Books are like the stock market, sales rise and fall over your title’s shelf life. At the mercy of fickle readership, your publication in many ways is no longer art, but a commodity, a product for sale. The trick is to bring your buyers to the stall and at least look it over. For my novel, A Kind of Drowning , I planned for the year, with one eye on the summer market and the end view of Christmas sales I marked out a calendar into three blocks...

Heather Morris’s debut novel, The Tattooist of Auschwitz , sold around six million copies. I think I even had two copies floating about in my house at one time. I’ve still got one. The stories in the title. Lale Sokolov (he changed his surname, years earlier to make it sound less Jewish) was transported to Auschwitz from Bratislava with his family. His sister Goldie survived. He did too. His job as a tattooist, inking all those consecutive...

https://www.itv.com/hub/savile-portrait-of-a-predator/10a1253a0001 https://www.abctales.com/story/celticman/jimmy-savile-and-me Ten years ago, Sir Jimmy Savile died. His funeral was an event that featured on the news. The great and the good appeared, in sombre tones, mourning our loss. People lined the streets to pay their respects. Sir Keith Stammer was Director of Public Prosecutions. Operation Yewtree was set up in London in 2012 to...

Alexander Starritt’s name can be added to the list of great Scottish writers. (He’s written another book I’ve not yet read, The Beast. ) I, initially, thought We Germans was a translation like Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front and The Road Home . The format is simple. A grandfather writing to his Scottish grandson, Callum. And his grandson replying. Oberkanonier Meissner was in the Wehrmacht. Six-foot-two and broad shouldered...

The title is like the snatched breath of an overhead conversation. It makes assumptions and asks questions of the reader. ‘Piped,’ refers to playing bagpipes. The identity of the ‘She’ refers to Queen Victoria. The narrator is Angus MacKay (1812-1859) telling the story of his life from a cell in Bethlem Hospital (Bedlam). Iain McDonald takes on the persona of Angus McKay. A factional story, fictionalising the few facts known about McKay. The...

Last week's Inspiration Point produced some wonderful work, and our Poem of the Week is one of those pieces. Jenny Skinner's 'Stone Loach' is a marvellous piece of nature writing, beautifully written and full of atmosphere: Stone Loach | ABCtales Story of the Week goes to Simon Barget's 'No. 782', which takes us to a place where we can reflect on where the time went and what it all means. It has a lot of humour, and much that pretty much all of...

I've tried multiple times over the past few days to upload a story but I keep getting the incomprehensible error message below. I've sent pleading messages via the Contact Us section of the web page but to no avail! I would really like to upload this story but may have to abandon the effort if this goes on :-( Any ideas? PDOException : SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 1366 Incorrect string value: '\xF0\x9F\x98\x8A</...' for column 'body_value...

Many stories I read blend into one another. Some of them I can vaguely remember. They tend to be—by that measure—the best. I’m thinking here of George Mackay Brown, Celia , which is arguably the best short story in The Devil and the Giro , edited by Carl MacDougall. I met Carl a few times and he was great, but not great enough to get in the collection of the best of The Scottish Short Story . Bernard MacLaverty short story A Time To Dance is a...

$5K - 52 Weeks - 20 Penny Stocks One Winner!! Current Status ( -$3,365.46 ) Week - 32 Go Birds - Dallas SUCKS! ------------- (I say again) EAGLES!!! EAGLES!!! EAGLES!!!!!! --------------------------------- Very disappointing outcome last week as a winnable contest slipped through the fingers of an inexperienced coach. All will be forgiven with a quality win on Monday night against the hated, despised, despicable… Cowboys (Ssshhhkk.. Ptooo..!) In...

Happy Friday to all! As always, it's very hard to pick just one poem or story - there is always such a variety of wonderful writing to choose from. Poem of the Week, this week, is hoalarg1's Beyond Reflection. A beautiful poem, tragic too, it stays with you. A very skilfully written poem. You can read it here: https://www.abctales.com/story/hoalarg1/beyond-reflection But please have a read of these poems if you haven't already from Rhiannon,...