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...

How To Become A Writer Learn to Listen Learn to Speak Learn to Read Learn to Write When people become writers they define a new reality for themselves. As long as these erstwhile ordinary people continue to write they are writers, if they stop writing, they cease to be writers. The state of not writing compared to the state of writing is the difference between paralysis and mobility. At the outset the proficiency of the writing is irrelevant; a...

This collection of nine short stories was winner of the Pulitzer Prize 2000. It gets my vote. Not that anyone asked me to vote, or even to read the long list or the short list. But if anybody had asked me which was the best of these short stories I would be flummoxed. I’d ask myself if they were all equally good. Janice Galloway, a writer I hold in the highest esteem, in comparison, wrote about the same number of stories in her collection of...

Philip Sidney wins the story honours this week for this wonderfully transporting piece 'Ghost Hunting In New England': http://www.abctales.com/story/philip-sidney/ghost-hunting-new-england and many of you will know that I'm a sucker for nature poetry especially that's inspired by the wonder of bird life. The poetry prize goes to MJG for an almost flawless piece 'Murmuration'. http://www.abctales.com/story/mjg/murmuration finally this week's...

https://www.itv.com/itvplayer/broadmoor/series-1/episode-1 Broadmoor is a bleak sounding name. Its 150-years old, an asylum, sixty miles from London that is expanding out to meet it. It used to provide a daytrip for gentile Londoners to go and gawk at Broadmoor’s inmates. Now the cameras have been invited inside. I’m not really sure why. Broadmoor we are told holds 200 ‘patients’ at a cost of £300 000 per year, per patient, an annual cost to the...

Hard to tell a tale of grim facts which we can all Google online and to keep our interest; Richard Flanagan does a capable job. We are mainly placed in the construction of The Death Railway, the Burma- Thailand Railway built in WW2 by the slave labour of Japanese prisoners of war. Dorrigo Evans is a hero and medical colonel, a leader of men. We shuttle back and forth to his civilian life before and after and Love is the additional interest, well...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04ndsb3/storyville-20142015-8-exposed-magicians-psychics-and-frauds ‘The Amazing Randi’ is indeed amazing. He’s in his mid eighties, stooped and worn and looks like he should be cast as Grumpy, or one of the other seven dwarves. But he has a very eloquent speaking voice and was awarded the MacArthur ‘genius grant’ about thirty-years ago. When he talks you should listen. He exposes fairy tales, New Age liars...

This week's honours go to... fromagreenhill for their wonderful poem Pan abctales.com/story/fromagreenhill/pan and VeraClark for her poetry-prose piece The Butchery abctales.com/story/veraclark/butchery Once again deciding what gets onto the home page on Friday evening has been hugely difficult, there were a number of close runners in both categories. Well done and thanks to everyone who offered their writing up on the site this week This weeks...