The Decluttering Queen

Book News:

This week I've been delighted that Martin and The Wolf gained a 4-star review at Goodreads - many thanks, Chris. Tuluscan Six and The Time Circle received a 4.5 star review at Jessewave Reviews, so thank you to Val for that.

Meanwhile, Tommy's Blind Date has been doing well, with a review at Tam's Reads (scroll down to view), and two 5-star reviews at Goodreads, one from Lisa and one from Stephanie, so a big thank you to you both! And, for the blink of an eye, The Delaneys and Me found itself at No 40 in the Amazon charts but has dropped out now.

Finally, in this section, K and I have been parsing the verb to Kindle, and have decided it's an irregular verb: I Kindle; you don't have a Kindle; he/she/it doesn't know what a Kindle is ... Really, I'm loving it.

My latest meditations are:


Meditation 430
To question God
with raw honesty

is better
than a thousand pleasant lies

told in the secret passages
of your heart.


Meditation 431
Sow in the field
of desire

and reap
a harvest of death;

sow in the field
of kindness

and reap
a harvest of life.


Meditation 432
A whisper from the sea
seven times softer
than the salty air
you breathe.

When the dark clouds dance
and the wind sings,
run before the promise
of rain, rejoicing.

Life News:

Well, it's been inevitable really, and certainly since the beginning of September when it all went horribly wrong, but K and I have this week now officially withdrawn from the flat-buying disaster and have, in a brief email to them and their solicitors, wished the vendors luck in whatever they decide to do with their flat from now on. Well, a former boss of mine once told me - and he was right - always to end a quarrel with courtesy so that is what we have attempted to do. Time to lick our wounds, take a deep breath and move on, once our solicitor's bill is paid, of course!

With this in mind, we've been continuing to paint and declutter our flat ready for potential buyers, and have managed to clear the place of nine bags of recyclable clothes and two bin-bags of clothes not even charity shops would take. We have also thrown away a lot of our old video tapes (though I can't bring myself to part with all my Star Trek ones - no way!) and have therefore all but filled three wheelie-bins full of rubbish again. And the binmen aren't collecting rubbish until Tuesday week as we're on a fortnightly cycle so Lord knows where I'll be putting the old/unwanted food leftovers ... Help!

We have also given at least one coat of paint to everything in the hallway that needs lightening up, apart from the skirting board as we need to take the carpet up for that. And I have washed the spare room walls where I can get to them between the bookcases ready for giving that a coat of paint too. There'll be more stuff to throw away from the spare room but some of that is a council tip job so I think K and I will have to tackle that together.

In the midst of all this, I've also had my regular hospital appointment with the lovely Alli, and we've now decided that I'll be coming off the HRT to try to avoid the need for another operation to take my right ovary out, as it's not very good really. Poor thing, I'm quite fond of it, you know - I think it's called George - and I'd like to try to save it. But I am a bit worried as to what it might do in terms of my mood swings, which the HRT was helping a lot with, so I will have to try to keep a close eye on how I am (not easy when I could be either screaming with rage and brandishing the nearest weaponry or weeping like a klutz all over the dining room table, and sometimes both!...) and keep taking the St John's Wort which is also marvellous for my happiness levels. We'll see.

So, thank goodness for a night out on Tuesday with the lovely Jane and Tanya, the latter of whom I'd not seen for ages so it was great to catch up. The French restaurant Jane chose ( Cote in Guildford) was fabulous too and the food top-notch though we were all puzzled as to why there was a choice of having your mushroom soup either hot or cold. Yuk! The French are a mysterious folk indeed. We're also at that age where none of us can read the menu unless it's at arm's length, which caused great amusement to our fellow diners. Ah well. We're not getting any younger, you know ...

Anne Brooke

Bitchy women and difficult men

Book News:

Angels and Airheads is now available for sale at All Romance Ebooks and, talking of sales, Untreed Reads are offering a 29% discount on ALL their titles for today only if you put HAPPYBIRTHDAYPC in as a discount code at checkout, so click here for a fabulous shopping experience.

I'm happy to note that Creative Accountancy for Beginners is No 10 on the Omnilit ebooks bestseller charts, well gosh, so a big thank you to those of you who've bought that one. Speaking of chart placings, The Delaneys and Me is back, after a brief holiday, into the Amazon Gay Fiction charts and is currently lying at No 59. I'm also thrilled to say that Martin and The Wolf has been chosen as one of the Recommended July Reads at Jessewave Reviews, so thank you, Wave, for that!

Also, to my surprise as at heart I'm a glass-half-empty sort of person, The Girl in the Painting appears to be selling well in the UK, so that's lovely to know. Another thank you to those readers out there. And yet another thank you, this time to Charles for his mention of Sunday Haiku at the ever-popular and very classy Ink Sweat & Tears webzine. (Apologies if that last link doesn't work, as Blogger doesn't seem to like it no matter what I do, sigh, but it is there, honest!...)

In addition, I've finished the first draft of my online novella, The Prayer Seeker's Journal, which has come in at about 45,000 words. So I'll start editing that when we're back from our holiday. Weirdly, I've started writing a story with a child who can't speak as a main character, so Lord alone knows where that's going. I'm calling it The Origami Nun - a title inspired by Ruth G at work. I can see the whole story in my head right now, which never happens. Is it my age? Or am I being switched with my far nicer twin after all these years?? Who can tell ...

Meanwhile at Vulpes Libris, my review of Suzannah Dunn's The Confession of Katherine Howard takes a look at bitchy women and difficult men, Tudor-style. I am of course an expert in the former (from self-knowledge, naturally) and have absolutely no knowledge whatsoever of the latter, ho ho.

This week's meditations are:

Meditation 403
All the cedar,
pine and gold
in the world

cannot ease the bitterness
of counting everything
as evil.


Meditation 404
The great temple
was built
not just by Solomon’s
godly obedience

but by the blood
and sweat
of the men he forced
to die for it.


Life News:

Work's been really tricky this week and, once again, I seem to have been at odds with the world, alas. So yes it probably is me. I am naturally angry all the time, sigh. Anyway, I ended up yesterday evening at home sobbing like a baby about it all whilst Lord K attempted to provide sustenance and support, bless him. Surely the change in my HRT regime can't have kicked in quite so soon?? Lord preserve us. Soon I will be wailing and screaming at least once a day while I wait for the menopause to arrive. Hey ho. Again.

Mind you, I think I've been leading up to another bout of nasty catarrh illness as I'm as sick as the proverbial today, a state made rather worse by being able to grab only a couple of hours' sleep last night. Why can't the TV channels have nice light comedies on during the very early mornings when we sick people of Britain actually need them? I'm thinking of writing a letter of complaint along these lines as I don't want politics, news, rampant naughtiness or murders when I'm feeling that delicate. I really don't understand why the programmers can't see that ...

What with all that, I looked like a zombie that had seen better days a long long time ago by the time the real morning was here - so thank goodness Lord K was on hand to deal with the mortgage surveyor who arrived bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 8.30am to give his verdict on the flat below. So I think we've done everything that we need to do to ease the buying process along and all we have to do now is wait for the various reports to arrive, and take stock at that point.

So far today then, I have been enjoying a diet of Lucozade, Lemsips, Sudafed, Vitamin C pills and allergy relief pills, together with lots of castor oil rubbed on to my neck to ease the breathing process - so never say I don't know how to enjoy myself. I ought to have some food later on, really, but with this old familiar monster (catarrh, not me - oh, on second thoughts, maybe me too ...) there's no point rushing it as it's over only when it says it is.

I have managed to do some packing though, trailing my boxes of tissues with me - as tomorrow Lord K and I are off to see the Egypt Group of friends (ie friends we met in Egypt - how good at titles I am!) oop north for the weekend and then we're spending a few days in Northumbria. I hope I don't spread too much disease along with southern largesse and style (if I had any), but I would advise avoiding any of the service stations on the A1 tomorrow as you are likely to meet me doing something unspeakable with castor oil on the way and looking unbearably slimy. What joy for you!

However, to take our minds off that frightening picture, Lord K has now put pictures of the Seville festival on his website, so enjoy the colour and true spectacle that only Spanish senoritas can provide.

See you next week - hope you all have a good (and healthy) one!

Anne Brooke
The Prayer Seeker's Journal

Book trailers, interviews, pills and potions

Goodness me, it seems as if my feet haven't touched the ground once today - or perhaps I really am sitting very strangely at the computer desk? It's hard to say ... Anyway, I had fun last night answering some very searching interview questions from First Edition Magazine which they hope to publish in May. And I also filled in an author publicity sheet for Bridge House Publishing in preparation for the arrival of the Real Bible Stories anthology later in the year. Hell, I almost sound like a real writer there. Obviously it can't last ... Actually I'm very excited by the anthology as Bridge House have all sorts of plans and ideas for it, including a blog, an authors' network and a possible launch event etc etc, depending on how near to each other all the contributors live. In the sheet, they also asked for suggestions of who might endorse the work, and I instantly thought of Victor Stock, the Dean of Guildford Cathedral, or perhaps the University Chaplain, Jonathan Frost. Something to ponder on, maybe ...

This morning, I'm afraid I've not done my usual Bible reading, so there's no meditation poem - my excuse is that I've had to skip breakfast in preparation for a cholesterol blood test at the doctor's so I haven't had the energy for spiritual exercise. Of any sort. At the surgery, they managed to get some blood out of my arm at the first attempt too (very rare), so well done them. However I shall be sure to limp and look suitably pathetic for when Lord H comes home. No change there then. I also had my usual diabetes test done at the same time - really, in this day and age you'd think they'd provide something more suitable than that minute test-tube to do one's business in, but sadly not. Apparently they'll ring me and let me know if (a) my cholesterol is rubbish; (b) I have diabetes; or (c) I'm dead. How kind. So no news is good news, as they say. Whilst there, I also picked up a renewal of my HRT pills, as they seem to be working okay at the moment. Long may that continue, eh.

For the rest of this morning, I've been having fun sourcing pictures, music and making a running plan for my proposed book trailer for Maloney's Law. For which I must heartily thank the lovely and talented Caroline Rance who spared me time in her no doubt action-packed pre-publication schedule to write me a short manual of how to do a book trailer. Thank you so much, Caroline - you are an utter star! I'm planning to have a go at the first version of it, with Lord H's help, this weekend, so wish me luck. However, at this stage in the game, I'm really thrilled with the pictures I've found, and the music is ace too. I can't wait to see how it turns out.

I've also managed to squeeze out another 1000 words to Hallsfoot's Battle, so I'm now into the 101,000 zone. And I think we're getting to some pretty explosive and magical goings-on right now. Though Ralph is rather the worse for wear, what with the agonies the mind-executioner has put him through. At the moment in that little scene, Simon is actually the only sane one there - which is a rather desperate situation, to say the least. Whatever next, I wonder.

In the midst of all that, I've also written a nonsense poem based on the words "bank", "barn" and "bottom". Yes, well. That probably is as good an indication of the state of my brain as any. It just started drumming away at my head at about 10.30 (maybe it's the lack of breakfast?), demanding I notice it, so I had to give in in the end. I enjoyed writing it too. Better out than in. As it were.

And much to my blessed relief, I've finally dragged myself, moaning and chortling (but not in a good way), to the end of the quite astonishingly dire Belshazzar's Daughter by Barbara Nadel. She's described on the front of the book as the "Donna Leon of Istanbul". I've never read a Leon. Is she really that bad?? Words fail me. Are publishers on drugs??? It's the only explanation. Anyway, it's very sloppily written, the point of view changes with the wind, even within paragraphs, and it's full of horrid, selfish people, all of whom I wished had died on Page 1. The only good thing is that Policeman Number Two, Suleyman, is nice, and Policeman Number One, Ikmen, is interesting. That's about it really. The plot is so cliched that I actually laughed out loud at several points, unable to believe what I was reading. I began to fear I would never get to the end of it and I would be stuck in the nightmare world of Nadel for ever, with no possibility of reprieve. Please God let her not write anything else. I couldn't bear the thought.

Tonight, Lord H and I are lightening the mood by going to the theatre to see Lloyd George Knew My Father. I'm hoping it's as funny as it says it is - after the recent reading horror, I need all the comedy I can get. Hell, I deserve it.

Today's nice things:

1. Responding to an interview request
2. Publicity sheets
3. Book trailers
4. Writing Hallsfoot
5. Nonsense poetry
6. Theatre.

Anne Brooke
Anne's website - I'm ready for my close-up, Mr DeMille ...