This anthology of Scottish writers, illustrated by their poetry or prose, was a TV series. I’d quite like to have seen it. I’m not sure how it would have worked, off the page, but no matter. The piece that stuck a real chord with me, was from someone I’d never heard of James Kennedy ‘The Highland Crofter’ (below). It was a lament for the Highland Clearances. Kennedy, a blacksmith and evicted crofter left Loch Tay and settled in Doune, Canada...

Leggings – the Morning Blast of Reality Radio. Thought you'd like to know that old greedy Mabel and her family have never given up! They have incredible stamina. They've been here keeping me awake for most of the week, getting intense by last night. They achieved their aim until about 3.15 today, when I stopped trying to sleep and got up for breakfast. It wasn't far off the magic hour of 4.00 when Grandfather and I would have started our day...

from my facebook of yesterday, call it frustration... " Rosalind Lee 12 hrs · Went off to Dereham today and saw Grand-daughter and her parents... while shopping in QD I saw out of the corner of my eye. A woman, dressed poorly in plain colors lingering over the main aisle... it was if she thought I couldn't see her yet I did. She looked almost fairy-like, grey, haggard skin, as tired as an old sin. As soon as she noticed that I could see her she...

When I read Alans' sequenced tales from boyhood up to leaving Glasgow for London and returning for Hogmanay .a line from the opening'Tinsel' hit hard. Wee Aleck is reading his Wonders Book of the World and 'nothing in the book was like anything he had seen'. I was 19 then and from Wembley Park. Ok no-one in my family was called Janet or John and I had a lot of aunts mostly living abroad who were all called Eva or Trude but the houses, the...

In memory of Julia.

I was shocked and saddened to receive the news of the passing of my friend, author and designer, Shannon Ware. It came through in the same manner as we met - on Facebook. One of her close friends and fellow writers contacted me to tell me Shannon had passed suddenly; some complications from the flu. She was 54. I once asked her for her address, to send a thank you for all the work she’d done, but Simi would only tell me that she lived near the...

I was aware of Carl MacDougall in an oblique way. I hadn’t read any of his work, but knew him to be the editor of one of the classic Scottish texts The Devil and the Giro: The Scottish Short Story . When I found out the Scottish Book Trust had approached him and he had agreed to be my mentor for my second novel I was chuffed. I googled him. This is his latest short-story collection, by the now defunct publishers Freight. I admit to a bias here...

Castle Pillock is quiet again. I am more blessed than I deserve to be by the fact that both my kids choose to come home for Christmas, and one of them now brings his other half. I am glad of heart to have had the Princess home from Uni for the entire vacation. I am delighted beyond measure that the four of us will be together in New York next Christmas. ​ (Did I mention we’re going to New York next Christmas? I may have done. Only fair to warn...

There's been some great pieces this week, particularly on the poetry front. I do hope more of our poets submit work to Cerasus Poetry - go on - you know you want too. Having said that, there's been some pretty stunning prose too. It's been very hard to to pick one but I've chosen Stephen Thom's gruesome but compelling two parter: https://www.abctales.com/story/stephen-thom/hydrotherapy-est-1894-1 So which poem to pick? So tricky, but I have to...

Let's hear it for the boys.