Front row, left to right: Joanna McIlhatton, Mary Cary, Peter Hurd, Adele Cosgrove-Bray, Peter Caton,(audience member), and Tim Hulme. In the second row, between Mary and Peter Hurd, you can just about see Carol Falaki and Dave Hughes. Here's me, reading Seagull Inn from the Ruins Terra anthology

Just back from the village, and what did I see when I walked up my garden path to my front door? My best camelia lying crushed on the floor, its main stem snapped. Five years to grow it; one second for some clumsy idiot to ruin it. Yes, the scaffolders will be receiving a flea in their ear from me in the morning.... I didn't have to grant them permission to put the end poles of their scaffold on our side of the hedge. The least they could do is respect our property. Anyway, I've just taken photographs of the roof with the scaffolding in the frame, so if they leave any broken tiles behind I have visual evidence that our roof was fine before they walked over it. Our immediate neighbours are having their roof done. Emily nearly climbed out of the open front-room window in order to scrounge cuddles off the builder who was in our garden whilst erecting scaffolding. I've already had to warn one of them to pay attention to our clear Beware of the Dog! signs. He'd pus

1,626 words this morning - and chapter one of the total re-write of Bethany Rose is now underway. The draft I'm working from was originally titled Cry for Innocence but this doesn’t fit in with the theme of my two other novel titles so I simply changed its name to that of the main character, as with the others. The old draft is only 50,000 words long, so I need to double that. I have a solid plot in mind, to amend this. Also, there are many character and plot details which need to be changed so that everything blends with the mythos I’ve developed since penning the first draft of Cry…. For those who are now totally confused, I’ll explain that I wrote Cry… first, followed by Tamsin then Rowan . They can all be read in any order, so this won’t matter in the slightest. However, I’m not happy with Cry… at all; and so it’s about to be totally re-written with a whole extra plotline in the second half, and big modifications in the first. In a way, it might be easier just to start

Saturday saw me in Manchester, when I met with two friends. When burgers were suggested for lunch I hesitated. Regular readers of my scribblings will know I avoid junk food like the plague. However, my two friends hold similar leanings regards health and aesthetics and they said this restaurant made its own burgers from 100% Aberdeen Angus beef. We just made it before a monsoon drenched the city! http://thatsfoodanddrink.blogspot.com/2007/07/gourmet-burger-kitchen-opens-in.html  offers a fair description of GBK. So, yes, if you’re in Manchester and are feeling hungry, I can recommend the place – pleasant surroundings, reasonably priced and excellent food. The milk shakes were yummy, too. Sunday saw Emily waiting for Cat to arrive. That puppy explodes into happy yipping-yapping when my niece’s arrival makes the front gate squeak. The poor girl can hardly get through the door for our two dogs excitedly greeting her. She was wearing black jeans. Oh dear. When will she learn? Black

Information taken from Amazon, just now! Barren Worlds Amazon.com Sales Rank: #59,895 in Books Publication Date: July 1, 2008 Ruins Metropolis Amazon.com Sales Rank: #59,393 in Books Publication Date: May 19, 2008 Ooow, that is goooood! Congratulations to the publisher (Hadley Rille Books) and my fellow contributors to these two anthologies. At Riverside Writers’ last meeting, the subject of constructive criticism was raised. Some of the members felt that they would like more feedback from the group after readings of work. Previously, Tim and I had backed away from giving too much crit as we’re only too aware that while people say they want criticism, most just want to hear “good” things. So we’ve tended to praise the good bits and stay silent over the not-so-good. Silence can say a lot. However, this can also lead to feedback being of little productive use. Before the group had its current resurgence of membership, some ex-members had been more critical – but while t

The phrase, “It’s a simple job; it’ll only take a minute” must surely ring alarm bells with any householder. Perhaps the phrase has been cursed by some long-forgotten sorcerer with a grudge against DIY. Employ this phrase, and you are bound to invoke some form of calamity. We decided to swap the downstairs furniture around, which also involved moving the TV from one corner to another. It all sounded so simple. However, in doing so we managed to “zap” the TV and wipe its memory. Could we retune it? No! We could get Sky 3 perfectly, but all other stations were half-hidden behind a dense snow-storm effect. When we originally bought this TV, we tried to tune it in for an entire weekend. In the interests of P&Q (Peace and Quiet), I called out a local technician, a young guy who’s made a business from setting up other people’s electronic stuff – TVs, hi-fi, digi boxes, DVDs etc. So I called him again and, as before, he had everything running smoothly in ten minutes flat. He also up