Read an Ebook Week!

Book News:


Welcome to Read an Ebook Week! I hope that those of you who read ebooks are having a great time and those of you who haven't taken the plunge yet might get the urge to have a go, especially in view of the range of discounts offered during the week by a wide variety of publishers.

In terms of my own books on offer this week, here's what there is:

1. 20% discount on all my work at Rainbow Ebooks - until this Saturday
2. 25% discount on The Hit List - direct from the publisher
3. 20% discount on all my ebooks at Dreamspinner Press
4. 20% discount on my haiku collection, Sunday Haiku - direct from the publisher
5. If you buy A Woman like The Sea, then my other books at Untreed Reads are at a 40% discount

And what could be nicer than all that? Enjoy!

Other book news is that Creative Accountancy for Beginners was briefly at No 43 in the Amazon UK Kindle charts, and The Delaneys and Me came in at No 90 in the Amazon UK Kindle Gay charts, so that certainly put a smile on my face.

In addition, Entertaining the Delaneys is now available from All Romance Ebooks, and I'm also happy to announce that I'll be taking part in the British Author Fortnight at Brief Encounter Reviews - my slot is 22 March so I'm looking forward to that.

Meanwhile, I'm quietly pleased to say that I've reached my 500th meditation poem. Doesn't mean a lot to anyone else, I know, but I feel pretty happy about it. Maybe I'll reach No 1000 one day - there's plenty of bible left to read, that's for sure! Here are the most recent poems:




Meditation 499
To make a fresh start
sometimes all you need

is a trusted road
and an open heart.




Meditation 500
God is best discovered
in the search
for something else

when we become aware
of the shimmer
at the edge of vision,

the thought
we can’t quite capture,
the friend we’ve forgotten

to meet:
that borderline land
where dreams still stand.




Meditation 501
Words when spoken aloud
create their own
unknowable life:

they break down
ancient temples,
destroy the history

we thought we knew,
change men’s lives,
reshape what is to come.




Meditation 502
After activity
the time comes
for celebration and rest,

the rhythm
of life’s seasons
being only the best.


Life News:

Well, we've had Pancake Day on Tuesday (mmm, pancakes - always good with ice cream and treacle, mmm ...), so Lent has begun in full. Forty days of trying to ease down on the worrying - I'm doing okay so far, but hey it's only Day Two. But I'm not worrying about it (ha!) so that's all right. My mantra, or rather two of my mantras, so far are: it might just work out well if I leave it alone; and God's more worried about this than I am, so let him do his job ... Not catchy, I know, but I'm letting them settle. The anti-depressants are good so far too, and are no doubt helping my Lenten focus. I feel surprisingly calm, even measured. That's not a feeling I've had for a while - it's very pleasant change. It may be psychosomatic as I've not been on them for more than a week, but I'm not complaining.

I even quite enjoyed staffing the Student Care table at last night's Postgraduate Open Event with one of my colleagues from Student Advice. It was great to catch up and we had some good conversations with visitors. At one stage, I even sounded fairly knowledgeable, which surprised me most of all. I doubt that will last long as really I don't know a bean.

And television is weaving its strange and mystical spell upon me. I was severely disappointed with the utter melodrama and laughable plot of the last episode of South Riding on Sunday. What were they all thinking? I giggled all the way through it (is it the pills?). As Andrea at work said, how can a cliff fall down onto a beach taking horse and rider with it and not one person notices that the cliff is missing. What??! I blame the lack of electricity they appear to have oop North - as everything was done in the utmost gloom. Somebody switch a light on and we can all head for the door ...

Mind you, I am still gripped with the huge amount of Awful People (capitals deliberate) who work at The Model Agency. They are all utterly horrid, my dears, honestly. It comes to something when the sanest, nicest and most sensible people in a TV programme are the teenage models themselves. It's the old people at the agency I despair of. What is the world coming to?

Anne Brooke