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  • The Magician: an abra-cada-bra poem.

    I’ve just joined a local writing group that meets virtually, once a week. The leader suggests a few different prompts for each meeting, one of this week’s being a ‘magical poem’ of three stanzas with the rhyming scheme abra-cada-bra. I do like a challenge so this is my contribution below. Some of you may recognise…

  • A to Whatever

    I decided to join in with the A to Z blog challenge on a whim. I didn’t make it to the end. Here are the silly rhymes I did manage for Nettie’s Neuroses: A Humorous look at Phobias. I hope they raise a smile.

  • The Invisible Illness

    Fibromyalgia is a fickle illness. It is not steady with a small set of constant symptoms. Instead, we fibronauts have what we like to refer to as flares: days, weeks or months when every symptom you’ve ever had (and possibly a few new ones) happen all at once and at a severity that takes your…

  • Snoozle Slide Sheet Review

    One of the major issues for fibronauts is disturbed sleep and never waking refreshed. If you’re anything like me, I wake up every time I change position: already tight, aching muscles seem to scream in complaint when I try to move from one side to the other. And as for getting up… Facebook, using all…

  • Judging a book

    I love to read and I also enjoy reviewing what I read. I’ve been an active Netgalley user for several years and have discovered many wonderful new authors. I’ve also tried to read a lot of trash, but they always seemed a good idea at the time. Recently, there has been a considerable number of…

  • Enjoy Yourself…

    …it’s later than you think. There is a freedom that comes with getting older, a freedom to be more yourself than you ever were when you were young. When I was young and skinny I spent hours sucking in my non-existent tummy, worrying whether people would look at me and think I was disgusting. Now…

  • PJ

    I am writing this at a time I hope is far from the date I will publish it. I know that when the time to publish comes I won’t be fit for anything so I’m writing and saving this now, while my little dog PJ is still with me. PJ has been ill for a…

  • Stabby Words and Cutting Remarks

    Last week Gary Parkin wrote a very good blog post about word lists and why it’s a good idea to use one when you are writing. You can read what he had to say about it here. Basically, Gary makes the point that it can be useful to have a small lexicon of era/genre/character specific…

  • Night Crawlers by Tim Curran

    If you look at the cover of Nightcrawlers by Tim Curran, see the oddly manicured female hands and the kitchy font of the title, you might be forgiven for expecting the literary equivalent of the type of movie shown by the Horror Channel at 3am: exploitative, all gore and no characterisation. Well, I hate to…