Riots, reviews and Brokeback Mountain revisited

Book News:

Some lovely reviews of my books from a new Italian reader, Anncleire, this week, who's been kind enough to give me a veritable riot of reviews for the following:

A 4-star review for Martin and The Wolf
A 4-star review for Tommy's Blind Date
A 5-star review for The Delaneys and Me
A 5-star review for Entertaining The Delaneys
A 5-star review for The Art of The Delaneys
A 5-star review for A Stranger's Touch.

All reviews are in Italian but Google Translate is a marvellous tool, Many thanks, Anncleire - it's much appreciated.

I also gained a 5-star review for Two Christmases, so many thanks, Arthur, for that one.

To put all this joy into the universal balance once more (and avoid my head getting way too large ...), The Gifting received a very mixed review from TWLIBReviews, so I'm rather less confident about my magnum opus than I was. Probably a good thing then! Though actually that makes one good official review for it and one mixed one, so there's an internal balance there too. Perhaps Simon (bless him!) and those Gathandrians are an acquired taste, like olives? Who can tell ...

Anyway, here's the next line or two of this evidently tricky fantasy novel:

There is no peace in the mind's battles. Only one chance to stop it now ...

Meanwhile, my full interview at Reasons to be Beautiful Magazine (click and scroll through to read) is now published (so many thanks, all, for that!), and Vulpes Libris have revisited my article on Brokeback Mountain. Many thanks for that one, Hilary!

And, for the first time, my pic is now up at DWB Publishing's author page for upcoming Christian novella, The Prayer Seeker, so that's exciting, well gosh. Other very exciting news this week (and hey it's not about me, so miracles can happen ...) is that best-selling crime novelist Vicki Tyley has a new book out called Fatal Liaison, so rush along now and get a copy. She's a dang fine writer.

This week's meditation poems are:


Meditation 556
Success doesn’t come
through winning the war,
the moment the victor relaxes;

he’ll know he’s on top
when the clear-up is done
and the losers are paying him taxes.




Meditation 557
It’s too early
in the morning
for the politics
of war.

I need coffee
and a shower
before sorrow
strikes me at the core

but the images
still haunt me:
something darkened,
something raw.

And I understand
how far we’re changed
by what we see
and what we store.


Life News:

We've exchanged on our Elstead house!!!! Hurrah, at long last we have managed to successfully navigate an exchange date. Third time lucky indeed, and we're both so very happy and relieved about it. Completion date is 1 September and we'll be moving in then. Which is why I've spent almost every spare house over the last few evenings and most of today trying to change our address details with the millions of businesses and utilities etc etc that we appear to be connected to. Who knew our lives were so entangled up with commerce and admin? I think I've all but worked through the ones I can do beforehand now - though I did get hugely cross this morning with the M&G who insisted I wasn't a real person in spite of the fact that we've been with them for about 20 years. My, I did get snippety. However, the fault was in the end entirely mine as I realised about an hour later that I'd been getting my various postcodes utterly muddled and what I'd insisted was correct to the unfortunate chappie at the other end of the line was nothing but bunkum and puff. Well, I simply have too many postcodes to deal with, my dears ... In the end they are melded into one vast generic code, much like Shakespeare plays seem to be as I get older. Mea culpa indeed. And to the young M&G man: heartfelt apologies and it actually wasn't your fault ...

Also this week, we woke up to a flood on Monday as the torrential rain had come through the upstairs neighbour's terrace and found its way across our living room floor. Deep sigh. The lovely Lara (thank you a thousand times ...) from Flat 4 womanfully sorted it out as the upstairs neighbours were away, and Lara knows who all the tradesmen are (in a decent and upstanding way, I have to say at this point ...). However we're not sure there's much that can be done about it as it's the way the house is built, and we shall either just have to pray for less heavy rainfall, or put up a plethora of umbrellas in the remaining three weeks we have here. Ah well.

And indeed we must move quickly for other reasons - this morning K and I were making silly faces at each other (as ... um ... usual) as he went off to work, and another neighbour unexpectedly popped round the corner. Leaving our faces frozen into positions the good Lord probably did not intend. Ah, the embarrassment. I bet they all want us to leave now ...

Finally, there have been a heck of a lot of riots in the UK. And I suspect that everything that needs to be said on the generally horrific nature of them has already been said, at least twice. However, there is something pleasingly odd in being surely the only country in the world who riots and then cleans up after ourselves. It must be the empire spirit, hey ho.

Anne Brooke
The Thoughtful Corner