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Where Motherhood and Fantasy Combine~ Shattered Energy: A Memory in Time

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There are fantasy novels built on spectacle, and then there are fantasy novels built on emotional truth. Shattered Energy: A Memory in Time by Athena Plencner manages to deliver both. At its center is Ariyana, a woman whose terrifying dreams begin to unravel the reality she thought she knew, forcing her to confront loss, identity, and the dangerous truths buried inside her own memory. As we celebrate Mother’s Day here in the United States, it feels especially fitting to talk about a novel whose heroine remains, through all the chaos and revelations surrounding her, a fiercely loving and deeply protective mother. Even while facing impossible choices, Ariyana’s concern for her children never leaves the emotional center of the story. I spoke with Athena Plencner about memory, dragons, fear, vulnerability, and building worlds that feel both epic and deeply human. Dianne Pearce: The idea that Ariyana’s dreams are actually memories is so compelling. What sparked that concept for you? Ariyan...
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The Mystery Box – a prison or a refuge?

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  Margery Allingham was a May baby, born into this gorgeous month of fresh grass and leaves, when the air is scented by honeysuckle or wild garlic; peonies, giant poppies and alliums are bursting balls of colour; the annual miracles of lilac and wisteria cascade in elegant fragrancies. As a lonely child, moving from suburban London to Layer Breton, Essex, she learned to love the unkempt garden of a decaying country rectory for its wildness and sense of possibility.  As a successful adult, living in Essex once again, she and her husband gave parties in their garden, employed a full-time gardener and exhibited prize roses in the local horticultural shows. That was never the heart of its meaning. Margery’s garden remained a sanctuary, a place where she could achieve ‘ a momentary clarity of mind, which will give me a definite lead at least to the next step in whatever I may be about .’ (Oaken Heart p115). When she experienced breakdown in mid-April 1955 she was seen wandering t...
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Yearning for a Simpler Time by Neil McGowan

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The last year or so has seen me coaxing more life out of my (admittedly rather old) laptops, to keep them running just that bit longer. As an engineer by trade, I quite enjoy poking around in hardware and software to see what I can tinker with to extend the working life of a piece of kit. There are a couple of reasons behind this, and why I don’t simply buy a new laptop. Cost is one with choice and sustainability behind the other, although for me the two are somewhat linked. Most obvious for me is cost – I can’t see the point in splashing out hundreds for a slighty newer version of something I already have. I don’t need anything too fancy – just some web browsing, office suite, and audio tools to rip CDs and play audio files. No need for high-end video as I’m not into movies or games. Problem is, the current craze for AI has driven the cost of IT kit through the roof. To add insult to injury, I’d also be paying the Microsoft tax to immediately wipe Windows off and install Linux. You...
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Debbie Bennett says Button It!

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Buttons and fasteners. Connections. Things that hold things together. Or just an embellishment?  My daughter bought me a long fluffy cardigan for Christmas a couple of years ago. She’s very tuned into my dress style and knows what I like. It’s one of those cardis that thinks it might be a jacket, or even a dressing gown in the right circumstances and at this time of year, it’s rarely far from me. But it needed buttons. Not that I like to button it up fully, but it can get annoying when it constantly slips off your shoulders.  No belt and no buttonholes. And it was machine-knitted. Handy as I am with a sewing machine, I’m not competent enough to make holes in a knit without the whole thing unravelling. So I bought some fasteners I could sew on to both sides and now it’s perfect!  Fast forward a year or so and I’m mooching around one of my favourite charity shops while killing time in town. And I find the most gorgeous deep red velour winter coat. In a charity shop but bran...
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Is This the Moment? (Cecilia Peartree)

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In the intervals of wrestling with ACX, I've managed to start some minimalist gardening. For some time now, I’ve had the idea at the back of my mind that I’d like to have a go at audiobooks. I have a feeling the books in my 30-book mystery series might suit the format, and as a recent audiobook listener I now know that the right narrator can add a lot to the basic text. Until now there were two main barriers preventing me from going ahead. One was the likely cost, needless to say. However I’ve somehow managed to make enough from Kobo sales, of all things, to cover the cost of having the first book, at least, narrated. The other and slightly more daunting barrier was that I had always imagined my younger son was the only person I could trust to do the books justice. They are set in Fife, in Scotland, with a cast of characters who vary in age and life experience but are mostly Scottish, so I needed someone with a Scottish but not too Scottish accent. When I say ‘not too Scottish’, I ...
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Sensim Sine Sensu: what I have been reading by Peter Leyland

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                                     Sensim Sine Sensu: what I have been reading   I was completely out of ideas for a post this month, so I turned to the books I had been reading for inspiration: The first was  The Quiet Ear  by Raymond Antrobus, a birthday present from my sister. This author, as some of you may know, is a performance poet who is partly deaf, but whose life has been considerably enhanced by the wearing of hearing aids. This autobiography is an account of his struggle to come to terms with his deafness in a world which often fails to accommodate those with hearing difficulties and his eventual triumph against all the odds.   The second book that I finished, one that I had been meaning to read for some time, was  Hamnet  by Maggie O’Farrell which I picked up in the second-hand section of my local library. It is the untold story of the death of Shak...
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Mary Bennet is Charming: it's the Other Bennet Sisters that are the problem, writes Griselda Heppel.

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The servants' view:  Longbourn by Jo Baker Look, I don’t usually bother with this sort of thing.  Yet another rewriting of Pride and Prejudice . We’ve had it from the servants’ point of view (Jo Baker’s Longbourn ), it’s infused Bridget Jones’s Diary , and been recast as a comic horror film,  Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,  starring the Undead. (This last version may be a kind of backhanded compliment to Jane Austen on the deathless status of her most loved work, I couldn’t possibly say.)  And now, heaven help us, we have Mary Bennet’s story.  Suffused with Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice : Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding That’s right. The hilariously tedious, pedantic, verbose, two-dimensional middle sister whose only function is for us to laugh at her. Whether or not you find her a believable character, or feel there’s a touch of cruelty in her creation, there's no escaping the fact that this is how Jane Austen wrote her.  But guess what....
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