If you’re able to access Overdrive via your library membership, you can now read all my books for free. The ones with mauve bands at the top and bottom are single short stories – the others are novels or short story collections.
The complete books should also be available through over services, such as Borrow Box, Odilo and Cloud Library, but you may have to request them through those services.
You can now subscribe to this blog and get new posts by email. At least, I hope so – technology isn’t my strong point. If you’d like to give it a try, enter your email address in the turquoise box over on the right.
Here are a few random photos, just to let you know the kind of thing you’d be letting yourself in for.
A tribulation is a great affliction or oppression, or the cause of that. The occupants of many abbeys suffered tribulations during the reformation ordered by Henry VIII.
It’s a good thing I looked it up before using it anywhere as I’d always imagined it meant a minor source of annoyance. Perhaps I was associating it with trivial?
Did you know what the word meant?
I don’t have a sister, so had to use my imagination for parts of this story about sisterly relationships, which is in the current issue of Take A Break’s Fiction Feast. There’s quite a lot about cake too, so I was writing what I know there!
To rootle is to dig with a snout, to poke about or search. Whilst you’re doing it you’re rootling and afterwards you’ll have rootled.
Somewhere I have a photo of pigs rootling, but when I rootled through my hard drive I got distracted, so here are some steps instead. Do you know where they are? Have you climbed them?
What were you looking for last time you rootled – and did you find it?
All of my collections of slightly spooky stories are currently on sale for 99p (or 99c on the US).
Estimation is the process or result of making an estimate, an opinion or judgement of worth, or an old term for esteem.
By my estimation it’s time for another plug for my books. You’d all go up in my estimation if you bought one 😉 (perhaps one of these which are currently reduced to 99p / 99c) Same applies if you read it on Kindle Unlimited, or borrow it from the library …
I don’t tend to get up really early, unless there’s a good reason, such as taking a sunrise shot of the lighthouse on the Mull of Galloway.
That was quite a few weeks ago (we’ve been so busy exploring, photographing and writing that I’ve found it hard to keep up with blogging). If I’d done it today it would have been much easier, thanks to it now getting light later, plus the clocks going back. I don’t think we’d have had such good weather though.
The word keep has a variety of meanings.
To keep is to retain or preserve – I keep food fresh by keeping it in the fridge. Or it can mean detain or prevent – Don’t let reading this blog keep you from writing. Or to guard or protect – keep yourself safe on the internet by keeping your passwords secret. It’s also part of a castle!
There are other uses for the word, but I’m not going to keep on typing as that’s kept me away from my stories long enough. Maybe some of you would like to keep on with the definitions or examples?
Not long ago, on a dreich day, we walked along the Ayrshire coast towards Greenan castle. On the way, we met a charming lady (I think she may be called Morag) and her delightful Scottie dogs (or dugs as they’re known round here) called Hamish and Robbie. Each had a tartan collar and bow. As we went our separate ways, Morag called the bots away to their porridge – apparently they like some every morning.
I ‘stormed the castle’ (OK, scrambled up the steep path), had a look round, then Gary and I went back to the van for tea, Empire biscuits, and shortbread.
