Holidays and haikus

Life News:

We had a totally lovely time with the Egypt Gang oop north (hello, all, and thank you again!) and catching up was as grand as ever. The only problem was that I spent the whole weekend and indeed the rest of this week being not very well at all, so I hope nobody else has caught what I've had - keep taking the tablets ... Lord K and I then moved a little further south to County Durham and spent a few days at a hotel before coming home. I must say the hotel was rather too Fawlty Towers than was good for it but the food was good and the staff meant well so all was not lost. I did spent a lot of time asleep and/or using up the whole of the UK tissue supply blowing my nose so I can't really say it was the best holiday ever but the weekend with The Gang made it all worthwhile, hurrah! Am definitely not looking forward to the return to work though - I could do with another week's holiday, sickness-free indeed.

Book News:

I have a new webpage for upcoming gay short story, Tommy's Blind Date, which is due out from Amber Allure Press on 12 September.

Meanwhile, the guns are pointing in my directions with tricky reviews here and here - obviously no-one like male hookers or wolves, but sorry for the trauma, Hayley ... Martin and The Wolf did slightly redeem itself however with a 4-star review at Goodreads - many thanks, Ami. In addition, Painting from Life gained its second 5-star review at Amazon US.

I'm also happy to note that during the week (though they're not there now), Maloney's Law unexpectedly found itself in the Top 100 Gay Books at Amazon UK, whilst The Bones of Summer was No 74 in the Amazon UK Gay Erotica charts, well gosh. Not to be outdone, The Delaneys and Me came back in at No 39 in the Amazon Gay Fiction charts and, to my astonishment, three of my Untreed Reads stories were in the Waterstone's Short Stories Top 10 chart, although one of them got a 1-star review (which is much like being blooded at the hunt ...), but you'll have to click on the link to find out which one. I do rather enjoy these 1-star ratings - it's always better to be hated than tolerated, as my grandmother used to say.

There's been one new poem this week:

Unseen
The thing seen
stands for absence
in grey and blue:

part blemish
part blessing
understood by you.


And two haikus:

The north swallows us:
skies of brindled blue and grey,
the woodlands' dark song.


Alnwick Garden
Poison infiltrates
my skin: henbane, rosemary,
wormwood and willow.

Anne Brooke