…manners, respect, politeness… yes, they DO exist aplenty…

More from the irascible MacSporran MacSporran in the Arabian Peninsular. 😉

Seumas Gallacher

…this ol’ Scots Jurassic scribbler is as susceptible as the next person to knee-jerk reactions to headline nonsense on the news channels, even though I watch SKYNews, coz it’s so bad it’s good, if yeez get my drift… the incendiary commentary that spews so facilely from ‘experts’ is fashioned in such a manner as to elicit emotive response from a gullible public (of which I am certainly one from time to time)… if I were dumb enuff to think that the whole WURLD is represented by the ‘truths’ disgorging from (alas) almost any of the major news disseminators, I would be a truly sorry man… happily, most of the time, I’m able to get my neck and mind above the parapet of the gutter, and to observe real people around me…

…and therein lies the proper balance… antidote to the mud-slinging politicians and self-serving spouters, antidote to the boorish…

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As the Writer of the Story, Does it Honestly Grab You?

Something for you budding writers to consider…

Have We Had Help?

If it doesn’t, move on to the next one…

How many stories have you written during your lifetime – tens, hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands? Over the past nineteen years I’ve written slightly over four thousand. Or to put it another way, thats over four thousand ideas for potential novels that I have come up with.

Each time I got an idea, I started typing like mad to get it down for posterity, even though in the vast majority of cases, I’m the only one who will ever read them. Because of my self imposed standards, out of that number I considered that only six were worthy of expansion into a novel, novella, and in one case, an anthology. As for the rest of them – the phrase ‘been there, done that’ pretty much covers them. The majority of those ideas seemed good at the time (usually at three or…

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New life from old…

Spring according to Ani’s human 😉 xx

Sue Vincent's Daily Echo

So much has happened over the past few days that I am at a loss where to begin. It started with the drive north through a land sprung to life and colour. A day’s warmth and winter had been banished. Trees, whose skeletal branches had laced the iron clouds, were unfurling their first leaves.

Every garden had daffodils, buds with hints of colour and bushes barely restraining themselves from  bursting into bloom. Wildflowers dotted the hedgerows and grassy banks, revealing themselves in beauty… even the bluebells were beginning to open…. and the fields were starting to turn, dusted with gold.

I stopped, close to my destination, for a walk in the woods to stretch my legs after the long drive. You could feel the awakening of the earth… see the beauty in a system that, from the decay of old summers, grows leaves to shade small and fragile creatures from…

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Extravagant Talks|خرافات

More from Laleh 😉

A Voice from Iran

 

There was a very kind old lady helping my mother during our childhood by babysitting us.

She was very skinny with a long face full of deep wrinkles. You could easily get a sense that she had an extremely painful life.

We loved her and respected her a lot. My mother was very kind and generous to her as much as she possibly could. We called her “Nane Ali.”

She had her own beliefs. For instance, she never liked to take a picture or be in family photos. We really wanted to have a photo to remember her for ever but she always refused.

Years passed and we grew up. One day me and my sister decided to pay a visit to Nane Ali.

Nane Ali got very excited and hugged us. We talked about all her kindness and how honored we were to have her growing up, and…

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We Were Supposed To Be Going Home

From Ralph – Enjoy 😉

Step In To My View

The spacefaring vessel Abatyse launched in late August, 2217, one of a fleet of twenty precious seedships. Her precious cargo- genetic material for every crucial plant and animal from Earth, the technology to clone and foster their growth, and… me. The AI on board guided the ship out of the solar system as I slept, unfurling the solar sails, and keeping watch over its wards as the Abatyse and its counterparts began their long one-way journey towards Kepler-296f.

The AI maneuvered the Abatyse through meteoric minefields and around the gravitational pull of dying stars, protecting its contents at all costs. It used boosters and bolstered radiation shields when situations called for it. At irregular intervals the ship would pull in to orbit around a star, furling its sails and recharging its batteries for the next long haul across the cosmos. Always, it would continue on undaunted by tribulation or distance…

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…aren’t top Literary Agents and Big Five Publishers imaginary species?…

It’s that man again. 😉

Seumas Gallacher

…this ol’ Scots Jurassic scribbler has long since realized that any complaining or whining from me, about anything, seldom achieves positive results… and that fact pertains especially to my publishing aspirations… over the past ten years, I’ve experienced the sum’time exhilarating, sum’time depressing, pendulum familiar to many authors… when my first wee literary baby came hot onto Auntie Amazon Kindle, I savoured the high that came with a successful first book sales volume… that tome reached #3 on Amazon (all titles) at the time… subsequent titles were equally well received… from a novice self-publisher, I graduated into having an excellent, small, hybrid publisher, but amicably parted company with them after a year, as the sales were not to my expectations, dropping to levels well below those that my own marketing and promotional activities generated… in between then and now, I’ve also dabbled with a freelance agent, but equally friendly severance…

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The Curse of Time Book Blitz: Q&A+Review

From the Hufflepuffnerdette 😉

Hello my little munchkins. Sorry I haven’t been that active. I have been super busy this week and this is literally the only free time I have had all week to do this so I hope you enjoy it and don’t forget to read the interview and enter the giveaway.

I hope you are all doing well.

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About Marjorie Mallon:

I am a debut author who has been blogging for three years at my lovely blog home Kyrosmagica: https://mjmallon.com. My interests include writing, photography, poetry, and alternative therapies. I write Fantasy YA, middle grade fiction and micro poetry – haiku and Tanka. I love to read and have written over 100 reviews: https://mjmallon.com/2015/09/28/a-z-of-my-book-reviews/
My alter ego is MJ – Mary Jane from Spiderman. I love superheroes! I was born on the 17th of November in Lion City: Singapore, (a passionate Scorpio, with the Chinese Zodiac sign a lucky rabbit,) second…

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The Vandal

Derek makes a good point

 

Why Reinvent the Wheel

Posted this a while back. Let’s see if it is greeted with apathy once again!

Have We Had Help?

Take a long hard look at the Orion space vehicle. Seem familiar to you? It should. Think back to when the Apollo programme to send men to the moon happened.

Since the Space Shuttle was retired due to the shortsightedness of those who hold the purse strings in America, in effect their space program virtually ground to a halt. Now NASA has decided to readopt the old nineteen sixties Apollo technology, minus the colossal Saturn Five rocket. Why? What’s the point of taking such a retrograde step, when with a little imagination, they already have the basis for what they are proposing in an already proven space vehicle – the Space Shuttle. All it needs is to be modified for the long flight to Mars.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-12-03/why-nasas-orion-spacecraft-looks-so-familiar

Let’s face it, America can not do it alone. If it is to be achieved then it must become a combined operation, encompassing the…

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Sally’s Cafe and Bookstore – Author Update – Jack Eason, Sacha de Black and K.D. Dowdall.

Sally is as good as her word when it comes to spreading reviews…