Word of the week time has come round again. I’m pretty sure you all know what round means … in my case it’s an excuse to post a picture of The Sphere.

It can also refer to sandwiches and drinks – round here we call that a picnic

I once mistyped the word entertainment as entrainment. No wiggly red line appeared underneath, so I realised it was an actual word. One I didn’t know. As I’m just a little odd, I was rather pleased with that … until I looked it up.

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My next short story collection, Criminal Intent, will be released on 5th October. It will cost £6.99 ($8.99) for the paperback and £1.99 ($2.99) for the ebook – unless you order it early! For a short period the ebook will be priced at 77p (99c).

Here’s the blurb –

There are a huge variety of crimes, committed for many different reasons. Those which seem justified or are at least understandable. Others for which there can be no possible excuse. Some crimes are calculated and deliberate, others unplanned or even accidental. More still are planned but don’t happen.

There are also multiple ways for the criminal to be caught out or made to pay for what they’ve done. The police, an amateur detective or even their victim might bring them to justice. And sometimes what at first appears to be a crime is revealed to be nothing of the sort.

Criminals, victims and those wrongly suspected all have a story to tell. This book contains 24 of them.

Salacin is a bitter substance with analgesic properties, which can be obtained from willow bark.

The trunk you can see at the right of this picture is our willow. If you’d like some salacin, please come round and help yourself to a branch as it could do with pruning.

One of my stories is available to read on the My Weekly website.

Click here to read it.

A riptide is a strong surface current from the shore.

A rip is a stretch of rough water caused by the meeting of two or more currents. Both can be very dangerous to swimmers and people floating around on lilos and the like.

Riptide can also be used to describe a state of conflicting psychological forces. That doesn’t sound a whole lot more fun than being washed out to sea, does it?

Heritage is generally understood to mean historic buildings, monuments and attractive countryside, especially if they’re

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I’m pleased to have a short story in the 2022 My Weekly Annual. As you can tell from the fact it’s only August, these publications are planned and produced well in advance. That means the stories are written well in advance and often I’ve forgotten all about them by the time they’re published. Not this one though.

The story is about a character who joins a book club. The idea came to me as I was walking down to the local library to attend such a group for the first time. I was a little early, so had time to scribble down a few notes before the meeting started. Handwriting anything is unusual for me, so that’s another thing which fixed it in my mind. My writing is pretty much unreadable, especially when done in a hurry, but there’s something about writing notes which helps me remember.

Since then, very sadly, the library has closed and of course there’s been COVID. Somehow it seems optimistic that something written before those things happened is now in print, and intended to take readers into next year.

Talking of things started a long time ago to be read in the future, I think I’ve finally finished the last round of edits for my romantic murder mystery novel Acting Like A Killer. I had thought I’d finished a couple of months ago, but the proofreader I sent it to is also an editor and she suggested a couple of improvements. I didn’t want the extra work, but I do want the book to be as good as possible, so I got stuck in.

I now need to get a little distance from it before giving it another read through and then having it proofread again, as there’s every chance that whilst improving one aspect I may have introduced new errors!

To be huffy can either mean offended, or quick to take offence. A person may be only a little huffy, a bit huffier than that or the huffiest of all.

The huffiness will become apparent due to the person who’s in a huff behaving huffily.

I was going to illustrate this post with a picture of me looking huffy, but couldn’t find one. I therefore conclude that I’m not even the slightest bit huffish … even when the weather is a touch damp and ever so slightly breezy.