Since 2012, I've created a list of annual goals which I aim to achieve within the following twelve months.  This is one way to keep track of the progress of various projects and it's a bit of self-entertainment.     Mallard; oil on canvas; Adele Cosgrove-Bray; Dec 2016.   M y goals for 2016 were:- Publish Fabian ; Finish the NVQ Level 3 course; Write more poems and short stories; Create more art and photography.  My fourth Artisan-Sorcerer novel, Fabian , was published by Middle Eye Press in paperback and ebook formats back in September.  Readers learned more about everyday life within the Artisan-Sorcerer household, but were also given  much more insight into the magical, spiritual side of their lives.  Fabian himself faces life-altering and life-threatening situations. You readers could really help me by posting reviews of my work on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or other online stores, or on your own blog.  The a...

Rapid sketch of moorhens; 2016. I'm enjoying a spot of annual leave this week, which began with a lively and well-attended writers' event at Bebington Library on Saturday the 19th.  This featured members of Wirral Writers , Bebington Bards , the 3Ls Creative Writing Group and Riverside Writers .  I'm no longer a member of Riverside Writers due to constraints of time, but I had been invited to join in anyway. Due to there being so many writers and poets wishing to read, a strict time limit was imposed and so the audience only heard half of my 1,600 word story, Fame, which is about an obscure, ageing rock singer who has turned up on Facebook.  It's a story about reminiscing and unachieved ambitions which still tempt. My sister Evelyn came to the library event, and afterwards she and I travelled to my home with my friends Tim and Nigel, where we all socialised for a couple of hours and caught up on news. I've been generally tidying up the house.  It is now ...

Boathouse, Birkenhead Park. Saturday, 19th November will find me at Bebington Library, Wirral, when along with other writers I'll be reading one of my short stories.  The event starts at 2pm, so if you're in the area do come along. It's absolutely ages since I took part in a similar event, and I've yet to decide which story I'll be reading.  I've so many to choose from! I had my hair trimmed on Saturday, then decided to go for a walk round Birkenhead while I was there, reasoning that I'd be able to have a look for some new jumpers for the coming winter without hubby helping - which translates as him enthusing over monstrosities which only a neolithic troll might perceive as stylish. Great idea!  So I walked into the very first shop I came to, and who was the first person I saw?  Yes, Richard.  He was at the counter, buying the latest in Joseph Delaney's Spooks series. We both really enjoyed the Spook's Apprentice series, but didn't tak...

Here are a few short quotes from Fabian to tempt your appetite... Grief is a weird thing; it hides beneath the surface and rises like a shark from the depths of your soul when you least expect it. *** If a person worships money as their god and devotes all or most of their time and energy to its accumulation, feeding the spiritual with only fragments of their energies, then the spiritual will starve. Wealth in itself presents no obstacle to the spiritual. On the contrary, financial independence can bring freedoms which would otherwise remain beyond reach. And mastery of the material world is an often-overlooked facet of mastery of the self. There is no place in our Order for those who pretend to be an Adept when they can't even pay their own bills. *** For all those years, she had ached for the future. So much time had been spent imagining how life would be, how events would unfold, how perfect everything would turn out in the end if only she kept hop...

Cadi; chinagraph & watercolour pencils. I passed my maths exam!  Thank goodness for that, as this means the final section of my NVQ Level 3 course is now complete, and all I have to do now is wait for my certificates to arrive. I'm glad to see the end of it, as the course took up far more time than was described at the outset - the better part of two years, in fact - and involved a disproportionate amount of writing for a course which was supposed to be largely vocational. Anyway, thanks go to Knowsley Community College tutors Helen Lea-Smith and Paul Byatt, who guided me through the course. That's enough courses, thank you.  I've done one job-related course after another for the last five years, including a previous NVQ Level 3.  Enough is enough. Rapid ink sketch of Canada geese. If you're in Birkenhead Park and see a woman trying to sketch whilst holding onto two Jack Russells who're itching to walk further on, that'll probably be me.  I...

I hope you all enjoy viewing this small collection of my art.

Fabian: An Artisan-Sorcerer Story out 09.09.16 I can now announce that the fourth novel in the Artisan-Sorcerer Series is now available in book shops the world over, in both paperback and ebook formats. I hope you all enjoy Fabian , and will consider writing a review on Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes & Noble or your blog or social networking site.  We indie authors can always use a bit of help, you know! I'm already developing ideas for the fifth novel.  I already know how it's going to end and who is going to die.  I'm not quite sure how our heroes are going to arrive at that point yet, but it will come.  The process is like daydreaming.  I toy around with an idea and allow my imagination to go anywhere it wants to, sometimes prodding it along a little with 'what if' questions but not trying to force ideas in any specific direction as that tends to limit creativity.  In this way, I end up with a flexible plot outline without having written even ...