Can you help Sue Vincent’s son Nick follow his dreams? Please do what you can to help this amazing man who has been through so much. Reblog, share, and donate what you can to Nick’s Go Fund Me Campaign.
What would you give to make a dream come true if you woke to find yourself living a nightmare?
What would you feel if you could never again walk on a beach? Or go out alone in the snow…feel the stillness of a wood or cross a field?
And then, you found a way…
In 2009, my son was a successful young man with a bright future… until he was stabbed through the brain in an unprovoked attack and left for dead in an alley.
He was found almost immediately by passers-by who saved his life. By the time we arrived at the hospital, Nick was being prepared for emergency brain surgery. We were allowed to see him, for a few minutes, to say goodbye. He was not expected to survive…
Over the past couple of years, many in the blogging community have come to know my son and know…
Reblog from RyanLanz – Ashleigh Giannoccaro’s great tips regarding what to look for in a beta reader. Very topical as my manuscript is currently with Colleen Chesboro at Silver Threading for the final edit – I hope!
Today is the last instalment from my lovely friends, who have been keeping my blog stocked with juicy tidbits in order to give me time to finish my book. A huge thank you to everyone who helped out, without you, I wouldn’t have had time to finish it
But today, I welcome the lovely Helen Jones, to talk about book covers. I recently talked about mastering your genre’s book cover. But Helen goes into a tone of useful things you need to consider, that I hadn’t even thought of. So her post was super useful for me this week, because I just sent off my cover design brief! *squeal*. Without further ado…. Helen…
The Cosy Teashop in The Castle is the perfect read to take away with you for a relaxing break. A light-hearted story set in Northumberland about a young women’s dream to run her own tea shop. Being a big fan of cakes, baking, tearooms, and castles, this really appealed to me. By the way there is the added bonus of a lovely cake recipe at the back of the book : Ellie’s grandmother – Choffee cake. Sounds delicious! There is also a very satisfactory dollop of romance that never goes amiss on a summer read! The only aspect of the novel that surprised me was just how steamy the romance sections were. Boy were they hot, just about as sweltering as the Portugal sun. So do bear that in mind! Obviously all that floury cake baking, combined with the chemistry between Ellie and the manager of the tearoom, Joe, really enabled the spark to light Ellie’s broken-hearted fuse. Phew….Yes, Ellie hasn’t had the best of times as far as men are concerned, making her a bit cautious, and Joe has his reasons to be a bit distant too. But the fuse well and truly does get lit, believe me!
My recommendation – Read and find out more!
My rating: 4 stars.
Have you read The Cosy Tea Shop in The Castle? Do let me know your thoughts if you have.
Bye for now, that little tea shop was surprisingly hot!
This is for all present and future contributors for our collaboration #PoetsForPeace. Michael and I are so excited to let you know that our friend and fellow blogger Laura M. Kaminski has graciously offered to help us get published in Praxis Magazine Online! Laura herself is an amazing writer and a published poet… I encourage you to check out her blog if you haven’t already done so.
In order to get published we will need permission from our contributors who would like their piece published with this collaboration. One or all of these fields will need to be included: URL, Name, Location Contributor is writing from. “The standard Praxis copyright page at the beginning will show that copyright for contributed lines is retained by the individual contributors”.- Laura
Michael from the Poetry Channel, will be contacting individual contributors with details soon; however, we wanted to make sure we…
Today is release day for Devastation, second volume of Jane Dougherty’s Pathfinders series. She is offering free Amazon downloads of Abomination, in case (like me) you have some catching up to do. The book covers look amazing….. I can’t resist the pull of a pretty cover!!
Austin at The Return Of The Modern Philophiser is having a blog pitch party. Want to join in? ‘Course you do… I did too, so had to press the reblog button. Go on be a devil, I dare you!
I realized this morning, Modern Philosophers, that I’m on vacation, need a distraction, and have The House on the Hill all to myself.
Let’s have a party!
It’s been almost a year and a half since my last Blog Pitch Party, so I think today is the perfect day to revive this popular feature.
As some of you know, I’m a screenwriter. When things are going well, I get invited to pitch meetings where producers ask me to pitch them my latest screenplays.
Basically, I need to come up with two or three sentences to sum up my entire screenplay in a way that intrigues the suits and makes them want to find the time to read it.
Off the top of my head, here’s a pitch I might make for one of my favorite screenplays: A high school kid travels back to 1955 in a souped up DeLorean…
Lee Taemin is a Korean idol from one of KPOP’s biggest groups SHINee which debuted in 2008 with ‘Replay’. They have gone from cute-pop bops to synthesizer melodies which have dabbled in house/techno. Currently, they are working on a new comeback after the success of their 2015 album release ‘Odd Eye’ and ‘Married to the Music’.
Lee Taemin is a vocalist/dancer/visual of SHINee and is their youngest member at the age of 23. In 2014, Taemin released his first ever solo debut with songs like ‘Ace’ and ‘Danger’ which successfully changed his cute image into a whole new persona. In his music video ‘Danger’, Taemin is seen with piercings and heavy eye make-up and array of different outfits. After his 2014 release, Taemin also released his second solo album Press It. Longer in length, Taemin worked with artists such as Bruno Mars to create and produce this ten track album. As well as this, Taemin has released songs in Japanese, his most recent album ‘Sayonara Hitori’ takes on a whole different kind of genre, many of the songs sounding like the OST (Opening Sound Track) of any fantasy anime. The video for ‘Sayonara Hitori’ deals with themes of light and dark, the fear of our own shadow. It is a stunning video, switching from beautiful scenes of mountains and valleys illuminated by a giant full moon to scenes of destruction — of volcanoes and war. The wardrobe changes in the video also reflects this, as Taemin is seen in silk clothing in one scene, and all in black in another. Taemin’s success in Japan is quite evident, and I will be looking forward to the music that he releases in the near (and distant future).
Please check Taemin and SHINee out!
Hope you liked my eldest daughter’s guest post. She’s absolutely obsessed with Korean K-Pop, and likes to share her love with others. She urged me to watch this video – she said that it reminded her of the themes of dark/light in my manuscript The Curse Of Time. I’m very flattered that she thought so. The video really is stunning.
Do you like Korean K-Pop? Do comment I’d love to hear from you.
Happy Friday – I hope you have a lovely weekend.
Bye for now, Sayonara!
My fun (totally not serious but nevertheless 90% true,) author bio on Wattpad – Link below.
Marjorie Mallon was born in Lion City: Singapore. She grew up in a mountainous court in Hong Kong. Her crazy parents dragged her spotty soul away from her exotic childhood and her much loved dog Topsy to the frozen wastelands of Scotland. There she mastered Scottish country dancing, haggis bashing, bagpipe playing and a whole new Och Aye lingo.
As a teenager she travelled to many far flung destinations to visit her abacus wielding wayfarer dad. On one such occasion a barracuda swam by. It stopped to view her bikini clad body, longing to take a big bite. With dogs' fangs replacing barracudas' teeth, she returned to her mother's birthplace: Kuching, Cat City. There, Blackie, a black-hearted dog sniffed her frightened butt, whimpered and ran away! Shortly after this extraordinary event an angry female Orang-Utan chased her unfit ass out of the Malaysian jungle believing that she was a threat to her babies! She still monkeys about, would love to own a cat, or a replacement Topsy but refuses to entertain murderous dogs, or over-protective monkeys.
It's rumoured that she lives in the Venice of Cambridge, with her six foot hunk of a Rock God husband, and her two enchanted daughters.
After such an upbringing her author's mind has taken total leave of its senses. When she's not writing, she eats exotic delicacies while belly dancing, or surfs to the far reaches of the moon. To chill out she practises Tai Chi and Yoga on the crest of a wave. If the mood takes her she goes snorkelling with mermaids, or signs up for idyllic holidays with the Chinese Unicorn, whose magnificent voice sings like a thousand wind chimes.
She is a child of the light and the dark. Her motto is simply this: Do what you love, stay true to your heart's desires, remain young at heart, and inspire others to do so, even if it appears that the odds are stacked like black hearted shadows against you...
This week’s market has an excellent prompt; as soon as I saw it, all sorts of ideas came bursting into my mind. Brilliant Flash Fiction’s prompt is ‘It came in the mail’. He…
This is very obviously a work in progress and a massively incomplete list, but if you’re looking for books both by and about people who openly identify as LGBTQIAP+, writing within their own orient…
What would you give to make a dream come true if you woke to find yourself living a nightmare?
Today is the last instalment from my lovely friends, who have been keeping my blog stocked with juicy tidbits in order to give me time to finish my book. A huge thank you to everyone who helped out, without you, I wouldn’t have had time to finish it
