February 2013 archive

Blank Green Rectangle continues

It’s deeply annoying. But there it is. If I shut down my site and go in from my url then I can look at anything posted. However I can’t be on my site as me, then go into the url on a different screen to check what I’ve just posted, if I do I’m back …

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Staying in Contact

It occurred to me to wonder, as I posted another letter to Thunder’s original family, how many people stay in contact with their cat’s previous people? Where possible, I do. I know that they probably loved him and hope he went to a home where he’d be cared for, loved, and looked after. But if …

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Don’t You Hate Rejections?

I didn’t spend my Christmas/New Year break doing nothing. I planned to begin a new book on January 14th and wanted a stack of short work submissions out before that, the more so as over late December I’d written a number of new stories and several new articles which needed to find homes. And I …

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The Cat Who Had Sixty Whiskers by Lilian Jackson Braun.

Reviewed by an infuriated Glenda Johnson. I very rarely if ever write a bad review, I’m all too aware of how devastating a bad review can be to a writer, (particularly if it’s grossly unfair as was one that Lyn received a couple of years ago, in which the reviewer seemed to have a personal …

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Re an anthology and why you should Keep your authors informed.

Timeline. Early February 2012 – I submit an original story to what sounds like an interesting anthology. Early November I thought I’d catch up on how the Rollicking Tales anthology was going, to find that it seemed to have vanished. I discovered a possible email address and queried. To be told by email from the …

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You Have To Accept This Job.

I’m not and never was against legalizing prostitution but at the time of the law change I commented to friends that it could make problems in areas that the law-makers hadn’t thought of. An example of this has just occurred overseas when a German teenager looking for a job was told to report for duty …

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LOOKING FOR YESTERDAY by Marcia Muller.

Hardcover, published Central park Publishing, (Hatchette) November 2012. Another great murder mystery from Marcia Muller. Three years back a woman was acquitted of killing her best friend. But since then her family and friends don’t want to know her and that’s unlikely to change until or unless she can show that it really wasn’t her. …

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Hot Weather and Similar Tempers.

The weather is hot, has been hot, and looks as if it may continue to be hot for weeks to come – with very little rain so a drought may be getting  closer than I like as a farmer, although we have ample grass as yet. And on the flip side of that I feel …

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Have You Overlooked – Ardath Mayhar?

One of the things that I can say that may not be generally known about this author, was that Ardath was a friend of Andre Norton’s, and Andre admired her writing. Ardath (Frances Hurst) Mayhar was born in February 1930 and died February 2012, three weeks short of her 82nd birthday. She started writing SF …

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Great Escapes

I was watching a new TV programme last week on Great Animal Escapes and was very amused at the escapades of an African honey badger, who, it seemed, had got that down pat. Time and time again when a keeper forgot a broom or shovel, the Honey Badger would carry it to his wall, stand …

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