Blogs

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...

Wolfhall: The Mirror and the Light (Wreckage), BBC 1, BBC iPlayer, screenplay by Peter Straughan, director Peter Kosminsky, based on Hillary Mantel’s novels of the same name.

Posted by celticman on Mon, 11 Nov 2024

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0024z1n/wolf-hall-the-mirror-and-the-light-1-wreckage Reading is what I do. Strange as it seems, I couldn’t get into Hilary Mantel’s trilogies about the Tudor dynasty. No surprise there. I’m no royalist. Henry VIII is distant to me as the current monarch, King Charles. I can’t bear to watch programmes such as Downton Abbey , which I refer to as ‘the parasites’. Yet, I binge-watched all six episodes of Wolf...

Chpt 4 Social Effects of Being Single

Posted by Shannan on Sun, 10 Nov 2024

Chapter Four – If you don’t have children, how has your single status affected you socially? Respondent 1: Donna, Except for the mentioned “episode”, I have not really been affected as I have single friends. (Response to Q3 was: Yes, I had a hysterectomy at 36, and got a bit emotional at a church camp when I saw all the kids with their families.) Respondent 2: Alyss, I find myself in the social circles of friends and their children’s birthday...

Compiled by Alice Riley & Emma Robdale (2024) Atypical Love.

Posted by celticman on Sat, 09 Nov 2024

Atypical Love is an anthology. Nine writers. Nine stories from Alice Riley, Echo Darling, Carole Kenrick, Miriam Lohr, Kevin Marman, Zara Relphman, Elinor Rowlands, Lennie Varvarides, Emma Robdale. What makes it different or atypical is the nine writers identify as neurodivergent. I’m not sure what that means. ‘We use the term neurodivergent + (ND+) to encompass neurodvelopemental variations such autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, but add the...

Jenni Fagin (2022) Hex.

Posted by celticman on Fri, 08 Nov 2024

Hex is a novella. To be read comfortably in one sitting. The premise is history that resonates. Jenni Fagin chose the North Berwick Witch trials. She has twin narrators in different centuries meeting in a cell three levels below the current city of Edinburgh on the 4 th December 1591. Gellis Duncan, a fifteen-year-old girl, is to be executed that morning for being a witch. Iris, via a séance, comes to offer comfort. Iris: ‘I was out in the Null...

Story and Poem of the Week and Inspiration Point

Posted by Insertponceyfrenchnamehere on Fri, 08 Nov 2024

Posted by airyfairy. Thank you to everyone for the lovely contributions to ABC this week! Story of the Week is Ewan's 'Message: Post Scriptum'. It's very funny, surreal, and of course totally unrelated to events in the real world. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did! Message : Post Scriptum | ABCtales Poem of the Week is Angus Folklore's stunning 'East Coast Scotland (Reflection). It combines history, myth, and wonderful observation of 'the sea...

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