Blogs

As today (1st December) marks the start of the official countdown to Christmas, I'm making my Christmas book (Kindle version), 'A Christmas Cracker' FREE for one day only. Apart from an alternative version of the Nativity and a wry take on those 'round robin' Christmas cards we all get, you'll also find some tales of my Christmas Past and the first ever Josiah and Archibald Christmas story. Grab it while you can, ho, ho, ho! https://getbook.at/...

As always, some wonderful writing on the site this week, a very welcome antidote to the winter weather. Story of the Week is Simon Barget's 'Us and Them'. There's a lot of snappy answers being offered to things going on in the world at the moment, but this piece offers thoughts on the heartbreaking complexity, nuances and stumbling humanity of it all. The deep sadness of the final paragraph stayed with me for a long time. Thanks to Simon for...

Write what you know. Megan Nolan writes about Waterford, where she was brought up. And London where she moved to. But it’s London 1990. Nolan would be a toddler. A child has been reported missing and later found dead. ‘Down below in Skyler Square the trouble was passing quickly from door to door, mothers telling mothers, not speaking aloud but somehow saying : baby gone, bad man, wild animal. ’ James Bulger 1993 is the classic case. But google...

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/utama/on-demand/75755-001 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utama Virgino (José Calcina) gets up early to tend his llamas in Altiplano, the arid high plateau of the Andes with its mixture of cold and heat. His wife Sisa (Luisa Quispe) takes two metal buckets and walks into town for water. But the annual monsoon didn’t come. It hasn’t rained for a year. The weather is sick, says one of the villagers. Virgino is...

As usual our members made this the most difficult task of the week. Story of the Week Mark Burrow’s WIP continues to convince with a strong narrative voice. I look forward to seeing it in print one day. The latest instalment is here I enjoyed Marandina’s short about a family tragedy. This, too, benefits from a strong and believable narrative voice. ‘Those We Leave Behind’ is here This week’s Story of the Week goes to a tale by one of the most...

bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0gnmkvz/scrublands-series-1-episode-1?seriesId=p0gnmk66 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0gnmlbt/scrublands-series-1-episo... https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0gnmm2g/scrublands-series-1-episo... https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0gnmmcc/scrublands-series-1-episo... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrublands_(novel) Scrublands begins with a bang. Literally. Father Byron Swift (Jay Ryan) after mass at St...