The Year of Magical Thinking has been an international bestseller, been reprinted over twenty times and is perhaps the best-known of her books. The subject she specialises in is death, which we’re all familiar with, but nobody seems to want to talk or write about it. In Duncan Williamson’s short story Death in a Nut , Jack (no relation) lived with his mother in a cottage by the shoreside (Williamson was born in a tent on the shores of Loch Fyne...

We Are One Never have you ever, been an unknown: Your very presence arouses those animalistic instincts . Ravish and torn, in a demoralizing taste clocked in Surveillance storm chaser: always under its radar. Uniquely as you are; so near yet so far: could the Bleeding dry on an open canvas, as stars fall from The sky. Even if an outcast by choice or society Force, chosen to go it alone you’re never on your own. For who we are, you are, they are...

Amy Cuddy (2016) Presence Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges. I usually give books like Amy Cuddy’s Presence short-shrift. Fake it till you make it seems to me like pebbledash. Yet it works and she shows her workings. How and why it works. She traces her ideas back to polymath William James, who helped to develop psychology as a subject of study outside philosophy, or perhaps inside? ‘Begin to be now what you will be hereafter...

John Vaillant moves from the taiga of The Tiger to ‘thinking like a fire’ in the boreal forests surrounding Fort McMurray (Fort Money) in Alberta, Canada and the evacuation of its almost 100 000 residents in May, 2016. His argument is that these fires can no longer be considered the exception to the rule, but the rule itself in an Anthropocene warming world we have created by our increasing use of fossil fuels which destroys our planet. A...

[ELEMENT OF DISTORTION] Heed, light separating from light, giving form to darkness ever co-exiting. It was once a rumbling throughout the Heavenlies. Arch-angles displays a uproar: Battle for primacy, warlords usurp estate, dominion causing an unbalance overflow. Slithering faceless. serpent, night stalkers, day walkers, midday talkers: millenniums subliminal messages, archon, aliens, Ufo; contending within a battle galactic celestial orbiting...

For more years than I care to remember, I've been using the same publicity photo for all my written work, wherever it appears. However, there comes a time when you have to accept that you're in a 'reverse Dorian Gray' situation, whereby you are getting increasingly decrepit but your photo remains the same! Don't get me wrong, I'm very fond of my publicity photo. It was taken on or around the time of my 50th birthday. We had some unused credit...

Watch Women Talking | Prime Video (amazon.co.uk) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_Talking_(film) ‘Women Talking’ is a deceptively simple title. Margaret Attwood suggested comparisons with A Handmaid’s Tale. The near-future is already here. Events that occurred between 2005 and 2009 in a remote Mennonite colony in Bolivia inspired the novel. In their close-knit religious community, it was discovered that eight men had been raping the women...

Billy Moore, a working-class Liverpudlian, was born into poverty in 1973. He doted on his mum and hated his drunken dad for beating his mum, when he was a child. He too was bullied, but learned to use his fists, gave out some beatings. Joined the group of schoolboy bullies. Matriculated in theft and drug taking and graduated to Liverpool’s Young Offenders, were ironically, he ended up a lifetime later. There are lots of books out there about...

Writers are told, never start with the weather. Paul Lynch starts with the weather in his debut novel, Red Sky in the Morning. Prophet Song, Lynch’s latest award-winning novel, starts with the night weather and a knocking on the door. ‘The night has come and she has not heard the knocking, standing at the window, looking out at the garden. How the dark gathers without sound the cherry trees. It gathers the last of the leaves and the leaves do...

If you haven't been following Turlough's wonderful account of his travels through Iran, you have been missing something really special. This series has been vivid, funny, thoughtful and, quite simply, a wonderful read. The final part, 'Cherries and Dahlia Petals, is our Story of the Week: Cherries and Dahlia Petals | ABCtales Poem of the Week was really tricky. There's been some beautiful and hopeful pieces about the coming of spring, and some...