In Green Egg Magazine , Katrina Rasbold has reviewed the forthcoming Black Magick anthology of 13 horror stories. Read the review here:  Green Egg Magazine

Irene Well had written a review of the forthcoming Black Magick anthology, due out in March: Read it here:-  Black Magick review on Goodreads

RC Gibson has published a review of the forthcoming Moon Books anthology, Black Magick , in the online magazine Indies Today. My contributing story, Spanish Jones , gets a mention. Read the review here:-  Black Magick Review in Indies Today

 

This article was originally published on Hubpages in 2009. I am in the process of transferring my old articles from there to here. Welcome to Gilroy Nature Park It would be easy to stroll by the entrance to Gilroy Nature Park and not even notice it was there, especially if the chorus of quacking ducks and geese had fallen silent. This pocket-sized park consists of a pond, a meadow and a small woodland, and is home to a surprisingly large variety of wildlife including water voles, common brown bats, weasels and foxes. A Stroll Around the Park Tucked away down a public footpath which runs from Gilroy Road in West Kirby, between fields of crops and languorous cows to the golf course close to Hoylake train station, is a gap in the hedge. A simple sign, half-buried behind branches, reads 'Gilroy Nature Park'. A Haven for Wildfowl The park is maintained by volunteers, and now this (and the adjacent field which readily floods) is home to teal, mallard, snipe, black-tailed godwits, cur...

This article was originally published on Hubpages in 2010. I'm slowly transferring all my old Hubpages articles to here. Bad at Arithmetic? Did you have serious problems trying to learn basic maths in school, or do you know of a child who is experiencing this? Have you heard of dyscalculia? This condition is akin to the much more widely known dyslexia. Whereas a dyslexic has word blindness, a dyscalculic person has number blindness. Some people have both. Number Blindness This means that anything requiring numbers, such as mental arithmetic, remembering phone numbers, using a calculator or understanding the mechanics of mathematics, is incredibly difficult. If a child, for example, is doing fine in other subjects like English, history, art, geography or biology, but struggles badly with scientific equations or the times table, then there is a possibility that dyscalculia may lie at the root of the problem. As well as having obvious numerical problems, a dyscalculic may also possess...

Do you keep a diary? Why did you start it, and, if you started one then stopped, why was that? What sort of things do (or did) you write about? I ask as, as a long-time diarist myself, there is an interesting piece in The Guardian today which talks about one woman's diary habit, which she began at the age of fourteen. I started a diary around that age too, but destroyed it after my mother accused me of using cocaine.  A stern scene followed, with both parents perched ram-rod straight in their armchairs, while I was subjected to a heated inquisition. Where had I bought it, and who from? Didn't I know such things led to death and doom? I struggled to decipher their bewildering accusations, until Mum blurted out, "I read it in your diary!" To find my diary, Mum would first have had to rummage through my dressing table, obviously when I wasn't around to protest. Her intrusion on my privacy was assumed by both parents to be acceptable, and now, with this handwritten c...