Thank you to Chantelle Atkins for this Q and A as part of the blog tour for the forthcoming release of This Is Lockdown, an anthology of 29 authors, writers and creatives. This Is Lockdown, is a snapshot of time and includes writing, diaries, flash fiction, poetry and contributions from the ‘isolation writers’ who featured on my blog. This Is Lockdown releases on July 20th. To preorder: mybook.to/Thisislockdown
Songs of Heartstrings: Poems of Gratitude and Beatitude depicts a road traveled with optimism, hope and appreciation amid heartache and unpredictable circumstances. It also celebrates genuine love and fulfilling relationships. The poetry collection includes nine themes: Songs of Nature, Songs of Dissonance, Songs of Physical Healing, Songs of Marriage, Songs of Parenthood, Songs of Tribute, Songs of Reflections, Songs of Challenge, and Songs of Inspiration. Each of these themes covers various aspects of her life experience.The poems are inspiring to the mind, heart, and spirit. The readers will resonate with these experiences. Hurdle illustrates the poems with her photograph and watercolor paintings.
My review:
What a lovely collection of poetry, photography and paintings. I really enjoyed this poetry collection. Songs of Heartstrings tells the story of the author’s life and the many difficulties she has overcome. It is heartfelt and personal. Miriam Hurdle’s poetry touches upon human frailties: struggling through cancer, learning to love again, rejoicing in the gifts of parenthood, music, exalting in the joy of nature, friendship and the sadness that returns with loss.
There is much that I related to, especially the poems of nature and the sea. Both of which mean a lot to me. It’s clear that Miriam Hurdle takes a great deal of comfort from religion and she shares her faith in her poetry.
The reader is enriched from reading Songs of Heartstrings with a sense of shared reminiscences and a deeper connection. Miriam Hurdle’s poetry is simply that, truthful, personal and real.
Lorraine writes bestselling crime: The DI Sterling series. There’s no crime in This Is Lockdown but Lorraine features a wide variety of authors in her Friday Fiction Features. She also has a critique and mentoring service plus information for writers on her blog.
19th July – Recap Promo of all the great promos- M J Mallon
Launch week:
20th July – Launch Day Promo M J Mallon – Lockdown Quotes. 21st July – Sharon Wilden of Shaz’s book blog – promo 22nd July – Ritu Kaur BP 23rd July – Richard Dee 24th July – D G Kaye ( Q and A) 25th July – Marian Wood
25th of July is the last day of the tour as I am going on holiday thereafter and taking a break from social media! As this has been a huge project and I reckon I will be exhausted by then.
The fabulous authors, bloggers and creatives who have contributed to This Is Lockdown. I’d like to give a shout out to them all.
This Is Lockdown is a anthology/compilation of diaries, short stories, flash fiction and poetry set during COVID19 from 23rd March until 1st June 2020. The anthology also features the ‘isolation writers’ who featured on my blog discussing their thoughts on isolation during this time.
The question which I posed at the time was:
How do writers, creatives, artists and bookish souls cope with isolation? Is their capacity to cope different from the rest of the population? It’s an interesting question and one that fascinates me.
Several of the contributing authors and bloggers also contributed poems, or thoughts about this time.
The wonderful contributing authors and creatives are many in number!
Thank you so much to each one of them for being a part of this project.
Please do visit their websites to discover the huge variety of writing and creative talent amongst them ranging from talented short story and poetry writers to horror, fantasy, supernatural thriller, romance and memoir writing. And more!!! Plus the wonderful fundraising Community Masks 4 NHS initiative from Jane Horwood and Melissa Santiago-Val.
There truly is something for everyone amongst this international group of writers and creatives who are based in the UK, Ireland, Canada, Italy, America and Zimbabwe.
This is a tough time for writers as it is for everyone. The arts and creative industry is under threat as are businesses worldwide.
The kindle of This Is Lockdown was released on 20th July.
The paperback of This Is Lockdown was released on 2nd December. It is a shorter version, (with no diaries, all photographic images in black and white. )
The latest posts regarding the book itself, or COVID19 are:
“Sci-Fi and psychological thriller fans are in for a treat.” “…action, adventure, romance and cerebral high-jinks…” Rick lives here on Earth now, with Cath. His life is boring, writing adverts for cat food and exotic holidays. When he’s asleep, he dreams vividly. In his dreams, he lives as Dan, spending his time with his wife Vanessa. They live six-hundred years in the future, half a galaxy away. They’re explorers, searching for valuable minerals on Ecias, an alien paradise. Dan has no dreams about Rick’s life, he lives on Ecias, loves his life and Vanessa. When the two worlds overlap, Rick starts to question what is real. Events in his waking and sleeping lives are mirrored, similar people inhabit both and coincidences mount up. Then disaster strikes in each world at the same time. In his dreams, Dan is accused of a crime he didn’t commit. Meanwhile, after one coincidence too many, Cath thinks that Rick’s dreams are hiding an affair and leaves him. Is Rick going crazy, or can he be living in two places, in two times, at once? If not, then which one of them is the reality? Will one life carry on when the other is on hold? Richard Dee’s fast-paced, edgy science fiction -cum- psychological thriller will keep you on the edge of your seat until the last page!
My review:
I loved this, so imaginative, exciting and relatable. Awesome writing Richard Dee. My hubby has action-packed, crazy, dreams all the time, so this really appealed to me. Though, I don’t think my hubby’s dreams have taken him off planet as yet, at least, if they have he hasn’t told me!
Poor Rick, he truly does get into trouble with his dreams which take him off galavanting to planet Ecias away from his married life, ( with Cath on earth,) into the arms of Vanessa. In Ecias, he has a name change too and becomes Dan.
Cath begins to think that Rick is having a real affair… And her jealousy leads her and Rick to disastrous measures.
Oh, can’t say I liked Cath much… But she redeemed herself somewhat… Jealousy can bring out the ugly in people.
Which is real? Life on earth, or life in Ecias?
My recommendation: 5 stars. If you want to read something different – in the Sci Fi/Thriller category give this a go. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the audio copy.
Part one includes my personal diaries and poetry during lockdown, the ‘isolation writers’ discussing the impact of this extraordinarily stressful time on their lives, poems and writings from authors, bloggers and a piece from Jane Horwood and Melissa Santiago-Val about their fabulous fundraising mask venture for the NHS.
Look at these:
Part two continues with my writings during lockdown: poetry, short stories, (including my YA short story The Poet’s Club, and flash fiction plus a more mature Love Affair, (short piece set post virus.)
It has been quite a learning curve for me – my first compilation/anthology!
The formatting was a challenge. There are lots and lots of photographs in this collection. The majority are observational photos I’ve taken during allowed walks of all manner of things including concrete frogs hidden below bridges…. and my thoughts about why this fellow is there… So mysterious…
There are also lovely kitty photos from my good friend Samantha Murdoch… Now that’s a face! Poor Charlie, kitty, what is the matter?
As well as fetching author photos… and masked up photos from myself, Beaton, and the Masks4NHS venture.
Anyway, it is a true account of my observations, and the thoughts of authors, bloggers and creatives from the UK, US, Canada, Italy and Zimbabwe.
Wherever we are, we are all feeling it. This time unites us in a way that we could never have imagined.
Colleen Chesebro is looking for syllabic poetry donations for Part Two of her book:
It’s time for an update on the poetry I need for examples for my new book, Word Craft – The Art of Crafting Syllabic Poetry. I’ve been playing with book cover ideas. The book is divided into two group: Japanese forms and American forms. This book covers the eleven forms we use in the weekly…
Today, I have great pleasure to share with you an excerpt from This Is Lockdown, an anthology of writing plus my poetry, flash fiction, and short stories due for release soon.
We are living in strange and difficult times indeed my friends, but there comes a time when we must raise our eyes to the future, and reflect and act on what we have learned…
Although not a native of the East Midlands, I find its quirky humour and the people here have grown on me the longer I’ve lived here and there’s always something… well strange going on.
Take the other day for example – as the youngest, fittest and lowest risk category member of my little family I do the shopping and medication run, and I had just returned from delivering essential items to my mother.
“Hurry up for Christ’s sake Samantha, you know I can’t go out and I am gasping for a cigarette and the dogs are driving me mad for treats!” namely cigarettes, dog meat and dog treats, leaving them carefully on her doorstep and waving to the dogs who were grinning madly at me through the window while standing on the windowsill wearing Mother’s net curtains on their heads like very fetching lace mantillas.
I called goodbye and left – “Get off the bloody windowsill you idiots!” – her words of farewell echoing behind me and went pottering off up the hill to return to my own house, pondering weighty issues like should I feed my sour dough starter again – did I need to plant more beetroot and would my partner possibly let me buy a little goat…
My reverie was, well, strangely interrupted by a somewhat overweight and half naked gentleman running towards me, his hands cupped carefully around something at his groin level shouting:
“Can you do anything with this please?”
Understandably, I backed away rapidly, fumbling desperately in my handbag for a weapon (I found a biro) and my look of confusion must have registered with the man because he stopped running and said, a little more reasonably:
“No, look!”
He held his hands out to me, and nestled on his palms was a collared dove, one of our prettiest native birds. I approached and looked down. It seemed uninjured, and gazed back trustingly at us.
“What would you like me to do with it?” I enquired politely, hoping I wasn’t about to be wrestled indoors and commanded to make pigeon pie…
“My cat had hold of it – she’s a bogger * for catching birds and bringing ‘em in and I can’t leave it in my garden coz she’ll only have it again, so I thought you could take it with you,” he finished, looking at me hopefully.
“Ah! Oh – no, I have four cats,” I told him, and we both nodded in mutual understanding of our furry friends’ proclivities.
Suddenly, he brightened as an idea struck.
“That house over there – they’ve got a big hedge! I can put it in there!”
“That’s a good idea,” I replied encouragingly.
Together, we sneaked across the road, keeping out of the sight line of the house and I watched as the man pushed the dove into a suitable hole as far up as he could reach in the hedge.
We stood back and looked. The dove settled quite happily into its hiding place and we smiled at each other, the half naked somewhat overweight man and I, united in our common goal to help save a little life.
I haven’t seen him since, and I hope the little bird recovered too. But in these strange days sometimes that’s all that’s needed – a little kindness.
* The term bogger is the pronunciation used in Nottingham of bugger!
Bio:
Samantha Murdoch enjoys sharing her thoughts on writing and the power of the written word. She entertains and amuses her blogging community with her thoughts and memories, cats, crystals laughter and the magic of everyday life.
A lovely blog with a warm and friendly welcome, and lots of furry friends too!
Thank you to Chantelle Atkins for this Q and A as part of the blog tour for the forthcoming release of This Is Lockdown, an anthology of 29 authors, writers and creatives. This Is Lockdown, is a snapshot of time and includes writing, diaries, flash fiction, poetry and contributions from the ‘isolation writers’ who featured on my blog. This Is Lockdown releases on July 20th. To preorder: mybook.to/Thisislockdown
M J Mallon YA Author and Poet 