I’ve made a short video of me reading the opening to my new novel. You can see it here.

Uxorial means of, or relating to, a wife. I’m not sure how useful the word is in everyday conversation, but it must be more useful than uxorious which means to be excessively fond of one’s wife. Speaking as a married woman I can’t see how such fondness could possibly be excessive.

South African magazine YOU chose a striking image for a story of mine which they published recently. It’s really interesting to see which elements of a story will be picked out for any illustrations and how they’ll be represented.

If you’d like to read the whole story you can find it, along with 23 others, in my collection Slightly Spooky Stories II.

Often I challenge you to use my Wednesday Word of the Week, but not this time. I’d like this one to vanish.

Invent is a word. It means to use thought to create and originate. The result is an invention, created by an inventive inventor. It could be a physical thing, such as a wheel, space ship or cake. It might be an idea, song or story.

Re-invent doesn’t mean anything, or at least not anything good as far as I can tell. Re-inventing usually seems to involve taking something good and popular and messing it up. Favourite food products are re-invented with a ‘new and improved’ recipe meaning they’re smaller, pricier and disgusting. Classic stories are re-invented as unconvincing, watered down versions of the original. Re-invention is so much not a thing, that I’m not even going to make the letters bold.

Ooops, Wednesday Word of the Week seems to have been re-invented as Wednesday Whinge of the Week! I’m right though … aren’t I?

I’ve spent long enough writing, re-writing, editing, proofing and formatting Acting Like A Killer to be in no doubt that it’s a real book. Even so, it felt good to lift a copy out of the box.

Translucent is a nice word. It always makes me slightly hungry as it reminds me of ‘suculent’ and is most commonly encountered in cookery books referring to fried onions. I do like fried onions.

If something is translucent it allows light to pass through diffusely – just as partialy cooked onions probably do (I’ve never actually fished one out the pan to test that). It’s also described as semi-transparent.

Abaddon is an old world which can either mean hell or a place of destruction, or be used to suggest an unpleasant angel or a devil.

I’d try to keep both at a safe distance, if I were you.

Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you, but Hallowe’en is coming up and I wanted you to be prepared. For some it’s a time to party in creative costumes, or go out trick or treating. Others (me included) prefer to stay indoors where it’s cosy – and have a supply of pumpkin soup or hot chocolate handy, as well as a book to read.

If you like short spooky, but not too scary stories then you might enjoy one of my collections. There are four so far, each with two dozen stories. Slightly Spooky Stories II is currently on special offer at 99p / 99c.

To explain a muckle, I first need to tell you about mickle. Mickle means large, or great amount. Eg, to  keep Patsy happy, provide a mickle of cakes. They can be small cakes as long as there are a lot of them, as many a little makes a mickle.

Got that? OK, now you may have heard that many a mickle makes a muckle. Well it’s not entirely true as mickles and muckles are the same thing. So you just need one mickle to make a muckle, as long as it’s a big un – which it will be as muckles are large.

Compared with a ping pong ball, The Sphere is a muckle beast. Or perhaps mickle suits him better?