This is SO witty! I read it out to my husband who said it's too late, I already have all the symptoms and it's too late for him to do anything about it!
(I love the picture of Monty Roberts you used, by the way. I suppose that's what we are actually, not horse whisperers but 'word whisperers!)
Veni, vidi...Wiki! Not long ago I had the all-time greatest Great Idea: one, born of total ignorance, that nearly tanked a novel. As you may have guessed from my opening line, my subject is Julius Caesar. But you might not have guessed from the title that my Great Idea entailed his being reborn as a penis. Don't laugh, please, I beg you. I saw no way around this, even though showing JC as a 'dick' might lead some to think that I've written a spoof. In fact, it's a serious thriller. Without giving the plot away, I can say this: I needed JC's ghost, today, remembering his nights with Cleopatra on her fabled golden barge. There was the heart of my book--a ghost trying for 2000 years to relive that lost boogie with Liz. And I'd begun to run with this when my memory corrected me: Mark Anthony, not JC, was on the barge with Cleo. And this was after JC's death. What the hell was I to do, lacking the good sense to check memory's 'facts
When John’s Campaign went to the House of Commons in March 2022 to explain why legislation is needed to ensure the right to a care supporter, we were asked who we would like to speak on our behalf. Without hesitation Nicci Gerrard and I invited Wendy Mitchell. We feel passionately that there should be ‘nothing about us without us’ but as a dementia campaign it is not always easy to find people living with the condition who feel able to describe their experience in public. Wendy was diagnosed with early onset dementia in 2014 when she was 58. At first, she sank into a deep depression but then decided that there was hope. She would live as well as she could for as long as she could – and encourage others to do the same. Since then, thousands -- perhaps millions -- of people have been inspired by Wendy though her blog ‘Which Me Am I today?’ her books, her public appearances and her extraordinary feats such as sky diving and wing-riding, undertaken when she discovered that battling de
It is March, and World Book Day approacheth… and I am delighted to find myself booked for the whole day. Christ Church Cathedral School, Oxford have asked for 3 workshops, one based on each of my books, to 3 different year groups, and I’m just hoping my voice doesn’t run out half way through the third one. I know this is nothing for many seasoned authors but I’ve never done quite so much in one day before and I’m wondering how to get into training. Talk more at home, perhaps, in the week up to Thursday, 7th March ? (What, more than you do already? exclaims my husband. Hmph. Thanks for that.) The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame One thing I do need to prepare, though: my costume. Dressing up as a favourite character in a children’s book is all part of the fun, apparently, but isn’t as easy as it sounds. Animals (Ratty in The Wind in the Willows , Reepicheep in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader , Kanga in Winnie the Pooh ) are out, as far as I’m concerned, owing to complexity of cos
Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose This book was recommended to me by the director of a creative writing program here in Amsterdam. She thought it might help me reacquaint myself with the various craft terms I’d need to know when I start teaching in the spring. Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose turned out to be so much more. As a reader, it crystallized for me the reason I love books. As a writer, it offered real life tips. And as a wannabe teacher, it gives me the courage to think I’ll make it someday. on reading For many of us, reading has become a chore. We skim through reports, emails, the news feed hoping to digest as much information as quickly as we can. And even when we read for pleasure, we might skip pages and paragraphs to cut to the chase, find out whodunit, answer the who-what-when questions in our mind. But when we were kids, reading was different. As Francine Prose reminds us: "We all begin as close readers. Even before we learn to
"I have seldom heard a train go by and not wished I was on it," wrote Paul Theroux welcoming us succinctly aboard The Great Railway Bazaa r. "Trains sing bewitchment," Theroux added at the start of a four-month rail journey from London through Europe, the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, returning via the Trans-Siberian Railway. His 1975 armchair classic depicts people, history, and cultures, more than trains and never complains about difficult accommodations. "If a train is large and comfortable you don't even need a destination." ...I concur. I've set a few of my stories on trains, including Onion Station (published in Chicago Quarterly Review and in my anthology, Sometimes Ridiculous ). The tale is told from the perspective of a boy on a 1940s transcontinental train trip stopover with his warring mother and father in Chicago. It's taken from life -- an episode in a forthcoming novella largely set on rocking ra
Comments
Thanks for bringing it to our attention! :-)
(I love the picture of Monty Roberts you used, by the way. I suppose that's what we are actually, not horse whisperers but 'word whisperers!)