Every Friday, I try to publish another episode in my 'Dead Reckoning' series about my two Undertakers, Josiah and Archibald. There are always weeks when I'm not in the right frame of mind or events overtake me and make it difficult. And then, there's this week... I hope there will be a new episode, tomorrow, but right now, I'm not so sure.

Given the date, I thought it would be appropriate to revive this short story: https://www.abctales.com/story/philwhiteland/trick-or-treat

How to encapsulate that feeling? Like loss, bereavement, a tender crushing feeling that you want to push you to tears but they just won't come. Like seeing beauty and feeling a kind of ache knowing that even as you experience it and it's there right now, you know that it's dying, that it's lost, that even as you're feeling it you can't quite touch it. Somehow like trying to draw a perfect circle freehand and searing it, slicing it, so balanced,...

So since I have been back off my holiday, I have not really had time to write anything. Life has once again got in the way. I am working too hard again which are long days. I have had a car accident so car is not working right now. Got a temporary car but will need to pay that back to insurance when I can. It has been very stressful and I have not found the inspiration to write. I hope to write something soon but please bear with me while I try...

I put aside a few hours on Sunday to read Ootlin, Jenni Fagan’s memoir, straight through. ‘Ootlin’ in a simple sense means outsider. From the Scottish word oot. Fagin tells the reader in the prologue, there are stories about stories. The social work department in Scotland, adoption agencies, psychiatric hospitals and the police all had files on Fagin and her family. The in-spectre of mad, bad or sad stories went before her even as a baby. She...

Chapter Three – Have you ever had your heart broken? If so, how did you push through the brokenness, or are you still not in the ‘all clear’? These are the story-answers of some non-fictional respondents... Respondent 1: Donna, 44, Christian, who has 100% support from her family and has been single most of her life. Yes, I had a hysterectomy at 36, and got a bit emotional at a church camp when I saw all the kids with their families. Respondent 2...

I’ve a signed copy of Isobel Shirlaw’s, A Proper Mother , and twice heard her read the beginning of her debut novel. But as we know, hearing is not the same as listening. Meeting her on the page offers greater understanding. Story structure is current and counter-current, much like the watery desert that is the Black Sea. Is, was, and ever shall be. ‘ Before’ ‘August 1974. ’ ‘On the last day of their honeymoon they thought they’d check out Agios...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002326c/the-outfit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outfit_(2022_film) Most of the action takes place in one night inside a tailor’s shop, which doubles as a stage, or in this case, film set. Chicago, 1956. Leonard Burling (Mark Rylance) is an English cutter who runs a tailor shop in an area controlled by gangster Roy Boyle (Simon Russell Beale). Burling makes made-to-measure suits for Boyle and the well-...

Ask yourself a simple question. Would you rather be blind or deaf? We can’t really imagine it. But for most of us, the answer, I’d guess, would be easy. I’d much rather be deaf. I’ve only heard one guy say he’d rather be blind. He loved music so much the answer was obvious to him, too. Stuart Braithwaite is the lead singer of Mogwai. The band took their name from creatures in Gremlins but in China also means ‘demon’ (I think because I never...

Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s debut novel Fleishman is in Trouble was an international bestseller. Long Island Compromise is her second novel. Awards and television series inevitably to follow. Grab your reader with the first line. It’s the kind of cliché right up there with the known knowns and the unknown knowns. Akner knows her readers will want something smart, bookish and literary, perhaps left-leaning. Aware of the paradox of what you’d need to...