Blogs

Story and Poem of the Week and Inspiration Point

Posted by insertponceyfrenchnamehere on Fri, 27 Mar 2026

Posted by onemorething: This Week's Story of the Week is Not of God by Alexander Moore - great writing, deeply unsettling, left me wanting to know more. https://www.abctales.com/story/alexander-moore/not-god This Week's Poem of the Week is Ralph's A Steady Carry On. Truth be told, I found it hard to choose between this and the other poem he posted this week - both powerful and beautifully written. You can read them here: https://www.abctales.com...

Daniel Goleman (1996) Emotional Intelligence. Why It Can Matter More Than IQ.

Posted by celticman on Thu, 26 Mar 2026

Daniel Goleman on Emotional Intelligence It’s been over two decades since the publication of Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence , which coincided with a spike in populism and hatred of others centred around the divisive figure of Donald J. Trump around a decade ago. Emotional Intelligence is empathy at work, which has never worked for Trump. Emotional self-awareness is a misnomer. At the memorial for conservative activist Charlie Kirk, whom...

Edna O’Brien (2017 [1960]) The Country Girls Trilogy.

Posted by celticman on Tue, 24 Mar 2026

Edna O’Brien claimed The Country Girls wrote itself. The best books often do. Indeed it’s a marvel and she is a marvellous writer. It’s easy to make the mistake of confusing her with Caithleen (Cait) Brady. The teenage protagonist growing into womanhood in rural, 1950s Tuamgraney, East Clare, and later Dublin, with a little help from her frenemy Baba Brennan. Write what you know. O’Brien/Cait knows the in and outs of every field and path through...

Dead Letters: "The Postmaster"

Posted by SoulFire77 on Tue, 24 Mar 2026

Filed by Fletcher Moody — Literary Correspondent I have, over the course of my career, failed to obtain interviews with some of the finest writers of the twentieth century. Hemingway refused to acknowledge I existed. Christie pretended to be someone else. But William Faulkner is the only author who ever lost my mail. I first wrote to Faulkner in the spring of 1923 at the University of Mississippi post office in Oxford, where he served as...

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Channel 4, Film 4, Rachel Joyce (adapting her own novel of the same name), Director: Hettie Macdonald.

Posted by celticman on Mon, 23 Mar 2026

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-unlikely-pilgrimage-of-harold-fry Jim Broadbent usually plays somebody’s dad. Here he’s Harold Fry. Solid. Dependable. Middle-class and retired. In one of those long-standing relationships. Husband and his wife Maureen (Penelope Wilton) have signed a grief-fire. Both are retired, standoffish and stuck in their middle-class home getting further and further from each other and fading into the wallpaper. A...

BBC Radio Wales, BBC Sounds, Secrets of the Salt Path.

Posted by celticman on Sat, 21 Mar 2026

BBC Radio Wales, BBC Sounds, Secrets of the Salt Path. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/p0n5p4w5 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0n7b8j7 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj32vx61x6lo https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c80p2pzgpmgo In films and television drama writers are one dimensional. Invariably, they are portrayed as some tortured soul that knocks off an international bestseller. It happens. Irvine Welsh is the poster boy...

Ben Creed (2021) City of Ghosts.

Posted by celticman on Fri, 20 Mar 2026

I’d bought this book for 20 pence. I’d read the first page and thought this iit pretty good, which was a mistake, because it’s great. I read the start of the book during a hospital appointment and finished 410 pages later. I liked the Social Realism. Ben Creed is actually two writers: Chris Rickaby and Barry Thompson. I’m not sure how that works, but it does. I’m going to read their follow up books set in the same milieu, which is the USSR, one...

Story and Poem of the Week, with Inspiration Point

Posted by insertponceyfrenchnamehere on Fri, 20 Mar 2026

Story and Poem of the Week, with Inspiration Point posted by di_hard Thank You so much for all your wonderful writing! First off, I cannot recommend highly enough that you check out Penny4athought's brilliant writing challenge, which has, already, inspired two FABULOUS entries, from Celticman and Luigi https://www.abctales.com/story/penny4athought/pennys-pass-story https://www.abctales.com/story/celticman/penny%E2%80%99s-pass-parcel%E2%... https...

Teeth Tales - The Results!

Posted by insertponceyfrenchnamehere on Tue, 17 Mar 2026

Posted by airyfairy Many, many thanks to all who entered the Teeth Tales competition, and to ScoZen for setting it and for letting me judge it! A very pleasurable task – it’s obviously a subject that both recalls funny situations and produces some wild flights of fancy. Thanks again to everyone! The Gold Medal goes to SoulFire77’s ‘Ratoncito Perez Is Not A Fairy’. As a Fairy, I will overlook the odd disparaging remark about my kind, because this...

New Writing Challenge Alert! Penny's Pass The Story

Posted by insertponceyfrenchnamehere on Mon, 16 Mar 2026

Penny’s Pass the Story I’m delighted to introduce our shiny new writing challenge. Our very own Penny4athought will donate $50 to ABCTales if we can finish her story in ten parts. How it works: Penny has posted the first part here and celticman has taken up the baton! https://www.abctales.com/story/penny4athought/pennys-pass-story To be next in line to do a part of the story, you will need to comment under the previous part and it'll be first...

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