Reggie is a ten year old mixed race boy with a single mother and a nan who hides a dark secret. Life has always been tough with ominous visitors, fights and a killing, trouble always lurking. Constant anxiety of what he doesn’t understand. This summer, though, things are about to change. The precinct outside Nan’s […]
I found Reggie swinging on railings with a song to be sung. Rap, in his case, a rap to explore what he half knows or doesn’t, fears but doesn’t understand, using language picked up from others, like the lager cans he finds and saves to help his new friend, Ernie. Ernie is a grumpy allotment […]
She greets me, a smile and a nod. It is to be expected after all these days, weeks, nay months, of waiting for an acknowledgment. It’s I, of course, who’ve made the effort, discreetly watched and taken note, but recognition is after all a two way process.
This woman, who will once have been a beauty with pale rose complexion pampered by Elizabeth Arden, blonde curls coiffured to stroke the contours of those fine boned cheeks, cannot be ignored. Even with time’s cruel ravages, the crumpling, drooping, pouching, she is the one you turn to twice.
He will need to be eliminated. The husband with flat cap, brown trousers, fawn anorak is a disgrace beside her fine red wool coat, elegant court shoes, and trim hat.
I await her spoken greeting, for, after all, the voice is all important; so hoping for a tone, an accent that will match. It can’t be long now before I’ll know whether, despite the poor marital choice, I can use her.
You must agree that finding the right character is a damned difficult business.
Two woman hold secrets which they have never shared; a mother, Elspeth, and daughter, Gina. The devastating incident in which they were both involved comes back to haunt them after decades of concealment. Elspeth, in her nineties suffering from dementia, is agitated, exposing the lies she guarded all her life; Gina is confused and angry […]
The Greenhouse Legacy is out there at last! The paperback is available to order from all bookshops as well as Amazon, where the eBook is on sale too. https://smarturl.it/ValKdTGL Thank you to my writers’ circle, to my advance readers, to my dear friends and publishers Drew and Innes at Deadhand Publishing . Writing the novel […]
Writers all; how many times have you had to take out a word, a phrase, a whole paragraph that you love but which adds nothing to what you’re trying to say, even detracts from the plot? Beautifully crafted phrases you can stick up on your wall for possible use on another occasion? Many times necessary […]
How would you like to read a brand new novel before it goes print? Sent to you electronically with my one plea, that you give me feedback. * The Greenhouse Legacy – has been four years in the making, that is the writing process. However it has been lurking inside my brain for twenty odd […]
‘Shuggie Bain’ by Douglas Stuart is my book of the year, 2020. A debut novel, Winner of the Booker Prize, a remarkable achievement and I love it. I read a hardback copy – borrowed – and am waiting impatiently for the paperback publication later this year to have my own copy. A story of love […]
This isn’t what I meant to write, an obituary, an epitaph, to the café in my town that has become a victim of lockdown. It is a small tragedy amongst the many far worse but it is a loss. It will have affected people with whom I’d become acquainted, the baristas who knew my regular […]
This makes me think of how it happens. Behind is a structure, the trellis of phrases, sentences, form. The branches and twigs are bare, no sign or hope of a flower until the eruption somehow magically happens and buds push out to blossom into work worth looking at. Just a thought!