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

Oranges and poetry

Well, the combination just has to be good for you. And today oranges are the only fruit. Or at least they are in the Lord H/Brooke household, where the supply of apples and bananas has reached the vanishing point. And no chance of me getting to the shops before Wednesday. Ah well. I do have a small supply of dried apricots, so should still be able to keep scurvy at bay.

The usual Monday morning drag today. It was an effort being awake, let alone attempting to look like a competent administrator. I think it’s the same for everyone though, as we were all heads down and no talking. Or perhaps we were all actually asleep and the typing noise was simply everyone’s noses rebounding off the keyboard. Wouldn’t surprise me, but I couldn't be arsed to turn round and check.

Took the minutes for the Wellbeing Group at lunchtime. It was a bit fluid, but we do have some ideas - hurrah! One of which is the Students' Union coming up with the goods once more. They're organising a "Know Yourself" month during February and March, with a focus on mental wellbeing and self-awareness. Sounds great to me - luckily staff are included, so we won't have to chain ourselves to the door and beg to be let in to the fun stuff again. That'll make a change.

This afternoon, I found myself sinking into a slough of despond again, and only managed to drag two pages of the minutes out of my notes and up onto the screen - when really I could easily have got the whole lot done. Got quite tearful a couple of times, but I don't think my immediate colleagues noticed. Thank God. I do hate explanations which involve weeping. Mine, that is. Though Sally from Student Advice did pop in and had a lovely chat with me - I can always talk to her (thank you, Sally!) - and we've arranged to go for coffee when we're both free in a couple of weeks' time, so that will be nice. Apparently, this may not - for once! - be all my own fault though, as today is supposed to be the most depressed day of the year. Bloody hell - I didn't know there was a rule. Think we should have been warned! Still, at least Lord H sent virtual hugs through the email, which are always appreciated, as in: (((Anne))). He's a genius with the keyboard ...

Oh, and I made two important decisions last night – mainly for my own mental wellbeing, let alone anyone else’s. I’ve decided to stop putting “Maloney’s Law” in the marketplace and have offered it to the Goldenford (http://www.goldenford.co.uk) Gang. One reply is keen so far (thanks, Irene!), but no response from the others yet. But don’t get too excited if the answer is yes, as it’ll take its place in the queue along with everything else, so I imagine the back end of 2008, at the very earliest. But there's lots of other good Goldenford stuff coming before then, so don’t forget to save up for the best books in the south!

And I’ve decided to self-publish another poetry collection – my last one was in 2004, so it’s about time for another, I think. I’m not going to wait for any more small publishers not to respond (there’s really no point trying the main poetry publishers – unless you’re related to Hughes or Plath, they don’t even bother replying …), so I’ve sent an email to Poetry Monthly Press (http://www.poetrymonthly.com) to see if they’re interested in printing it. They run a small self-publishing facility for poets, and it would be nice to get something out there this year that I can at least control. And it’ll have some award-winning and magazine-published pieces in, so probably worth a couple of quid or so. And hey stop press on this - Martin Holroyd from PMP has asked me to send him a floppy disc of the collection, which I'm calling "A Stranger's Table" after one of the poems in it. So I've spent tonight getting it organised and copied to disc. It's now wrapped in an envelope within an envelope ready for posting tomorrow. I hope he agrees to let it go through his system, as I know he doesn't take everything.

Ooh, and the lovely Sue Haywood has decided to opt for playtime advertising of "Pink Champagne and Apple Juice", a picture of which you can see here: http://www.teafriendsandchocolate.com/sue/ - under her blog of today's date. Great picture, Sue! Thank you very much! Not sure what Health & Safety would say though ...

And Lord H (bless him!) has bought apples and bananas, to add to our orange supply - so they're not the only fruit after all ...

Today’s nice things:

1. Making two publication decisions
2. Getting through Monday - thank God!
3. Seeing the picture on Sue's site.

Anne Brooke
http://www.annebrooke.com