The Wife of Bath

Bella Stefie – got to love her xx

e-Tinkerbell

In the past, from Aristotle onwards, there was the common creed that God had structured all matters of life in a hierarchical way, a precise work of art where everything had their exact place. This Great Chain of Being, as it was called, in the Middle Age had developed more or less like this: God was at the top of the ladder and right under him there were the angels, which like him are entirely spirit and immutable. Human beings, who consist of both spirit and matter, were beneath them. Animals, plants, minerals followed in this order.

Of course, each group was organized according to a sub-hierarchical structure, as nothing had be left to chance. For what concerns human beings, men came first. That was an uncontroverted law of God. Hence, according to this view women were believed to be naturally inferior. Just like God is above men, men are…

View original post 660 more words

A Delicate Subject

Ileni

I’m now at the stage in my WIP where love is in the air for Ileni (pictured above on my new WIP’s cover). After all she’s been through, it’s only taken her five million years to find and experience it for herself. I can tell you that both her and the story’s leading character – Peter, are becoming inseparable. In past books of mine I’ve dealt exclusively with the inevitable physical outcome of sexual attraction. Not this time. 

I know from personal experience that to find true love is an extremely precious thing. It only happened once in my lifetime, lasting eighteen months before her untimely death parted us, fifty-five years ago. At my age, sadly I doubt I’ll ever experience it again. So what I have in mind regarding Elini and Peter will be heavily influenced by my own experience back in the middle nineteen-sixties…

It’s a challenge spelling out a love affair, long before sex rears its often ugly head. But I’m up for it. Currently I’m exploring how she reacts towards Peter, and in turn how he feels about her. By and large the males in the story attitudes towards her is highly predictable. Slaves to their animal instincts, all they see is a beautiful young woman and immediately want to have their way with her. There are three exceptions to my generalization, one of them being Peter, the second his friend, the Medii historian – Alfonso. The third is Franco, a life long woman hater. More about how she deals with him later, after I’ve clearly established Ileni and Peter’s relationship in Chapter Ten.

More later…

Finality

How many people, whether male or female, have experienced this horrible situation?

countingducks

“You must leave in the morning but we can say goodbye tonight” was my wife’s way of closing the door on our marriage: her voice was flat and calm: she was always calm. She had been my safe space, haven and refuge since we were ten years old but I suffered from a sense of adventure which found me one afternoon in the arms of another woman:  we might call her a diversion.

Filled with remorse I told my wife two days later after she asked me “Where has Derek gone?” that being my name. Her face hardly moved but her motions developed a closure about them once I told her, so we had the last meal, the last cup of tea, the last cuddle and final goodbye. She asked for no explanation, conduct was what it was, she felt, and mine no longer merited cherishing.

That night we slept…

View original post 160 more words

A sign of the times…

Nothing ever changes…

Have We Had Help?

My old friend Glob reading his tales

The £0.99p offer on my fantasy anthology Globular Van Der Graff’s Goblin Tales ended at midnight Wednesday. The number of books sold was just seven. Four of them were bought in America for the full price, where the offer was never in place.

What does this say about the sale of books today? Every published writer knows that it makes no difference how successful we may have been in the past regarding book sales. These days every single one of us is in the same boat. The public are simply not reading anything longer than a Tweet! Believe me when I tell you that low numbers of books bought has unfortunately become the norm.

I’ll give it another month and try the £0.99p deal again with one more of my books. In the meantime I look forward to seeing how many of the…

View original post 92 more words

A New Release

Help my friend and fellow writer Adele Marie Park – buy her book!

firefly465

This release has been a long time coming. I don’t remember what year I started to write Wolf Manor but it has gone through many re-writes since.

I won a writing competition run by Dan Alatorre and the prize was a chance to get one of your novels published by a reputable company, I won’t put name here. However they felt they couldn’t publish Wolf Manor at that time.

I’m sure all of you writers know what rejection feels like, it hurts like a thousand needles piercing your eyeballs. Yeuck. I kept going, re-writing and tweeking.

Enter wonderful faery Godmother, Shehanne Moore of Black Wolf Publishing.

https://www.facebook.com/BlackWolfPublishing/

Shehanne picked up Wolf Manor and we began the process of getting the novel ready and worthy of publishing. I learned so much, from how to keep one POV to changing the sentence structure to make it more exciting. I can not thank…

View original post 52 more words

Morweth’s Speech

Milords, ladies and gentlemen, pray silence for the wizard Morweth!

Have We Had Help?

In every fantasy story there is always good and evil. In my anthology Globular Van der Graff’s Goblin Tales, one of the good guys is the ancient white wizard Morweth. To give you a flavour of him, here is a speech he delivers right at the beginning of part two of ‘Beware on Crellen’s Mine’.

~~~

Morweth ended a heated argument over what they would do with the black wizard Crellen when they finally caught up with him. He knew only too well that this was the time for wisdom, magic and cunning not simple blind angry revenge. “No, no, no, Crellen must not die! Goblindom exists because it is in total equilibrium, unlike the world beyond our magic border. Life and death, growth and decay, summer and winter, and in magic’s case, good and evil, all contribute to keeping us hidden from prying eyes. Should any of these elements…

View original post 175 more words

A word of nostalgia (ennui)

More from my friend Aladin 😉

lampmagician

http://Susun Weed

Have you ever had a day in which you have no idea? I have it today! It is like that there is all emptiness and nothing moves in the mind. It might because of sleepless nights or, better to say poorly sleep. I have this often. I sleep for about four hours but am suddenly awake, and It takes about one or two hours until I fall asleep again. And in this period, my sleep is very light and shallow.

Last night, I had the same problem and, in the early morning, in my light sleep, I had a dream, and I thought I’d just write it down.; I dreamed of a man who felt lonely because he had found himself as a stranger in this world. As I might say, he convinced that the people around him would not understand his thoughts and feelings. Of course, it…

View original post 314 more words

My WIP – The Forgotten People

The Citadel above Victoria on Gozo

So far I’ve outlined nine chapters. Until now the story has been steadily building towards something which you the readers will have to wonder about, until I’ve published it, and you’ve read it. Sorry but there it is. If you’ve been hoping that I would give you hints via spoilers, you don’t know me, or the way I write a story! At this moment in time I am very close to 8,000 words.

Once I’ve outlined a chapter I return to the beginning of any story I write to ‘fine tune’ whats already written as part of my method of constant editing. I will tell you that my team of characters are still on Gozo, but thats all at the moment regarding the story.

I have ideas constantly entering my ‘little grey cells’ as Hercule Poirot refers to our minds. Consequently my sleep pattern is shot to pieces. Par for the course for any serious writer! More often than not when I’m in my ‘full writing mode’ as I am at the moment, that means I wake anywhere between eleven pm and midnight to write them down. Once they’re on the screen of this laptop I can then begin to expand on them, or change them until I’m satisfied that they slot into place in the storyline.

I know one thing for certain – this WIP once published will be it for 2021. One book a year is enough for this old man to contend with. By the way – in sixteen days from now I will have reached my seventy-third birthday (8th March).

 

More later…

A Writer’s Voice – The Shepherd’s Crown

Heres something for us all to read from our Jo

Jo Robinson

Many apologies for my extended absence this time. I still don’t want to talk about it though. Life happens all the time, to everyone, and whining doesn’t do much for me most of the time. Onward and forward is my preferred go-to. My other go-to is reading. I’ve read some fabulous books these past months, which I will post reviews for later-ish, as well as doing a big comment catch up, but for now I’m thinking about how unique us scribblers are.

Real readers are a discerning bunch. They’re just as much of a tribe as writers are, and it’s not easy to pull the wool over their eyes. They know what their favourite authors sound like. They know what the worlds in their favourite books look and feel like. They recognise the voices coming off the pages, and a lot of the time, if those voices don’t seem quite…

View original post 554 more words

Depression – my lifelong companion

It’s always lurking in the background, waiting to strike me down…

Have We Had Help?

We all have acquaintances. A mere handful of them can maybe be considered as friends. As for the rest they are what I refer to as ‘fair-weather’ friends, people who while professing genuine friendship towards you, cannot be relied on to sense that all you really need is a shoulder to cry on and a real hug from time to time, two of the things a life long depressive like myself constantly craves, together with actually sitting down talking to people, face to face.

Apart from a brief eighteen month period back in the middle sixties, I have always lived alone. The fact that my mother and father never showed any recognisable sign of love towards each other or me come to that, probably has a lot to do with it.

Not once while they were alive did I ever see them so much as hold hands. Nor kiss or…

View original post 144 more words