Marandina’s not-quite-Shaggy Dog Story, Holodog . In three parts, it is a fine example of near future sci-fi. Do use these links to read the first two parts if you haven’t already. Pt I Pt II Honourable mentions go to: Mark Burrow’s Doolally , with its teenaged narrator showing us the view from the bottom. Celticman’s Goatie 5 , another surreally funny slice of...

Storyville: Nelly and Nadine—Ravensbruck, 1944, BBC 4, BBC iPlayer, Director Magnus Gertten. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001lczg/storyville-nelly-and-nadine-ravensbruck-1944 Holocaust literature regularly tops the bestselling lists. Yet the story of Nadine Hwang, the daughter of the Chinese ambassador to Spain, who fell in love with opera singer Nelly Mousset Vos on Christmas day, 1944, in Ravensbruck, a Nazi’s women’s concentration...

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/derren-brown-showman Writer, philosopher, showman and a must-see, Derren Brown opens your mind, pokes about and walks away, leaving you baffled. Showman starts with Brown taking the piss. Horoscopes. He shows a horoscope for a Sagittarian (that’s me) and asks if it hits the mark. I thought it did. Others in the audience thought so too. Us Sagittarians stood together, smarter than most, bolder than most, risk...

I didn’t know who Rebecca Humphries was. Look at the title. What does it mean to you? Listen for the semi-ironic tone. The cover is a portrait of an upper-crust lady in a peacock coloured dress on a chaise lounge, pondering. In the background, a dour-faced gentleman in black, barely visible. A chapter titled ‘Brave’. Blurbs from Emma Thompson. ‘Fierce. Game-changing. Urgently necessary. Brilliant, brilliant and did I say brilliant? Marian Keyes...

‘Make death proud to take you.’ A quote from a quote from Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Julius Caesar , but also a starting point and end point for O’Hagan’s bestselling book, Mayflies . The tragedy of making America proud to take us is they already have, with the rise and lies of Brexit and market solutions to every aspect of life. O’Hagan’s essays were written before the rise or the moron’s moron and 42 nd American President. But in an essay on...

Patrick Radden Keefe starts with the long-playback-shot. 6 th June 1993. A routine police patrol near Coney Island. National Park Police Officers doing the graveyard shift. A volunteer auxiliary force. They had to oil their handcuffs because of the sea air and lack of use. But they spot a ship on the sandbars and hear the screams from the water. Breezy Point, notable for keg parties, has become a graveyard, crime and rescue scene involving Coast...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001l5q0/deborah-james-bowelbabe-in-her-own-words Deborah James, mother of two children, died recently from bowel cancer. Hence the title Bowelbabe. The second part of the conjunction Babe was how she promoted her charity work, with a tie-in with The Sun . She helped fundraise over £11 million for her work. She was made a Dame before she died, the Princess Di of bowel cancer. This documentary focuses on the...