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Hi Everyone, I recently heard someone use the expression ‘information from nowhere.’ What she seemed to be saying was that sometimes (and this was, she felt, her particular quirk) information about a person, place or thing would arrive uninvited, apropos of no event and relatively free-floating. From that single sliver of info she would invent […]

Hi Everyone, While many people class my novel Geraniums as historical fiction, I do not. Set in the 1960s and ’70s, I tag it modern-day, as those were years I lived through. History was within easy reach. Today I am writing what I think of as true historical fiction, a story set in the decade between 1819

Hi Everyone, When was the last time you bought a lottery ticket? Growing up in my family home, games of chance were verboten, forbidden, evil and a slippery slope to who knows were. Hell, I assume. Who hadn’t heard the comparison to fortune tellers, tarot cards, astrology? Or the tale of the three girls who went to

Hi Everyone, The back seat. Some say it eventually hits every parent, mums and dads alike, but while some go with the flow, I understand others go kicking and screaming into that dark night, some even scheming to never let go. For me, I think “it” is as natural as leaves turning, holding shade in

Hi Everyone, “Always arrive early.” That’s what my grandmother said and that’s what she did. Why? Being “on time” to my grandmother Anne Theresa meant being early, even if you had to wait. In addition, you had to leave in advance to be early (on time), which we always did. The funny thing is that with my grandmother

Hi Everyone, June? How can it be? I was trying to hold back April and then May rolled in, and of course the garden? Well, that just keeps rolling right along, regardless. Yes, it is bursting with all things green and a variety of roses (some unknown to me), as well as free-seeded flowers in

Hi Everyone, Doldrums. I’ve always liked that word. It felt to me like a special, maybe even mythical place, and apparently to some degree it is. Doldrums is a nautical term that refers to the belt around the Earth near the equator where sailing ships sometimes get caught on windless waters. It is today more

Hi Everyone, Over twenty years ago, I adapted the Estonian novel The Czar’s Madman for the screen. That particular adaptation, sadly, has never been produced, despite my being told by the author’s then agent that it was his favourite adaptation. As I see the tragic events continue to unfold in Ukraine, I am even more convinced of

Hi Everyone Some authors say that all work should be kept quiet until you have finished the last draft. I imagine that to possibly be true. However, as a few of you have asked for more of WIP The Fair Incognito, I find it impossible to say no, just as I once found it impossible

Hi Everyone,   When I began writing again after a break of at least a decade, I turned to Jane Friedman’s How to Publish Your Book, produced by The Great Courses. In time, I subscribed to Jane’s blog. This past week she quoted a filmmaker who emphasised that when climbing a mountain don’t look at