Blogs

Our Story and Poem of the Month for May, very kindly chosen by RJNewlyn:

A very warm welcome to our new members, and to those who've returned after a while - it's always nice to see familiar names.

I thought myself pretty smart, when I was wee, writing my name and street and town and county (Scotland) and Europe and World and Universe. I was, of course, centre of the Jack O’Donnellian world. Just imagine if you were American President? A narcissistic psychopath that couldn’t imagine he wasn’t the centre of the world. His blot on the map irreversible. We don’t need a Galileo to show the Trumpicentric view of the universe is as crazy as it...

Filed by Fletcher Moody — Literary Correspondent In the spring of 1936, I drove down to Pacific Grove, California, to interview a writer named John Steinbeck, who had published a novel called Tortilla Flat the year before and was beginning to be discussed in the kind of rooms where writers are discussed before they are read. I had written ahead. He had agreed, with the reluctance of a man who would rather be doing almost anything else, to give...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zennor_in_Darkness Helen Dunmore (1993) Zennor in Darkness won the 1994 McKitterick Prize which is awarded for debut novels for writers over 40. Dunmore is a great example of why poets often make the best prose writers. Her protagonists are brought alive by her attention to detail. Big historical events such as the First World War in 1917 are being fought somewhere else but also in the heart. Dunmore captures girls...

How did the French Revolution effect property prices in Bristol? Helen Dunmore likes to capture lost voices. Those that do not make it into history books. Lives lived and largely forgotten. The protagonist fits a familiar pattern. Plucky female. In this case, it’s Lizzie Fawkes. Her mother is a Radical, Julia Elizabeth Fawkes. She is a writer of pamphlets that champion causes such as women’s independence, the overthrow of a system that favours...

The Bible says there will be terrible times in the last days before Jesus returns. People will be selfish, lovers of money, arrogant, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God and children will be disobedient to their parents. 2Timothy 3:1-5. Many people feel that there has been a moral decline in our society during our lifetime. Fifty years ago children didn't attack teachers. Fifty years ago drugs were something that happened in a small sub...

https://youtube.com/shorts/nGzQrUvjlqM?si=vq93vVif0oGLyuvR I've been concentrationg over the past five years writing Irish crime thrillers. That said, I’ve occasionally stepped outside that world. To date, I’ve contributed to just a handful of anthologies—but one in particular stands out: Cogs in Time , a steampunk collection created by Catherine Stovall with a striking cover designed by Rue Volley, (both accomplished writers in their own right...

Edna O’Brien’s The Light of Evening follows a familiar mother-daughter path. Dilly is dying in a Dublin hospital. Her daughter, Elenaora, has inherited her beautiful hair, which features in every novel. A writer whose debut novel scandalized her Irish neighbours, and an ultra-Catholic nation because it showed women’s desire from the inside. She has fled to London and married an older man (who already had a wife and child). Her dad is a brute...