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.

A font can be the object in a church which holds holy water for splashing onto those being baptised, a reservoir for oil in a lamp, or an old-fashioned word for spring or fountain.

The font is also the typeface in which something is printed or appears online. There are lots to choose from – Times New Roman if you want to be taken seriously, Comic Sans if

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I’m so pleased with this recent review for my book, Slightly Spooky Stories II.

Threepence (pronounced thruppence) or a threepenny piece or threepenny bit is a decimalisation coin worth … three old pence.

I suggest only having the one in your collection as

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