The contents are: Peter Hurd: The Literary Chicken; Carbon Footprints; A Matter of Principle. Tim Hulme: The Sugar Loaf; The Mckechnie Plunger; One More Day. Carol Falaki: Equal Footing; I Am; Eran . Peter Caton: The 437; Grandads; Zi and The Boy. Adele Cosgrove-Bray: Food; Party Time; Shell Boy . Andy Siddle: Old Poet; The Old Wirral Line; The Present. Eileen Brown: Waiting; Autumn . Catherine Evans-Hewitt: Celebrity . Clive McLaren: Crippen's Couplet; Water Refelctions; Handsome Is As Handsome Does. The anthology costs £3 and is available  from Riverside Writers' events; Lingham's Bookshop in West Kirby, Wirral; Hoylake Library; West Kirby Library. By the way, Shell Boy features Rowan, albeit in an anonymous capacity.

 If you like children's books, then give  Ingo by Helen Dunmore a try. This story about mermaids off the Cornish coast was imaginative and thoughtful, and introduces the reader to two modern-day children who are grieving for their father. The mermaids may be enchanting but can they be trusted? I can’t wait to read the second in the new series. Also good was   North Child   by Edith Pattou , which has elements of Beauty and the Beast and The Snow Queen. The heroine comes from a farming family who’ve run into hard times. She is pushed into a dangerous and scary life with a talking polar bear - but who is the polite stranger who sleeps beside her each night? Several members of Riverside Writers enjoy reading children’s literature. They admit that having kids or grandkids is a great excuse to indulge in the latest stories. I have no such excuse - but who cares! On Monday, May 24th, local author and playwright Marc Gee will be giving a public talk about his w...

Amazon Shorts will cease to be available from June, so if you wish to purchase copies of my two Shorts, A Wirral Otherkin Trilogy and Quiet Lives , you’d best act now. You’ll find these on Amazon, or you may prefer to use the clickable links on my website. According to the email sent out by Amazon, their Shorts program has been replaced by Kindle. If I wish to make my Shorts available on Kindle (an e-reader which costs nearly $300) then this self-publishing option is available to me. Otherwise, all Rights revert to me. My views about self-publishing can be read here: http://hubpages.com/hub/Self-Publishing-Pitfalls Amazon Shorts were short digital downloads which enabled a customer to try out a writer’s work for a minimal fee. For the author, Shorts offered a way of supplementing their income and promoting their work to a wider audience. At least, this was the theory. In practice, few people seemed to grasp what an Amazon Short was. Was it a piece of clothing designed for ...