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

The Gift of the Snow and last chance blogs

Book News:

Don't forget that the Blog Hop Against Homophobia is still running until tonight, and you can find my blog about it here. All comments are entered into a competition to win something from my ebook backlist so don't miss out!

In addition, the last stop of my blog tour for Where You Hurt The Most was at Amara's Place, and there's still time (just!) to enter that ebook competition also, but you'll have to hurray. This week, the story has received a 4-star review at Goodreads, so many thanks, Sadonna, for that.

And I'm happy to say that my literary paranormal short story The Gift of The Snow has now been published by Untreed Reads, and was briefly at No 67 in the Amazon UK horror charts (though more literary than horror, to my mind), so thank you to those of you who've bought it and I hope you enjoy the read.

Life News:

I've come somewhat under fire once more this week for being a Christian who fully supports same-sex marriage and GLBTQ inclusion in the church. People are very happy to tell me in detail how wrong and unChristian I am, which is interesting as I don't feel I have to take other people to task for believing in a different way to me. Actually it makes me even more determined to stand up for what I see as reasonable equality and to make it known as much as I can that Christianity is - or should be - as much for the GLBTQ community as it is for the straight one. In fact there should be no difference. We're all human and all fully equal in God's sight, and I'm more than happy to keep shouting that joyful fact. It's good news indeed. For this reason I can thoroughly recommend Changing Attitude who work in the UK helping to encourage churches to be more inclusive of GLBTQ people. Well done to them!

This weekend has been hugely busy. We had the meeting of the Jubilee Street Party Committee yesterday, and I think we're now on track to sorting out the final details of what we're all doing. Only two weeks to go now, goodness me. Also yesterday I made a pretty fine carrot cake with orange frosting which not only tastes good but also looks almost exactly as it does in the book. Golly gosh, that's a first for me, eh ...

And Saturday just wouldn't have been the same without the Elstead Rubber Duck races at lunchtime. So wonderfully English and strangely gripping, we loved it - though sadly our ducks Troilus and Cressida weren't anywhere to be seen in the winning heats. Maybe next year then.

It's also been a plant-filled weekend, which has been great. We bought a lilac phlox, a hebe, 4 cosmos and one broccoli at the church plant sale, plus a purple osteospermum and another sunflower from the village florist. Today, we've visited Rake Garden Centre, where we bought a huge trolley-load of flowers, including nine French marigolds, six salvias, an impatiens, six chrysanthemums, four large fuchsias, two lupins and a veronica. And a partridge in a pear tree (that last one's untrue, btw ...). All now safely planted up in back and front gardens, and very good they look too, hurrah!

Oh, and our azalea and one of the three rhododendrons are now doing pretty well too, as you can see ...

On the way back we also popped in to see Lowder Mill which was open today as part of the National Gardens Scheme. A totally amazing place and if you get a chance to go, I can really recommend it. Beautiful grounds, and so very quirky and peaceful, at the same time. Plus the cakes were magnificent. What could be nicer?

Here's this week's haiku:

On this soft morning
the garden dances in pink
while small birds flutter.


Anne Brooke
Hop Against Homophobia
Gay Reads UK
The Gathandrian Fantasy Trilogy
Biblical Fiction UK

Hop Against Homophobia

I’m very proud to be taking part in the Hop Against Homophobia Day and to stand up for the human rights of all people, whatever their sexuality, gender, race or religion.

I also want to stand up for heterosexual Christians like myself who are 100% behind the drive for GLBTQ equality and same-sex marriage - the media seem at the moment to be concentrating on those Christians who are against the idea, and I think it's important for people to know that we don't all think the same. I'm proud to say I've just joined the Lesbian & Gay Christian Movement in the UK to show my support, and hope that other Christians will also stand with me on this point.

As a Christian, I’m also very proud of the fact that I’m a writer of gay erotic fiction, and celebrate love and romance wherever it’s found. To my mind, there’s no battle between being GLBTQ and being Christian, and the sooner the churches catch up with this freedom we have in God, the better. Recently, the Church Times wrote in one of its articles that we have much to learn about equality, truth and justice from society’s approach to homosexuality and faith, implying that God doesn’t always speak to us through the Church alone. Quite right too!

You can find out more about my gay fiction at Gay Reads UK, and about my Biblical fiction (which happily includes a lesbian reinterpretation of a few of the bible stories) at Biblical Fiction UK.

And as a special treat, anyone who leaves a comment on this blog will be entered into a competition to win a FREE ebook from my gay fiction collection. Good luck and happy blog hopping!

Anne Brooke

Hop Against Homophobia

Gay Reads UK

Biblical Fiction UK

The Gathandria Fantasy Trilogy