Discounts, disappointments and the evil deer

Book News:

There's a nice Goodreads review of gay paranormal short story, Martin and The Wolf, so thank you, Mandy, for that. And thank you also for wanting a sequel - I shall have to add that to my increasingly long sequel list and give it some thought!

And let's not forget (as if I'd allow it, eh ...) that my Amber Allure gay fiction remains discounted at All Romance Ebooks until the end of October - rush now to avoid disappointment ...

Ooh, and earlier this month, I discovered from the lovely and very talented Stella Wiseman that there's an Elstead Writers' Group who meet every month, so I went along yesterday morning and had an incredibly good time - thank you, everyone, for making me feel so very welcome and I'm looking forward to the November meeting already!

Here's the latest meditation poem:




Meditation 579
We cannot contain God
in all the vastness of heaven
or the grandeur of earth

so how can we contain him
in a thought,
a plea, a prayer?

One moment
of courage
might carry us there.


The Sunday haiku is (and I think I am being hugely noble by putting it down at all - but see below for explanation, grr!...):

The roe deer gallops
in sunlight, on frosted grass,
and slips out of sight.


Life News:

Dang it, but the wretched deer (ah, the cursed beasties) have found their way into the garden and eaten 90% of K's lovely vegetable and winter salad garden. Ah, the pain, misery and gnashing of teeth - you could probably hear it from space! I popped out one evening to add some salad to our meal and alas the cupboard was bare, my dears. Utterly bare. The hooved demons have ripped up and eaten all the spinach and Swiss chard, though they have left the rocket and the pak choi - which they obviously turn their nostrils up at. They've also taken most of the roses at head height, left their footprints all over the vegetable patch, along with a polite note asking for more. Well, almost. Deep sigh, eh. And just when I was waxing lyrical about how beautiful they are in the field (hence the haiku), so more fool me. Now, of course I will be chasing them round the garden waving my loppers (as it were) at every opportunity. One had forgotten the joys of country living indeed, hey ho.

Yesterday, after Writers' Group, K and I spent a happy afternoon at Wisley and bought yet more plants for the parts of the garden we (well, he, actually) is/are digging up. Not surprisingly, we didn't get any roses. I've also spent a long time today ripping up weeds with my (gloved) hands, battling with recalcitrant hedges and lopping everything that dares to stray from its allotted path. K keeping surprisingly quiet indeed ... though unless he turns green and starts growing leaves I think he's fairly safe. I must say things look a lot tidier now and there's a much greater sense of space, but of course (as we're learning) there's always more to do.

This morning, we really enjoyed church - the hymns were great and I knew all the tunes, hurrah. It was also Bible Sunday and we were celebrating the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible with an exhibition on the history of it in church. Great stuff - wonderful to see the old manuscripts, and I also learnt that during the 1600s, you couldn't print a bible unless you were the official Royal Printer, but you could print one if you also added notes and annotations to the text - as it wasn't then seen as a "proper" bible. Well, I never knew that. Honestly you learn something new every day.

Though sometimes, alas, it can be disappointing. One of my local acquaintances (whom I've had the pleasure of meeting a couple of times and whom I like very much indeed) has decided to unfriend me on Facebook as they don't believe I should be writing gay erotic fiction if I profess to be Christian. Naturally I feel rather saddened by this but, of course, there are many different views across the whole spectrum of Christianity, and people's beliefs are their own and must be respected as such. Still, I was tempted to advise that, like most of my friends - both Christian and otherwise - they simply don't read what they don't like, and give the other stuff a go if they're so inclined. It's not obligatory after all.

From the other side of the equation, it did make me smile that there are aspects of my acquaintance's religion that make me shudder but I wouldn't like to tell anyone they're wrong. Well, not until I know them a lot better, ho ho. And, of course, if on the great Day of Judgement the good Lord finds me severely wanting (which he no doubt well may), then I suspect it won't be because I've written gay erotic fiction but for all the many sins in my life that I've wilfully committed, such as hypocrisy, bitchiness, anger, meanness, lying, laziness, selfishness and pride. To name but a few - and indeed only those committed within the last half-hour, alas. Lordy, never a dull moment here in Elstead, you know! Ah well, onwards and upwards, as they say.

Anne Brooke
The Thoughtful Corner