Blogs

Story and Poem of the Week and Inspiration Point

It’s getting ever closer to winter and our Poem of the Week is a beautiful reminder of the season to come - Thoughts of an Oak Tree’s Spirit by skinner_jennifer. You can read it here: https://www.abctales.com/story/skinnerjennifer/thoughts-oak-trees-spirit Story of the Week is the very powerful and brilliantly written story, Wednesday Club, by celticman. You can read it here: https://www.abctales.com/story/celticman/wednesday-club This week’s...

ABCtales Critiquing Service - good reports!

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...

Nadia Dalbuono (2015) The American

Nadia Dalbuono (2015) The American The American is one of a series of books featuring Detective Leone Scamarcio. Daluono’s book was published before the election of the moron’s moron Trump, when the idea of destabilising society—with false-flag operations—and saving democracy by appointing a dictator belonged in Roman History and not current affairs. The CIA has been at work at home and abroad assassinating presidents and asset-stripping...

Story and Poem of the Week and Inspiration Point

Posted by airyfairy. Welcome to cold and rainy October! Fortunately there's been lots of splendid stuff on ABC to take our minds off it. Our Story of the Week is Caldwell's darkly funny 'Trump Reads Hansel and Gretel'. As one commenter observed, laughter in the dark is the most precious. Also, the author perfectly captures the tone of his narrator. It's a brilliant response to last week's Inspiration Point: Trump reads Hansel and Gretel |...

MY BEST 5 WRITERS SEPT '25

My current best Writers on AbcTales September 2025 5. mcscraic – Paul McCann 4. rhiannonw – Rhiannon 3. luigi_pagano – Luigi 2. valiswaverider – Rob Wheeldon 1. queen beatle – Morwenna A very optimistic newcomer, Sir Loin with three stories.

Rachel Wilson (2023) Losing Young. How to Grieve When Your Life is Just Beginning.

I read some books. Pick others up and start reading them. Think that’s interesting and realise I’ve read it before. I was going to say something about grief. But don’t really know what I’m talking about, which isn’t unusual. I couldn’t, for example, make a podcast about it, as Rachel Wilson did, The Grief Network. Or write this book. Here (more or less) is her mission statement. ‘When my mother died, I took it for granted a group tailored to...

Hannah Fry & Adam Rutherford (2021) Rutherford & Fry’s Complete Guide to Absolutely Everything.

I’m not sure who Adam Rutherford is. Professor Hannah Fry has presented a couple of quirky programmes for the BBC. She’s a model scientist and role model for those girls that think science is just for boys. Science matters they tell us. But is also, like everything else, biased. Their Complete Guide to Absolutely Everything is tongue-in-cheek. Because anyone and everyone knows that the complete guide to absolutely everything is on your phone...

Will the Church of the Future Be Completely Different to Today?

A new kind of church is coming. A church that can meet anywhere, homes, cafes, or even surfing together by the sea. A church that has no pastors or preachers. A church that is based on the first churches in the Bible with less emphasis on preaching and a greater sense of the miraculous. The first churches met in people's homes. Acts 2:46,47. They continued daily in the temple and breaking bread from house to house. The first Christians were all...

Isabella MacIver Thomas (2025) The First Lewis Woman in Athabasca

The story is in the title. A pamphlet printed in her native Gaelic and later in English. From some ‘sketchy notes’ Isabella MacIver Thomas travelled by the SS Clansman from Lewis to Canada, March 1880. Three years after her wedding to join her husband, (and first cousin) James Thomson. Then by the Canadian Pacific Railway out through to America—Detroit, Chicago, St. Paul, Minnesota and back again to join him—in Canada at Pembina in the province...

Pages