Click on the image to view it larger.     I was surprised to discover that one of my poetry ebooks, Entering the Grove , currently ranks at #66 in the Amazon.com Best Sellers listing for "Inspirational and Religious Poetry". The book blurb reads: "This collection of Adele Cosgrove-Bray’s poetry describes how, at the age of nineteen, she entered an order known variously as the Eternal Companions or the Initiates of Ma'at, which was led by an elderly man called Thomas Joseph Walton, (or "T"). His philosophy was similar to that of GI Gurdjieff's.  Entering the Grove describes her seven years with this group. She hoped to find answers to a series of experiences which had haunted her since early childhood, as depicted in the poems I Wonder , Twilight and Love's Hermitage , but she gradually became disillusioned with Walton’s philosophy. In 1999, Adele joined the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (OBOD), and this heralded the start of

Emily and Poppi inspect pools of water beside the sea wall.   Hoylake Beach   Looking towards Hilbre Island   Adele at Red Rocks, Hoylake, with dogs Emily and Poppi.     Richard sitting on Red Rocks, on Hoylake Beach. Sand dunes and grassy marsh running from Red Rocks alongside West Kirby beach. Sparrowhawk hovering over the grassy sand dunes along West Kirby beach.   Several of my short stories and one of my Artisan-Sorcerer novels, Rowan , are set close to Hoylake and West Kirby beaches.  So here're a few photos so you can see the location for yourself.  Richard and I were here this morning, taking our dogs for a walk.  It was breezy but sunny and pleasant, though three hours later it's pouring down.  The weather is typically changeable here, being right on the coast and with being a peninsula, which seems to create its own microclimate anyway.   Click on the photos to see them bigger, if you wish.

One of the tiny frogs currently in our garden.  An army of tiny frogs has invaded our garden.  The photo above shows just one of them, sitting on our block-paved drive at the side of our house, which gives a good idea of just how small they truly are.  They're so cute!  We have to really watch where we're putting our feet, there're so many of them.  It's as well that we have no chickens at the moment, as the eggs would be so full of reassembled frog that the eggs would start hopping. Our roses have been fabulous this year.  Not so our raspberries, which tasted vile and quickly went past their best.  My attempt at growing garlic ended in a shrivelled disaster, and I suspect that the sun has been too fierce for the shoots to thrive.  The rosemary cuttings have taken well to their new spot in the far border, however, and the broom looks ok too.  The big box of wild flower seeds that I sprinkled round the borders has produced various poppies and a smattering of whit

Welcome to this series of writing tips.  If you would like to pen a guest post for this series, email me at ACBwrites@aol.com . I am often asked where I get my ideas for stories from.  This is a slightly puzzling question, to me, as I've more ideas for stories than I have time to write.  I get my ideas from all over the place, but while this answer covers it from my perspective it's probably not so helpful to anyone else. The standard advice to all writers and poets is to carry a notebook around with you so whenever you see or hear something of particular interest you can note it down.  I used to do this.  Now I've a cupboard jammed with notebooks which I never even glance at as there is a long queue of ideas in my mind already, and so I no longer use this method.  You're totally free to try it and see if it works for you, of course.  Perhaps the real benefit of note-keeping is that it primes the mind to be aware of ideas for stories. Only you can decide what

        Here are the previews of the new paperback covers for the Artisan-Sorcerer series.  Intimations is only available as an ebook at this time, if you were wondering why it's absent.  The covers are currently undergoing the production process, and until that's complete the paperbacks won't be available, but that will only be for a day or so.

I have long been fascinated by other creative people's workspaces.  Photos of them offer glimpses into how that person works.  Whether it's a chaotic tangle of prompts and tools of the trade or a minimalist super-tidy area, I enjoy peeping into their world.  Here's mine, tucked away in the corner of our dining room:- Click on the image to view it larger.     There is a collection of forty photos of the workspaces used by well-known writers, poets and artists here  which I enjoyed looking at.  I'm tempted to start a series on this blog, posting photos of other people's workspaces.  If you would like to take part, email me on ACBwrites@aol.com .  

Welcome to this series of writing tips, to be posted each Wednesday. If you would like to pen a guest post for this series, email me at ACBwrites@aol.com.  If you want to be a writer, or to improve your writing and your chances of being published, you need to read.  Read all kinds of books, including those which you might not usually choose for yourself.  You can learn as much from authors whose work leaves you cold as you can from those you instinctively love.  You will discover ideas, methods of plot construction and literary styles which you many not have thought otherwise thought of.  Some of these you might choose to adapt for your own work; others you might make a point of never using on pain of  death.  But you will have given yourself the opportunity to analyse which aspects of any particular book worked and which didn't, in your opinion, and to make your own creative choices based on this. The publishing world is a fickle and is currently undergoing huge chang