Signatures II…

More from Stuart 😉

Stuart France

*

… The hollow of Dragon Hill affords a stunning vista of the Manger and the Giant’s Stairs.

From this vantage the sheer scale of the site starts to impinge upon my consciousness.

I concur with Wen that the laity would have congregated in the bowl or chalice of the hill where we now stand, shaped as it is it forms a natural amphitheatre and the scoured grass beneath our feet which according to tradition is the spot where St. George ‘loosed the Dragon’s blood’ is clearly as anything a missing piece off the horse on the hill opposite.

I am minded of the myth of Isis and Osiris and the search of the Goddess for her brother’s dismembered body…

The other disconcerting thing, from our point of view, is that the figure is not wholly visible from this elevation.

One would need to be a lot higher up or…

View original post 33 more words

Advertisements

Alibis in the Archives at Gladstone’s Library

Michael holds court (amongst others) at the Gladstone Library..

writerlywitterings

There are times when writing seems a doddle, and other times when all you want to do is sit down and write, but these other things get in the way …

I was very grateful to be invited to the annual Alibis in the Archive event, part of Gladfest at the Gladstone Library. For one thing, I had an increasing workload, and getting away from the desk for a weekend was appealing, but also because I had heard so much about the Gladstone Library, and this was an opportunity to have a look at it.

The journey up was rather more eventful than I would have liked. I checked with Google, and discovered that the trip would take at least four and a half hours. Hmm. Well, I thought I had better leave no later than noon, in that case. I took the dogs for a good six mile…

View original post 821 more words

I wonder?

Have you ever thought about the brain-dead who love to write one and two star reviews simply because the books they attack are beyond their level of intelligence? I wonder what they would make of the most famous work of fiction of them all – The Epic of Gilgamesh? Not only the most famous, but quite literally the first!

Chances are that like any other book not written specifically for the mentally challenged (of course I refer to those brought up on comics and computer games in the United States) that instead of reading it and expanding their minds, they will feel obliged to hate it on principle!

For the more intelligent among you, no matter where you live, here is the Wikipedia page on the subject to browse. Hopefully you will then want to read the Epic for yourselves as a pdf file.

PS – I’ve read it on several occasions during my lifetime. So, once having read the Epic in its entirety, the more astute among you will now know why I have used the Sumerian connection so many times in my own books…

Lord of the Deep – Workshop April 2019

Here’s an invite if ever there was one…

Sue Vincent's Daily Echo

The Silent Eye’s Spring workshop for 2019

*

The glories above were unamed.

The word for that world beneath, unuttered.

Source and time, unfettered, merged…

From the mingling waves-of-water came mud and slime.

Enshar and Kishar, twin halves of the globe, shone out of them.

*

THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH

The Oldest written story known to man…
What spiritual treasures lie hidden in this, five thousand-year old, Epic?
What can this ancient civilisation teach us about the questions of existence?
Join us on this quest of a life-time, next April, to find out…

*
‘Gilgamesh is among the greatest things that can ever happen to a person.’
– Rainer Maria Rilke.

Fully catered weekend package, including room, meals and workshop: £235 – £260

Click here to download the Booking Form

For further details or to reserve your place: rivingtide@gmail.com

Lord of the Deep: The quest for Immortality

26-28 April, 2019…

View original post 4 more words

Books of Hope

More from our man Justin in Malta. 😉

The Champagne Epicurean

After the death of Anthony Bourdain I’ve been hearing the word ‘suicide contagion’ being bandied around as if it were a Meme or a Gif. I don’t like the sound of it, no one does. Yet despite its shallow nature t does bring up some deep questions about human nature.

In the late 18th century the first case of copycat suicide plagued Europe. Known as ‘Werther Fever’ after the Goethe novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, in which the main character shoots himself with a pistol after being rejected by the woman he loved. The book was subsequently banned in several countries because of the suicide trend it had inspired in youths.

Human beings are a social animal. And this is a Pandora’s Box of a gift and a curse. It has enabled us to create skyscraping cities and reach the edges of our solar system – but it leaves…

View original post 1,292 more words

Writing in Different Genres!

Take a look at Janice’s books 😉

Jemsbooks

Writing in Different Genres

How important is it for authors to be able to write across genres?

First of all, not everyone cares to write in multi-genres. There are some who choose to write in one genre and for select readers. There is nothing wrong with writing in one or multi-genres. Who am I to tell anyone what is the right thing to do?

If you look at J K Rowling, for instance, she has excelled in writing for YA, PT, MG groups (young adult, preteen, middle-grade). She has also written for 18+. I am one of her biggest fans for the first group but I did not enjoy the 18+ mysteries as much as the Harry Potter series. That does not mean that her books didn’t sell well! On the contrary, once she became established as a successful author anything she wrote (even under a pen name) sold off…

View original post 442 more words

Something fishy in Preseli…

Stewart goes to Preseli 😉

Stuart France

‘Pentre-Ifan’

*

‘I know we’re not in England but it doesn’t even feel like we’re in Britain!”

We were in Nevern churchyard in Pembrokeshire, Wales, on one of the Silent Eye’s Workshops…

And a familiar feeling was creeping over us…

The church and the ‘Stone Cross’ too seemed vaguely reminiscent of ‘something’ and we began to entertain the notion that we might have inadvertantly stumbled upon one of the treasures we had recently come across in our reading.

We were not destined to get to the mound at the back of the church, unfortunately, but we were near enough.

The garden walls of the houses which huddled around the local church were packed with quartz crystal, huge chunks of the stuff in some cases…

*

‘I made a mental note to look at the relationship between Pentre Ifan, Nevern church and Carningli Peak… The three locations appeared to form an…

View original post 133 more words