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

Fun Facts about Guildford

The setting of my literary gay short story, The Heart’s Greater Silence, is Guildford, my nearest town, and most of the action takes place in the church at the bottom of the High Street. One of my friends recently created a brand new genre for my story which she calls Hot Clerical Action, or HCA for short, and she’s not far wrong, but you’ll have to read it for yourself to find that one out!

I used the town as I wanted somewhere I thought of as ordinary as a backdrop for the intense and obsessive relationships that my main character, Mark, is involved with. But actually when I started looking more closely, I soon realised that nothing is as “ordinary” as we think it is, when we start investigating. Not even a town … 

I didn’t know, for instance, that Guildford Cathedral was the setting for the 1976 film version of The Omen – there was a brave decision of the church to make, that’s for sure. Sadly though, even in spite of having a cathedral, Guildford still isn’t a city. It last made an application for city status in 2002 but the Queen decided against it. Shame … Though in this Jubilee Year, perhaps she might change her mind (hint, hint)?

If I’m looking for more obvious literary connections, then I find that Ford Prefect from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy claimed to be from Guildford (good man!), and Lewis Carol, the author of Alice in Wonderland, lived and was buried here. Both great classics indeed. 

Turning to other places of worship beyond that visited by Mark and Richard in my story, one of the oldest sites we have in Guildford is a Jewish one, as in 1995 the remains of a 12th century synagogue were discovered in the High Street. In fact it’s believed to be the oldest remains of a synagogue in Europe, so an important religious centre for all indeed.

Naturally, the town is also a centre of sporting excellence, especially with the new Surrey Sports Park just opened nearby, with a special emphasis on this year’s Olympics (well, we’re only 30 minutes from London by train). But as early as 1598, a court case referred to the game of cricket being played in c1550 at the Royal Grammar School. Keeping tradition alive, the School still exists and still has a cricket team though I don’t think any of them remember that first game …

Finally, the two most likely possibilities for the origin of the name Guildford itself are the yellow (Guild = Golden) sand the river runs through, or the yellow marigolds that grow down by the river. Perhaps not as strange as the other facts I’ve unearthed in my investigations, but certainly just as poetic. I shall never look at my home town in quite the same way again, nor assume any setting I use in my fiction is ever really ordinary.

So, what’s the secret life of your home town, and does it have a quirky fact or two of its own? If so I’d love to hear it! And don’t forget if you leave a comment on the blog, then you’re automatically entered in the below competition:

1. Two contests per stop - the first one being a backlist ebook giveaway for one commenter, and the second one being one signed Heart's Greater Silence cover flat and magnet for another commenter.

2a. I also have two cumulative competitions throughout the blog tour, the first one involving answering 3 questions from The Heart's Greater Silence - with the prize being 3 backlist ebooks for one commenter from the tour as a whole. Please send your answers to: albrooke@me.com - thank you! The questions are:

(i) What item of his trade is Richard wearing when Mark sees him in church? 

(ii) When Craig discovers Mark and Richard together, what does he do just before leaving? 

(iii) What action does Mark take at the end of the story?

2b. And the second cumulative competition is for a gift certificate to be drawn at the end of the tour - with this NOT being the winner of Item 2a (see above).

Good luck!

(With grateful thanks to the Guildford Fun Trivia site for the facts!)

Anne Brooke

The Gathandrian Trilogy

Gay Reads UK

Biblical Fiction UK