Here's the poster for this year's Parallel Dimensions, which takes place on Saturday 10th December at West Kirby Library.  Doors open at 2pm, but be early to ensure a seat as previous PDs have been well-attended. This is the third Parallel Dimensions, so I think it's ok to call it an annual event now. FREE event!  Please pass on the image and the information.  If you have any queries, either leave a message here or email me.   

Yesterday I saw the English National Ballet's new production, Strictly Gershwin, at the Empire Theatre in Liverpool. I love ballet, and was excited to see some of my favourite dancers again, especially Erina Takahashi who partnered with Zdenek Konvalina for Someone to Watch Over Me and with Esteban Berlanga for The Man I Love .  The dancers were wonderful, the costumes were gorgeous...but did the choreography quite work? Gershwin was never meant to be twee, and unfortunately the show sometimes felt stilted and unadventurous, particularly with Rhapsody in Blue where the dance bore no relation at all to the story told by the music which, for that piece, was played in a lacklustre manner by the orchestra. The orchestra formed a large part of the backdrop for the performance.  Perhaps this could have been exploited to greater visual effect, so that soloists might have been picked out by a spotlight - hardly a groundbreaking method of allowing the audience to see more clearly wh

What was the beyond-human being who walked into her dreams? How could mere dreams seem more real than reality? This enchanting collection of poetry describes the author's long search for answers. 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 a highly creative period. Yet she had still found no solution to the l

Researchers have learned that they can train volunteers to meet aliens in their dreams by focussing on a half-dream state, ie. lucid dreaming, and seeking out ETs with their minds. In this recent post I offered this idea: "The potential of the mind is immense. What if...the universe is all mind? What if the world you see when your brain interprets light beams caught on your retinas is really a creation of your mind? What if the whole of Planet Earth is, in effect, a giant holograph kept in place by mutual unconscious agreement? What if other collectives of mutual conscious agreement could create for themselves another kind of holograph - a parallel dimension, in other words?" Is it really so difficult to accept that if a person determinedly sets out to visit other dimensions via their own will power - which, like most abilities, can be improved upon with practice and persistence, that it is possible to slip from one dimension to another?  Contemporary terms

Dark Tides is now available on Apple iTunes at: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/dark-tides/id472904959?mt=11 Spanish Jones is available on Apple iTunes at: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/spanish-jones/id472906427?mt=11 You can also find both these ebooks on Barnes & Noble at: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/c/adele-cosgrove-bray I'm still waiting for these to be shipped to Kobo and Amazon, but that's in the pipeline.  They should also be available on Sony and Diesel within the next week or so.   

  

Looking forward into the future... And further into the future... One of the arguments against cryo-preservation and life extension insists that humanity will run out of space.  Earth is already a cramped cosmic island, so where are we all going to fit? Firstly, not everyone will choose an immortal life.  How many times have you heard people say they'll be glad when life is over?  To an immortalist, this is the statement of someone with suicidal tendencies but many think this way, imagining that death will always be inevitable and unconquerable despite the continuing progress of sciences which - given proper investment and further research - will overcome present limitations. Secondly, look up.  It's a big universe up there...  Big as in infinite .  If the "universe" is expanding, logic dictates that it has to have something into which it can expand.  If it had a boundary, an edge of some kind, there would have to be something beyond to define that boundar

Alan Billis, a sixty-one year old taxi driver with terminal lung cancer, volunteered to be mummified after the manner of Ancient Egyptians.  The taxi driver from Torquay allegedly said his only regret would be that at he wouldn't be around to see the programme, although he hoped it would give his grandchildren an insight into his personality. I wonder if Mr Billis gave cryonics any consideration?  If cryonics works, then he could tell his grandchildren (if they also opted for cryonics) all about himself for himself - and that's assuming cryonics isn't a working reality before Billis's grandchildren require cryo-preservation to make that leap into the future.  A cryo-sceptic would say that's a lot of "ifs", and that is a fair point.  However, looked at with a rational mind which makes the most sense - a slim chance of a possibly-eternal life, or no chance at all? Mummifying Alan: Egypt's Last Secret will be screened on Channel 4 on  October 2

Adele says:  Welcome to the first of a series of guest blogs written by a diverse array of interesting people.  This installment is from author and poet Nick Armbrister .  If you would like to contribute to this blog, feel free to contact me via email at ACBwrites@aol.com and write Guest Blog in the subject line. Nick Armbrister writes:   2011 has been busy for me; I released 5 books on www.lulu.com/spotlight/nickarmbrister of poetry and fiction stories. I could pick out one important book of the five but to me, all five are important. One is a huge poetry collection covering my fifteen years of writing poems ( The Complete Nick Armbrister Poetry Collection ), two others are short story collections. One is erotic stories ( Take It In Your Stride , a series of erotic adult stories) and the second normal ones ( Heart Of The Country Short Story Collection ). Finally there are two fiction novels in my Juniper’s Daughter series ( Juniper's Daughter: The Final War and Juniper'

Amazon will allegedly be publishing 122 books, fiction and non-fiction, in the autumn.   This is far more than many traditional publishers produce in an entire year - or two or three years, even.  Not only can authors already self-publish with Amazon's Create Space (for paperbacks) and Kindle (for ebooks), not only are all authors offered virtual shelf-space and dedicated pages on Amazon's massive - and always growing - site, now Amazon is diving into the role of a traditional publisher.  And I say good! Does this action finally kill off the myth that ebooks, including self-published ebooks, don't sell?  If there wasn't money to be made then a hefty company like Amazon wouldn't be expanding further into this field.  While many businesses take chances, the successful ones only take informed chances.  If a product works and is wanted and is affordable, it will sell.  If a system, no matter how long-established, ceases to provide what is wanted it's customers

Wirral's annual Bookfest began today, with a chick-lit event at Bromborough Civic Centre with authors Lesley Pearse and Judy Astley.  Tuesday sees Professor Stephen Hawking at Birkenhead Central Library, talking about a replica Viking longship named Draken Harald Fairhair, which will sail to Wirral from Norway next year.  Wednesday brings Sir Andrew Motion, a former Poet Laureate, to Bromborough Civic Centre.  There are two events on Thursday 13th.  Elizabeth Williams, of the Gaskell Society, will give a talk at Bebington Central Library about the role of love in Jane Austen's and Charlotte Bronte's fiction.  The history of Birkenhead will be the subject of a talk by Elizabeth Davey at Upton Library. The event which interests me the most will be held at Wallasey Central Library on Friday, when Gavin Chapell will give a talk about the infamous Wirral privateer called Fortunatas Wright.  Personally, I suspect Wright might just be a pseudonym used by Spanish Jones....  F

Apparently, former SNP leader Gordon Wilson wants a referendum on the government's proposals to allow same-sex marriage.  In  a nine-page document he allegedly described same-sex marriages as an assault on Xtian values which could lead to social disintegration and sexual confusion. Excuse me, but exactly how can two people loving each other and deciding to get married bring about the end of life as we know it?  Who is anyone to declare how love should be expressed or where love should blossom for anyone other than themselves?   And how do gay people become a social hazard through marrying each other; does this mean that by remaining unmarried they're somehow more safe?  How ridiculous. As for Xtian values, how about:- “Do not judge so that you will not be judged.” Matthew 7:1 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:34-35 Ac

Have you ever loved a story so much that you wanted to visit the place where it happened? Have you been so involved in a scene that you felt like you were really there? Well, a new innovation means you almost can be there - almost. When an ebook's tale is set in a particular place - a cafe, a theatre, an historic location, a bowling alley etc., - then readers can click a link to learn more about the factual place. This opens up a new angle in virtual tourism, which could potentially result in readers of a story booking into a hotel or diner where their fictional heroes stayed. So what we have here is another way of writers gaining an income. Just as sports people are sponsored to wear trade logos, then why couldn't writers be sponsored to include linked-to places/businesses in their ebooks? The principles are fairly similar. Blind Fate by Patrick Brian Miller and Dixie Noir by Kirk Curnutt are the first of these innovative ebooks to be published on Kindle (which c

Hazel and Adele, a long time ago... There are some photos which simply make you smile.  They might not be the most professionally done or the most artistic, but they're precious in their own way.  Like this one, above, which shows my sister and I paddling somewhere near Southampton.  I totally forget the name of the place; it had three shallow pools in a row, and I recall feeling incredibly adventurous for walking through each of them all by myself.  We visited this place more than once during various visits to my Aunt Kathleen and Uncle George's home.  My four cousins were probably paddling not too far away, just out of camera shot.  My first typewriter, a Smith Corona, which was a Xmas present shared with my sister.  I used to type poetry on this before mailing it off to various magazines.  Some of it got published, too...  This machine worked well for many years until the carriage developed an annoying habit of jumping spaces or of not moving at all.  This didn't exac

Enjoy!   

Learn about the history of tattooing, and about Liverpool's famous tattooing family, of which Richie Tattoo Artist is a member, in this interview with Richie broadcast on Radio Merseyside in 1996.   

Several people have asked me why I've recently self-published two ebooks, Spanish Jones and Dark Tides .  In the past, I've been dead set against self-publishing.  Vanity publishing (where you pay a company to publish your book) is mostly an expensive dead-end, and self-publishing (where you DIY) requires much product promotion, can also be pricey, and in the past wasn't taken seriously.  The given wisdom was that people only self-publish when no-one will buy their book. Is that still true in 2011?  If readers didn't take self-published ebooks seriously, they wouldn't be buying them.  And they are, in ever increasing numbers, to the point that ebook sales are now apparently overtaking paperback sales. Producing an ebook can cost nothing but time if an author can create their own eye-catching front covers and do their own editing.  In my case, I went to art school where I studied art and design; I've worked as a photographer and an editor; and I also get pra

Pirates, selkies and witches battle to survive in this dramatic short fantasy tale. When Charlie Porter makes a deal with Spanish Jones, he ensnares the Porter family in a vicious centuries-long feud. Can Charlie's descendent stop the violence? Set on the ruggedly beautiful Hilbre Island in the Dee Estuary, history and folklore blend to create a magically atmospheric tale. Spanish Jones - a new ebook short by Adele Cosgrove-Bray, out October 1st, 2011. Available from:  Here     

"Police in Paris discovered a cinema-cum-restaurant in a large and previously uncharted cavern underneath the capital's chic 16th arrondissement...  A tunnel held a desk and a closed-circuit TV camera set to automatically record images of anyone passing.  The tunnel opened into a vast 400 sq metre cave some 18m underground, "like an underground amphitheatre, with terraces cut into the rock and chairs"...a full-sized cinema screen, projection equipment and a wide variety of films.  A smaller cave next door had been turned into an informal restaurant and bar. "There were bottles of whisky and other spirits behind a bar, tables and chairs, a pressure-cooker for making couscous," the spokesman said.   "The whole thing ran off a professionally installed electricity system and there were at least three phone lines." Source:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/08/filmnews.france?fb=optOut This article dates back to 2004; I recall mentioning it

"...We offer "singles" for 99 cents and five story collections for $2.99 (which brings the per story price down to 60 cents.) And we offer ten story collections of the singles for $4.99.  Think of albums in music. A single song is 99 cents usually, but albums with that song on it are more. Same thing in short stories and books. The story should be both ways to give readers choices." - Dean Wesley Smith This excellent interview with Dean Wesley Smith, Joe Konrath, Blake Crouch, Scott Nicholson and David Graughan explores the exanding market for ebooks, which type of ebooks sell well and why how to offer readers more choice. Read the interview:   http://www.fearnet.com/news/interviews/b23910_short_stories_ebooks_discussion_with.html   

"Archaeologist Alfonso Forgione, from L'Aquila University...said, 'I have never seen anything like this before. I'm convinced because of the nails found in the jaw and around the skeleton the woman was a witch.   S he was buried in bare earth, not in a coffin and she had no shroud around her either, intriguingly other nails were hammered around her to pin down her clothes.' " 'The second skeleton we have found was buried in a similar fashion but this time we found 17 dice around her - 17 is an unlucky number in Italy and also dice was a game that women were forbidden to play." Source: http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2011/09/800-year-old-witch-burial-found-in.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheArchaeologyNewsNetwork+%28The+Archaeology+News+Network%29   

Hot off the press - well, off the phone, actually - comes a date for the 3rd annual Fantasy, Science-Fiction and Horror fiction event.  Parallel Dimensions will take place on December 10th, 2011, at West Kirby Library, Wirral.  Doors open at 2pm. Participating authors have yet to be confirmed.  If you're an author whose work falls within the F/SF/H category and you'd like to take part, email me ASAP at ACBwrites@aol.com .  There is no payment for taking part but you are welcome to sell your own books and to hand out flyers.  The event gives people the chance to hear new, orginal fiction and to meet the authors.  Authors get the chance to read aloud some of their work before an audience. I'll post further news as things develop.