This is a figure of speech in which the natural order of events is reversed. It occurs in well known phrases such as ‘born and bred’ ‘put on your shoes and socks’ and ‘thunder and lightning’.

Be careful of accidental hysteron proteron in your writing, for example ‘Fred jumped in the air. A loud crash from the dropped tray of glasses had startled him.’ Unless you have a good reason for doing things differently, cause should come before result.

Can you think of other examples of hysteron proteron?

I’m in the process of making my books available from more outlets, rather than just Amazon. While I’m doing that I’m taking the opportunity to update some of the covers.

Two of those which have had a makeover are All That Love Stuff and With Love And Kisses. They’re both collections of 24 short stories all with the theme of love and romance.

Originally they had white backgrounds, which showed off the cartoon images well. However if displayed online anywhere which also had a white background the entire cover got lost. There was also the issue of them looking so much the same I’m not sure people realised they were two different books.

My clever husband has given them pretty sunrise and sunset backgrounds, which I think are very pretty and help distinguish them as different books.

If you’d like more details on either book, click on ‘short story collections’ in the menu.

If you’d like to read either book you can still get All That Love Stuff and With Love and Kisses from Amazon as ebooks or paperbacks. Paperbacks of both books can be ordered from bookshops and many online retailers or requested from your local library. The ebooks are also available from a range of different retailers. You can find All That Love Stuff here and this is the link for With Love And Kisses.

Whether they’re together forever, broken-hearted, or still trying to make it work, anyone who has loved has a story to tell. These collections each contain 24 of them.

Do you like the new covers?

I’ve got a story in each of two very different magazines at the moment – and they each have appropriately different illustrations.

My bright and cheery tale ‘A Fresh Outlook’ is in the always upbeat The People’s Friend Magazine.

Despite its title ‘Comfort Food’ is rather darker and less jolly. That’s in the current Take A Break Fiction Feast.

I wouldn’t call Fiction Feast downbeat, but it’s certainly grittier than The People’s Friend and you can’t always be assured of a happy ever after ending.

Which do you prefer? A guaranteed happy ending, or to not know what you’re going to get?

I’ve just updated the ‘For Writers’ page on this site. You can navigate to it from the menu, or via this link.

Athirst can mean thirsty (from the Old English ofthyrst apparently). It also means eager or strongly desirous as in athirst for knowledge. I think I’ll combine them into athirst for a nice cold glass of wine – and as it’s my birthday today I reckon I’m entitled.

The second definition surprised me. I’d heard the phrase and understood the meaning, but had thought it was written as ‘a thirst for knowledge’.

Parbuckle is … what I get when I ask my husband for a word of the week suggestion. A parbuckle is a rope or sling used to raise or lower casks or other cylindrical objects.

When used to right a ship, I suppose parbuckling is the opposite of careening. I used to talk about careening in my day job but as I don’t do it any more, I’ll spare you the details. When not used in a nautical context careening means to swerve about.

Here’s a picture of a ship. I careened (slowly) up a nearby mountain to take the photo.

I’ll be sending out a new newsletter soon. If you’re not on the list but would like to be you can sign up, and get a free short story here – https://mailchi.mp/677f65e1ee8f/sign-up

My dictionary doesn’t think fettling is a word. It’s wrong.

Gary spends quite a bit of time fettling. It’s the present participle of the verb fettle and means sorting out, tidying up and tiddlying off.

Fettle is in my dictionary. It means condition or trim – as in ‘he felt in fine fettle‘. It can also be what you do to tidy metal castings or pieces of pottery before firing them.

Fettler is also in my dictionary. A fettler is a person who fettles.

I can’t say for certain this pot was ever fettled, but my Black Pearl chili growing in it is in fine fettle, don’t you think?

Quite a bit of fettling of my stories is needed before I’m ready to submit them to magazines or enter them in competitions. I think it’s worth the effort.