Blogs

Story and Poem of the Week and Inspiration Point

Posted by onemorething on Fri, 19 Nov 2021

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!

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...

Word puns

Posted by Caldwell on Wed, 20 Nov 2024

I bore myself with my obsessive compulsion to endlessly create word puns in the worst dad joke way that leaves me groaning before I have even shared them, and yet they keep coming. This morning for instance I was considering grandiose titles of books and with a few letter changes diminishing their power. Tern of the Sentry - An old guard officer who had tamed a sea bird, and together, they would defend the gates of the palace. The Gapes of Roth...

Chpt 5, solo without kids, changes things...

Posted by Shannan on Sun, 17 Nov 2024

Chapter Five – If you don’t have children, do you feel like it has impacted you emotionally &/ psychologically? If so, how? These are the stories of some respondents to a questionnaire around being single over the age of 40 as a woman. Donna, Not sure how to answer this one. I've been a preschool teacher most of my life, and hear all about the struggles with children, especially the financial implications. So, in my circumstances, I don't...

Samantha Harvey (2024) Orbital.

Posted by celticman on Sun, 17 Nov 2024

Samantha Harvey’s 136 pages novella, Orbital , won the Booker Prize 2024. It was whittled down from 150 books. I’d picked it up before her fifth novel sold millions and started reading it. But then put it down, largely unread. Hmmm, I thought, pop. David Bowie/Ziggy Stardust has already covered this, Starman , circa 1969 and the moon landing. ‘Hear I am floating in a tin can. Far above the sea. Planet Earth is blue and there’s nothing I can do...

Saltburn, by ABCTales Writer Drew Gummerson. Pre-Order your Copy!

Posted by Insertponceyfrenchnamehere on Sun, 17 Nov 2024

Very big congratulations to Drew Gummerson whose new book Saltburn, has a publishing date and can be pre-ordered on the link below. Here's what Drew says: Saltburn. I started Saltburn here on ABCTales in the first week of 2020. In February 2025 it’s going to be published. This is the story. I’m usually terrible at remembering dates. But in 2019 I was writing Seven Nights at the Flamingo Hotel, also posting it here, and I remember I wanted to...

Story and Poem of the Week, and Inspiration Point

Posted by Insertponceyfrenchnamehere on Fri, 15 Nov 2024

Story and Poem of the Week and Inspiration Point, posted by Di_Hard Thank you so much for all the wonderful writing this week! Two powerful pieces of prose have really stood out for me - Turlough combines being (surely) one of the world's best listeners with easygoing profundity in his travel writing. In this account of a visit to an antique shop in Serbia, he has given me a new understanding of that country's recent history : https://www...

Paul Johnson (2023) Follow the Money: How Much Does Britain Cost?

Posted by celticman on Thu, 14 Nov 2024

Politics in about power. Economics is about money. As Bill Clinton said in 1992/93: ‘It’s about the economy, stupid!’ Politics and money are indivisible. The cover has a picture of a top hat with a rabbit in it. Pulling a rabbit out of a hat? Get it? Our knowledge of our world is limited. Economics offers the illusion that we’re in control and smarter than we are. As Douglas Adams puts it: ‘The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity...

Carlo Revelli (2022) Heligoland. The Strange and Beautiful Story of Quantum Physics. Translated by Erica Segre and Simon Carnell.

Posted by celticman on Wed, 13 Nov 2024

I’d always hoped to use a sentence telling folk that Einstein and yours truly struggled with quantum physics. I’m reminded of Richard Feynman's remark -he had great comic timing, but was also a Nobel winning theoretical physicist - ‘nobody understands quanta’. I’m pretty good at writing books with no beginning, no middle and no end. Not so good at the actual maths. I’ve leaned on Carlo Revelli for this. Heligoland seems a good place to start...

Elif Shafak (2024) There are Rivers in the Sky.

Posted by celticman on Tue, 12 Nov 2024

Ruth Ozeki, on the book’s cover, describes, There are Rivers in the Sky as ‘A Masterpiece’. Elif Shafak’s novel was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize. She is a wonderful writer who imparts words of wisdom, and I’ll be reading more of her work. Shafak plays on words. She tells the reader ‘this is the work of a junior scribe’. Her theme is the interconnectedness of being. Water remembers. Water has consciousness. It is involved in the life...

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