Books, flowers and the Olympic Blog

Book News:

It's the start of Ebook Fortnight at Vulpes Libris Reviews, where you can find my post confessing how ebooks saved my life, amongst other fascinating articles. Happy (e-) reading.

Gay comic romance Angels and Airheads received an A rating at Brief Encounter Reviews, and over at Goodreads, The Delaneys and Me gained a 4 star review, and Entertaining the Delaneys a 5-star one. Thank you to Kazza for those comments. And, talking of the Delaneys, I've just given the final edits to Amber Allure for The Delaneys At Home, which is due out on Sunday 3 June. Not long to go now!

Meanwhile, there's a sale of all my books over at Books on Board - so hurry over and don't miss out ...

And we GLBTQ UK 2012 Conference writers are not letting the Olympics go unnoticed. We've started a daily Carrying The Torch Olympic blog, and my first post there is all about the joyous cream teas and toilets of Exeter. Perfection indeed!



Recent meditation poems are:




Meditation 658
Power comes
when it will
and leaves
when it must:

its promises
thrill,
though it’s nothing
but dust.




Meditation 659
In these days
prophets are few
and far between

their wisdom
cooling in the air
while the leaves are green

and if we seek them
their shapes are only shadows,
sight unseen.


Life News:

Returning briefly to the importance of supporting the GLBTQ community, Go All Out seems to be a good place to be, so I've added it to my favourites. The focus there is on building a world where we can all live freely and be accepted for who we are - and there's nothing fairer than that. Come and join me - I make good cake! Well, sometimes, eh ...

The last couple of days have been wonderfully garden-friendly. Our strawberries are developing nicely, the choisya is out, the sunflower seeds are starting to sprout, and the remaining two rhododendrons are coming into flower and are both going to be purple. Bliss indeed. On the minus side however, I discovered yesterday that our internal food bin was providing a home from home for a very determined ant community, so I dumped it all into the outside food bin, and it's being recycled tomorrow. Whilst driving out the interlopers, the food bin closed itself very nicely on my finger and I somehow managed to cut myself. Which is pretty impressive, seeing as it's plastic. Luckily I worked the injured digit free, as otherwise the ants would have been in clover, ho hum.

Today, I have planted out the flowers we've grown from seed - so the beds are now full of our jubilee (red, white and blue) petunias, plus verbena, antirrhinums, sweet peas and cuphea ignea. I looked quite charming in my floppy hat and carrying my trusty trowel. It felt like being in an episode of Midsomer Murders before the body is discovered ...

Later on, I'm getting my hair cut, so I'll be able to see out, and then tonight, K's boss is taking us both out for dinner as it's K's 10 year work anniversary. Well done indeed! And what a star boss he has.

Anne Brooke
Gay Reads UK
The Gathandrian Fantasy Trilogy
Biblical Fiction UK

Houses and haikus

Life News:

Well, we've finally made our decision: we've withdrawn our offer on the Woking house because of the general incompetence of our vendors' solicitors who in the last 3.5 months have been amongst the most inefficient people I've ever known. However, our own conveyancer has not been far behind: when we withdrew our offer formally on Friday, we were both annoyed but not at all surprised when the vendors' solicitors and estate agent both asked us what the point was of our decision when we couldn't buy their house anyway without selling ours - as of course we'd told them both about 7 times that the purchase was not at all dependent on the sale of our flat, so we were used to the fact that nobody was listening to us. We were rather more surprised when our own conveyancer emailed us to say she couldn't understand either as surely we "couldn't buy without selling, could we?..." I've never known K be quite so cross and indeed I felt very much like ringing the silly bint up, telling her she was a useless pile of shite and kicking her arse to kingdom come and beyond. But, being the calm and loving person that I am (ha!), I left it to K to send a snippety email saying we'd told her about 5 times that the purchase wasn't in any way dependent on the sale. Oh, and by the way, she was now sacked as our purchase conveyancer, we were making a formal complaint and she'd have to whistle for her fees. Put that in your pipe, love, and smoke it ...

Lordy, what fun we're having right now, eh! Who indeed will rid me of these troublesome conveyancers, and are there any good ones in the whole of Surrey?? Alas, I believe not ... In the meantime, we continue to be utterly bemused that it seems so incredibly difficult for people to accept that we have (a) no chain; (b) savings enough and a decent mortgage to buy a house; and (c) the desperate desire to give vendors money. Why won't the buggers take it?!?

So, back to the house viewing, and we've one lined up to see on Thursday, and 2 more I'm intending to get appointments for this week. Let's hope someone out there starts to take us seriously or I'm going to build my own bloody house in the middle of our former conveyancer's garden. Ha!

However, there is good news! The lovely Brucie finally gets a knighthood and we had a fabulous (and house/publisher crises-free) time wandering round the gardens and enjoying a cream tea at Nymans, and then wandering round yet more gardens at Wakehurst Place - both are definitely recommended.

Today we have got round to visiting our nearest high Anglican church in the area - All Saints Woodham - and, if trying out high church offerings, it's always best to go on Pentecost (today) - ah, the bells, the smells, the ritual, the bling. Bliss. All served (sorry) up with a hint of informality and laughter. We loved it. Plus the coffee they serve is real. Real ground coffee after a church service - we've never had that before! We'll definitely be back ...

And, this afternoon, we have done something we haven't done since our honeymoon nearly 18 years ago (steady, people, steady ...) - we have used the dishwasher that comes with the flat. Gosh! Isn't it lovely. Everything's sooo clean and we didn't have to do it ourselves. How very grown-up we are becoming. Will definitely be doing that again too.

Book News:

NB THIS SECTION HAS BEEN REMOVED DUE TO LEGAL NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE PUBLISHER CONCERNED, AT THEIR REQUEST.

On a happier literary note, The Art of The Delaneys is now available at Amazon UK and Amazon US. And I'm really delighted to say that my Sunday Haiku collection gained a 5-star review at Goodreads, so many thanks to Vicki for that.

This week's meditation poem is:




Meditation 536
It takes 212 men
to guard the temple gates

which just goes to show
women are more dangerous
than you think.


And the Sunday haiku is:

A slow-falling note
soothes this melodious air:
the greenfinch's song.

Anne Brooke