I’m a contributing author in the Plaisted Publishing House Ghostly Writes Anthology 2018 with my story Ghostly Goodbye. Ghostly Goodbye by M J Mallon Ghostly Goodbye is a paranormal love story about a young woman called Iris who can’t get over her husband’s death. She is mourning him so much that she feels dead inside. Her husband Ed sends her a ghostly message from beyond the grave via an old forgotten garment in her wardrobe. She responds by dragging herself from her tomb-like bed and he draws back the curtain of death to visit her in a most unusual way.
Available on Amazon, Apple, Nook, Kobo, Scribd, 24S, Playster, Indigo, Angus & Robertson, Mondadori Store: Universal Buying Link
This week Colleen has given us total freedom with a free choice of words so I thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to explore a new form of poetry too. Etheree poem…
Etheree The Etheree poem consists of ten lines of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 syllables. Etheree can also be reversed and written 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. The trick is to create a memorable message within the required format. Poets can get creative and write an Etheree with more than one verse, but the idea is to follow suit with an inverted syllable count. Reversed Etheree Syllable Count: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 Double Etheree Syllable Count: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10, 9, 8, 7, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
I had a wonderful walk in the Botanic Gardens in Cambridge during my lunch break and came across this beautiful tree. It was so beautiful and magical that I struggled to part with it! This Etheree is in its honour.
I have an important announcement to make Kyrosmagica is now taking its first delicate steps into the …… unknown …. new civilisations … space dock….. no only kidding, I’m partaking in the delights of Instagram. You will probably have noticed by now that I love taking photos. All sorts of weird and wonderful things catch my eye, even fabulous ceilings like the one above, so I will be posting my favourite inspiring images and sharing them with you.
There will be something for everyone, I hope!
Whether that might be pretty trees, colourful flowers, tasty food, (I love my grub,) lovely places, candles, clocks, crystals, and of course bookish/blog related posts. Stolen cats (yes, I might need to pinch some as I don’t own one, a serious setback to an Instagram user. Any cats free for a sitting? You know who to contact, details below.
So please do follow me on Instagram too, this is a new endeavour and this empty handed lover of cats needs all the support she can get, help me crank up my follower notch a little if you can. If you do I promise I will purr….. I can’t wait to connect with new followers on Instagram and see all your lovely photos from all over the world. Already I’ve discovered some wonderful photos locally here in Cambridge, and further afield in exotic faraway places.
So do join me on this journey.
Yesterday with this in mind I went out on my first Instagram specific photography jaunt, the weather wasn’t what I’d call optimum, it was a bit of a grey day, it could have been sunnier but nevertheless I managed to get a few photos without being rained upon.
I have lots of ideas planned for my Instagram page and I am very excited about this!!!
Funnily enough I saw another person taking a close up photo of tree bark, I reckon she must be a keen Instagram enthusiast too! Either that or she is studying botany. At about the same time I nearly took a photo of my feet walking but I saved that gem of wonderment for next time!! Don’t laugh, people do this on Instagram all the time!
One particular image that caught my eye was a simple blue balloon that had floated up to the top of the ceiling in the shopping centre in Cambridge, and was trapped there. Can you imagine what that child’s reaction must have been when it floated away? No doubt tears were shed. I guess it might have been a birthday balloon, it looked shiny and fancy. I loved the contrast of the round, blue balloon, against the crisp lines of the ceiling structure.
Here’s the rest of my selection from yesterday, which you can see on my Instagram too, most of which have an Autumnal/Halloween theme:
Starting off with some candles on display in a shop, I love candles, tea lights, and aromatic delights so it’s not surprising that these featured.
Some Lush Halloween Bath Bombs perhaps, I love my smellies!
This colourful tree by the colleges and other pretty spots in the park on the way to Cambridge town centre caught my eye too:
It does look kind of deserted doesn’t it? There were people around but they kindly moved out of the way for my photography stint!
And did I mention that I like to eat? I think I did. This window display at Patisserie Valerie made me halt in my tracks. It’s enough to make anyone’s mouth water!! So have a cake or two on me ………………
Hope you like them!!! Napkin anyone?
Thanks so much to all my lovely followers for continuing to support me in all that I do here in this blog, on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and Goodreads, and now on Instagram. It means so much.
This October I’m doing a lead up to Halloween theme with lots of spooky, scary, and fun posts. As well as this I will be doing some reblogs (which don’t necessarily need to be autumn/Halloween themed but are helpful advice to authors/bloggers, writers.)
Here are some of my Halloween themed posts that you might have missed:
I’ve just finished reading Frozen Charlotte by Alex Bell – part of the #redeyereadealong on Goodreads. Highly recommended 4.5 stars. Keep an eye out for my review. After this I’ll be reading the rest of the red eye titles too! So plenty to keep me occupied…
As well as this I’ve been nosy checking out other bloggers posts about Halloween/Autumn and thought it would be nice to share them with you, here are a few gems:
First up is this wonderfully spooky cat café in Japan, this really caught my eye:
Fellow #Blog Battler author Rawls E. has a welcome to autumn post, celebrating autumn, October, pumpkins, spooky Haunted houses, hayrides, and cemeteries:
Fancy visiting some literary horror houses? Look no further, Flavorwire, opens up its doors to Stephen King, (spider webbed gated front with bats!!) Edgar Allen Poe’s red brick house with eerie basement, H.P. Lovecraft, Neil Gaiman (with a phenomenal library!) Ray Bradbury, Anne Rice, Clive Barker, Shirley Jackson.
Annika Perry featured one of my favourite poems about autumn, John Keats Ode to autumn, and has had some wonderful posts just recently, so do check out her blog:
Hope you enjoyed all these Autumnal and Halloween inspired posts, I may be doing more of these so if you’d like to feature, and share the Halloween love do get in contact.
Apparently this little fellow is coming to pay us a visit in the UK this autumn. It’s not even Halloween yet but well he’s keen to make your acquaintance. He doesn’t need much care, just a steady stream of insects to eat, somewhere to hide when the going gets rough. He comes with the guarantee of No Vet Bills to worry about. Play with him from time to time, he promises not to bite. He’s real cute scuttling across the floor. Just don’t bother trying to catch him, he’s mega fast. Oh and whatever you do, don’t break up his web, he gets really upset. That’s his home, he’s spent a lot of time working on it, give Mr Spider a break! How would you feel if somebody smashed up your home?
Ok, joking apart these guys look scary but they’re harmless. Actually they’re quite useful. They’ll keep your insect population down. Handy chaps to have around. This gets me back to a real life event, the other evening my daughter came running into the living room whilst we were watching TV. She said that she’d seen an enormous spider. It was as “big as a Tarantula.” She was so upset she was virtually on the verge of tears. I was a bit sceptical, but now I’m beginning to wonder, did she see our friend above ? No wonder she was upset if she did! Anyway we turned her bedroom upside down, screaming with mounting hysteria every time we thought something had fallen out of a bag, or a shoe. This took a long, long, time, her room isn’t very tidy. Come on she’s a teenager, give her a little slack. Anyway Mr Tarantula didn’t make an appearance again. I think the screaming scared him away, maybe he had a headache and decided that he needed to go for a nap? Or maybe he was hungry and was off to sample a buffet of his favourite insects? Either way I just hope we don’t wake up one morning with him crawling on our faces! We don’t fancy being his delicacy!
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