ABCtales Critiquing Service - good reports!

Posted by tcook on Mon, 26 Mar 2012

Over the years many of you have asked for a critiquing service and it has taken a long time to find (a) someone good enough to do it well and (b) someone who will charge what we regard as a reasonable fee. Finally, we've done it! Lorraine Mace is a freelance writer, columnist and tutor for the Writers Bureau. Winner of the Petra Kenney International Poetry Competition (comic verse category), Lorraine's fiction, features and humour have appeared...

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Discuss writing from ABCtales.com

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Old Git on the Northern Line, Wednesday evening

Posted by Ivan the OK-ish on Thu, 27 Nov 2025

I’m having a break from fiction writing. Maybe these random thoughts will serve as a substitute until – if - inspiration should return. Just tell me to stop, if I should …. There’s a column in the MetroTalk page of the Metro, the free newspaper given away on tubes and trains. It doesn’t have an actual headline, but it could I suppose be called ‘Brief Encounter’ or, more prosaically, the Letch Corner. Here are some typical entries from a few...

Letters to the Earth (2019) Introduced by Emma Thompson and illustrated by Jackie Morris.

Posted by celticman on Wed, 26 Nov 2025

‘Drill baby drill’. That’s been the response of the moron’s moron Trump and his followers. It makes meetings of heads of states COP 25, COP 26…meaningless. Short-term thinking. Extinction Rebellion has lost its lustre. All around the world, eco activists have been reclassified as terrorists. Chief Seattle, ‘The Earth is our mother. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself’...

The Story Behind The Payout Game - The Man from Malta and combing through the ashes

Posted by Robert Craven on Tue, 25 Nov 2025

This book almost didn’t happen. I could put it down to writer’s block or in the words of John Lennon: ‘Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans’ , but by March this year, the book was stalled. Frozen. Part of the problem I realised was the journals and notebooks were becoming an albatross around my neck. Instead of them being a map or a guide, they became a convenient go-to crutch. I had two notebooks filled with notes,...

What Does God Think of Us?

Posted by mallisle on Tue, 25 Nov 2025

The Bible tells us not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought to. Romans 12:3-8. There is nothing we can do to impress God. Anything good that we have in ourselves has come from him. If I am a good writer or a good preacher I must realise that God has given me those abilities. I may say that writing Christian articles on websites and preaching is my ministry but I must remember that all Christians have a ministry. The Bible says that we...

What washes up in Roscarrig… doesn’t stay buried / The Payout Game

Posted by Robert Craven on Sat, 22 Nov 2025

Release date 01.24.26 The Payout Game is an Irish crime thriller featuring Garda Inspector P.J. Crowe — a flawed but dediicated detective living in the small coastal town of Roscarrig that keeps giving him big-city problems. Crowe is hoping for a quiet Christmas in Roscarrig, but during a charity regatta, a body washes up on the rocks beneath a lighthouse — a man known across Ireland: a celebrity bookmaker with deep connections to high-stakes...

Kathy Burke (2025) A Mind of My Own

Posted by celticman on Fri, 21 Nov 2025

Most of us know who Kathy Burke is. She’s kinda famous. Famous enough to have a major publisher publish her autobiography, A Mind of My Own . I like her because she always comes across as that rarest of breeds, a working-class actress made good. Working-class actor if we’re being politically correct. I loved her retort to Helena Bonham Carter when she opined that there weren’t enough roles for her because she was too pretty. Let me remind you...

Story and Poem of the Week and Inspiration Point

Posted by insertponceyfrenchnamehere on Fri, 21 Nov 2025

Thank you all so much for your wonderful contributions to our site this week. My choices are as follows: Poem of the Week is Jane Hyphen's brilliant 'The World is Closed' which is particularly apt for this time of the year: https://www.abctales.com/story/jane-hyphen/world-closed Story of the Week goes to Sean McNulty for today's part from his work in progress 'The Discharge'. It reads perfectly well as a stand alone and has one of the best and...

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