Blogs

Shulamith Firestone - the forgotten Feminist

Posted by Ray Schaufeld on Mon, 10 Oct 2022

Not long ago I got a ride in Kirkcaldy from my old pal Brian who I have known since uni days. Brian is now a senior paramedic. He harked backed to the old days where as a rookie cabbie he was learning 'the knowledge' on the busy streets of Ayr. In those days all the drivers gave lifts to hitchers. We used our savvy and went for it. Then we heard the horrible story of aileen wournos. Aileen was American she was a mad murdering bitch who took out...

Liz Truss is a belter.

Posted by celticman on Tue, 04 Oct 2022

The formless nought. That was my thinking when I heard Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng mentioning ‘the people,’ ‘the people’ he talked to, ‘the people’ he listened to, ‘the people’— Not my people. Not me. Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, friend of Queen Victoria, leader of the Conservative Party and twice Prime Minister but also a writer. Sybil (1845), for example, brought the two nations argument into dining rooms. The...

The Alien Buddha's House of Horrors featuring ABCTales' very own Marandina!

Posted by Insertponceyfrenchnamehere on Tue, 04 Oct 2022

In July Marandina wrote to me to say that he'd submitted two of his short stories (his first submissions!) and that they'd both been accepted. Today, I'm very pleased to announce that the first of them is available from The Alien Buddha. Here are a couple of Amazon links to buy if you're in the UK: https://tinyurl.com/yjyddtsn https://tinyurl.com/bdz5fxmu A very big congratulations to Marandina from all of us at ABCTales!

Story and Poem of the Month

Posted by Insertponceyfrenchnamehere on Mon, 03 Oct 2022

Our Story and Poem of the Month for September have very kindly been chosen by Drew Gummerson: Story and Poem of month Well it’s an honour to be choosing September’s Story and Poem of the month and what a hard choice that was. Once again I am amazed by the talent on the site and by the real variety of pieces submitted. But choices I have made. In these turbulent times the Story of the Month goes to Mark Burrow and his Small Town Insurrection...

Happiness is a Warm Keyboard=I Live to and Love to Write

Posted by Penny4athought on Sat, 01 Oct 2022

Where have all my imaginative thoughts gone to? I ask myself this as I try to conjure up words...to bring my story back to life...to continue where I’ve left it off and take it through the middle, and on to the ending. It's not often I’m lost for words; in fact, I usually carry too many around and toss them out of my thinking bag a bit over zealously…then I have to comb through the mess of words I’ve tossed about and kick out the useless, over...

Story and Poem of the Week and Inspiration Point

Posted by Insertponceyfrenchnamehere on Fri, 30 Sep 2022

Thanks to all who've posted such brilliant pieces this week. They've been a pleasure to read. Thank you also to the editors who keep everything going. We couldn't do it without you. Very quickly before I tell you about the picks of the week, I spoke to Tony Cook the other day who you'll be pleased to hear sounds back to his normal jolly self after his couple of mini strokes - anyway he asked if we'd think of having another London reading night (...

Jennette McCurdy (2022) I’m Glad My Mom Died.

Posted by celticman on Fri, 30 Sep 2022

The title struck me. I was glad my mum died too, but for different reasons. She had Alzheimer’s and her life wasn’t a life. The front cover has two quotes from famous people saying nice things about Jennette McCurdy’s autobiography. Jerrod Carmichael ‘Impressively funny’. I didn’t think so and I don’t know who that is. But before reading this book, which I did mostly in one sitting, leaving the last few chapters until the next day, I didn’t know...

Dick Lehr (2019) Nothing But The Truth.

Posted by celticman on Sat, 24 Sep 2022

The cover is a give-away: ‘A Father Behind Bars/A Daughter Determined to Free Him.’ Obviously I hadn’t been paying attention. I thought the narrator was a young black man. In the Author’s Note, Dick Lehr tells the reader the facts. ‘Nothing But the Truth has its origins in one of Boston’s most notorious murders—the shooting of twelve-year-old Tiffany Moore on a hot summer night in 1988. Tiffany was seated on a blue mailbox in Roxbury, swinging...

Story and Poem of the Week and Inspiration Point

Posted by Insertponceyfrenchnamehere on Fri, 23 Sep 2022

Posted by airyfairy on Fri, 23 Sep 2022 We're living in a strange old world at the moment, one way and another, and our Story of the Week reflects this perfectly. Jane Hyphen's 'It's the year...' is sharply funny and surreal, and yet somehow all too believable. If you happen to know an Orca, now might be the time to start getting on the right side of it. It's the year. . . | ABCtales Our Poem of the Week takes the autumn equinox as its theme...

Story and Poem of the Week and Inspiration Point

Posted by airyfairy on Fri, 23 Sep 2022

We're living in a strange old world at the moment, one way and another, and our Story of the Week reflects this perfectly. Jane Hyphen's 'It's the year...' is sharply funny and surreal, and yet somehow all too believable. If you happen to know an Orca, now might be the time to start getting on the right side of it. It's the year. . . | ABCtales Our Poem of the Week takes the autumn equinox as its theme. Jennifer Skinner's haunting 'Lucid Dreams...

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