Here is the Amazon link referred to  in my previous post. :0)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1445735806/ref=sib_rdr_dp

Sunday, 6th June, 2010

At last, a return to blogging.  Assignments completed and 'Massacre at St Hilda's' concluded, I have time to think and write  - though not, of course, necessarily in that order.  My latest news is that the 'One Million Stories' Anthology for 2009 - which includes my story 'On Walking Carne Brae' - is now available on Amazon price £7.99.  (I will add a link for this shortly.) Also, my poem, 'On a Beach in Winter' will appear in the October edition of 'Poetry Cornwall'. I have been foolhardy enough to sign up for Write a Damned Novel in June and I am currently roughly 2,000 words behind.  I am not, in fact, writing a novel but rather a number of short stories.  This is permitted so long as the target of 50,000 words is reached.

Thursday 1st April, 2010

The April edition of 'Word with JAM' is out NOW.  It contains a small collection of my poems which have been most attractively presented.  If you have not seen it, you are missing a treat; this is an excellent magazine for anyone with an interest in writing.  It is available FREE online if you complete the subscription form.  Just google 'Words with JAM'.
      Also, today I have signed up for NaPoWriMo, an event that is linked to the Open University and that runs throughout April.  The idea is to write a poem a day every day for a month.  I have set up a blog page especially for this purpose and have added a link. That said, I had better be off - to do some writing...

Monday, 29th March, 2010.

The One Million Stories Creative Writing Project is thrilled and delighted to announce the launch of its first publication:

Good news today.  I received this e mail very late last night. (It was reassuring to know that I am not the only one who sits at my desk until three or four in the morning.) The story in this anthology is not the one that is currently on line at One Million Stories but another published right at the end of last year.  It is called 'On Walking Carne Brae' and, while it is not autobiographical, I would like to dedicate this piece to the indelibly painful memory of Jonathan Paul Anthony Wyatt - wherever he is and whatever name he is using at this time.. Bitter? Moi?  How could you think it?  :0)

"The One Million Stories Creative Writing Project 2009 Anthology"!

Congratulations to all our fabulous contributors:

JF Chavoor, Claire Snook, Vivienne McCulloch, Lilit Hotham, Linda Davies, M King, Bryan McGuiness, Simon Kellow-Bingham, Joe Miller, Peter Forester, Clare Glennon, Cecelia McSweeney, M Johnson, Jaume Munoz, Vivian McInerny, Maureen Simpkin, Dark Alley, Alan Hutcheson, and Abi Wyatt.

The book looks fantastic and the stories are all terrific reads! This really is a very strong collection! We have to thank all the writers who contributed and all the readers who gave their time in order to polish the final draft.

Friday, 26h March, 2010

I have just popped in this morning to add a new link to 'Rumble'.  The current issue, out today, contains my 'micro piece' 'Outline'.  If you have a minute to spare, you could do worse than have a look.  Even if you don't like my piece, 'Rumble' is a great magazine.  :0)

Thursday, 25th March

Here we go again.  Far too much to do and not enough time to do any of it properly.  Why do I keep inflicting this kind of panic on myself?  I have two short weeks in which to work out the structure of a screenplay - I am still fannying around re-defining the action-idea - and then write enough of it to demonstrate that it's utterly brilliant.  At the same time, I have lines to learn for the new murder mystery - which was penned by my good friend, David Carlisle, and is utterly brilliant - and in which I play - titter ye not! -  the part of Twiggy St Clair, super model.  Now, I have lost twelve pounds since January but I will need to lose another twelve to make even  a passable Twiggy.  Fortunately, it's a comedy - and I will be wearing a wig and a hat.  By the way, my thanks go to the talented and tireless Barbara Laffin for her 'Garage Entertainment' fundraiser which took place last Saturday.  This proved to be a show that was truly fun for all the family.  I enjoyed it so much that, in a moment of weakness, I agreed to do a'turn' next time.  See what I mean?  Maybe I should deliver my rendition of 'I'm Jest A Gal Who Can't Say No'...  Back to the screenplay!

Sunday, 7th March, 2010

Today the weather is bright but very cold and I am torn between the desire to be out in the sunshine and the need to stay warm.  Two bouts of flu over the past three months have left me with a persistent cough and the fact that my heating sytem is broken beyond repair is not helping matters.  However, the March issue of 'A Long Story Short' is now available and includes my sonnet 'Dead Letters'.  Do have a look if you can spare the time.  Meanwhile, I must return to the business of preparing new submissions, a process which I quite enjoy but which can be very time-consuming.  Sometimes, though, when one is not feeling terribly creative, it is a useful displacement activity...

Thursay, 4th March, 2010

Today is my father's birthday.  This is both a sad and a happy occasion because he died on the16th June last year.  My mother and I have placed a bouquet of white flowers next to his photograph and we will be thinking of him throughought the day. We will remember him as he was when he was still strong and healthy. He was a good man, a man who loved to cherish things and to watch them grow. May he have found lasting peace and a release from constant pain.

Today, too, I have heard that Words with JAM are to publish four of my poems as a small collection at the end of this month.  This is a new outlet for me which is always exciting.  As soon as the poems become availabe, I will add a link.

I have also heard from 'One Million Stories' that my story 'On Walking Carne Brae' is to be included in their annual 'best of' anthology so my thanks go to the editors there. 

All this is helping me to 'come back to life' following the tragic loss of my sister-in-law and very best friend, the lovely Estefania Maria Garcia Poole who lost her ten year battle with breast cancer on the 5th February this year.  Among my photographs are those taken at last summer's 'Race for Life'.  She leaves two sons, Samuel and Miguel, and the husband to whom she was devoted.  She will be missed by many and always in the hearts of those who loved her dearly.

New Link to Ink, Sweat & Tears

My poem 'After the Deluge' came out in 'Ink, Sweat & Tears' yesterday so I have added a link as promised. Life has been rather difficult and fraught of late and, quite apart from these problems, I am currently struggling to formulate a proposal for my ECA (which is a major assessment piece) and  attend almost nightly rehearsals for 'Dick Whittington' in which lavish theatrical spectacle I take the part of King Rat.  I hope to get back to making regular submissions as soon as all this is over.  Onwards and upwards. 

6th January, 2010

Good news, good news! Yesterday brought my first acceptance of 2010. Ink, Sweat & Tears have accepted a short poem, 'After the Deluge', something I actually wrote some time ago but 'tweaked' just ecently.  The editors have not yet advised me of the edition in which the poem will appear so I will add a link in due course.  MT New Year Resolution is to be both more organised and more disciplined in the business of submitting work. In the past, it has been something I have done too sporadically.  Time to pull myself together!

A New Piece Out Today

The first of my three pieces with million stories.net is out today.  It is called 'On Walking Carne Brae'.  I am adding a link that on One Million Stories right now. :0)

Good News

Yesterday was a good day.  I came home from the gym feeling too weak to switch on the laptop.  Later, though, I was so pleased that I made the effort because I had two acceptance e mails, one from A Long Story Short and the other from One Million Stories.  A Long Story Short have taken two poems, 'The Far Side of the Hill' and 'Moving On'. These will be in the July and September editions respectively.  (I already have poems due out with them in January and March.). One Million Stories have taken three stories the first of which, 'On Walking Carne Brae' will be available before Christmas.  The others, 'Good News' and 'Marital Hystery', will follow in the the new year.  I will add a link for One Million Stories in the very near future. It is an excellent site for readers and writers of short prose fiction and well worth a look.

Sunday, 1st November, 2009

 On Death, Life and End of Course Assessment

I have settled on the general direction of my ECA writing project (OU Advanced Creative Writing A363).  Broadly speaking, I am interested in bringing together the ideas of 'death' and 'narrative'.  I hope to consider stories that turn on the imminence of death or the presence of 'death in life'; also, those tales and enduring myths that seek to explore death's power and mystery.  There will be those, no doubt, who will think me odd,  if not actually perverse - we are living in an 'Icarus culture' that has scant regard for the dark -  but I do I believe that, at this time,  it is into the darkness that my soul wants to go; consequently, I find I have no option but to follow it.  In any case, any lingering doubts that I may have felt have been dispelled by my recent reading of James Hillman's 'Suicide and the Soul' (Fifth Spring, 1978 ) in which - apart from much food for thought - I found the following quotation from 'Healing' by D.H. Lawrence:

I am not  mechanism, an assembly of various sections,

And it is not because the mechanism is working wrongly that I am ill.

I am ill because of wounds to the soul, to the deep, emotional self

and the wounds to the soul take a long, long time, only time can help

and patience, and a certain difficult repentance

long, difficult repentance, realisation of life's mistake, and the freeing oneself

from the endless repetition of the mistake

which mankind at large has chosen to sanctify.'

                                                  From 'Healing' by D.H. Lawrence 'Selected Poems' (1916) Viking Press

which struck me as being so completely pertinent to my situation as to constitute a providential blessing.  Please, if you can point me in the direction of a text you think I need to read, do not be shy about saying so.  Help me 'build my ship of death'!

Me and Polanski

This morning, when I switched on my laptop, I was browsing the Yahoo news when my attention was caught by a piece on the current Polanski debate.  I finished the piece and began to read the comments that had been posted below.  I was shocked and saddened by the number of comments I found that sought either to defend Polanski or to minimise his wrong doing by attributing responsibility  to the child in the case.  I do not normally contribute to public fora like Yahoo News; on this occasion, however, I felt that I needed to make an exception.  Below is the material I posted there as an act of solidarity with all those women who, like myself, have been emotionally and psychologically damaged not only by the offendeners themselves but also by the 'system' that excused and protected the wrongdoers.  I should point out that is only very recently that I have been able to speak openly about these events though, clearly, they occurred many, many years ago.  Outwardly, there were no dramatic consequences except that, for a time, I was both very fat and very,very frightened.  There was damage, though, - in my heart and in my head - and I have spend much of my life trying to heal that hurt. In many ways, I have succeeded  but I would like to make it clear that I will never succeed entirely - and that never again will I be a girl just turning thirteen.


In the mid-sixties and at a similar age (to the girl in the Polanski case who was 13) I was 'groomed' by a man who would now be termed a paedophile.  This 'grooming' went on over a period of months.  I was persaded to engage in sexual activity of various kinds by a subtle blend of kind words, emotional blackmail, and terror.  Eventually, I was taken - at the point of a knife - to the other end of the country where he took my spectacles - I am very short-sighted - and hacked off my long hair with a hunting knife.  Eventually, after three days of fear and miser, he was cornered by the police and gave himself up.  I thought that my troubles were over.  I could not have been more wrong.  The woman police sergeant that came to see me the next day called me a 'dirty little tart' and I was sent to a hell-hole of a remand home while he was released on bail.  Finally, in court, his barrister was permitted to humiliate me utterly while presentin his client as a respectable man who had been tempted by the amorous overtures of some kind of Lolita figure.  My tormentor was not actually acquitted but he served only three months in a 'soft' open prison and, on his return to my home town, mocked me in a very public way.  I received no counselling.  In fact, when I returned to my school, I was shunned by my classmates whose parents had instructed them not to talk to me.  There is no doubt in my mind that this experience has affected me throughout my life.  I would like to think that, over the past decades, the world has moved on.  It seems, however, both from the fact that Polanski continues to evade justice and from the presence of so many men willing to blame the child in this case, that if the world has moved at all, it has has not moved very far.

Los Bomberos

For some weeks now I have been experiencing difficulty with my smoke alarms.  One of them started to beep, at first very softly, a random and intermittent nuisance, irritating, but bearable.  However, as time went on, its complaints became progressively louder and more insistent.  Eventually, rendered reckless by sheer exasperation, I climbed on a chair to investigate.  Being somewhat vertically challenged, I could not see much at all.  I discovered that there was something writtten on the white plastic casing - but I could not get close enough to read what the words said.  (I wear vari-focal spectacles and the angle and the distance was all wrong.) I tried to remove the aforementioned plastic casing but I could not see how this might be easily acomplished.  The harder I tried to achieve my goal, the more likely it seemed I would fall over.  All the time I was wobbling on the chair, the thing was going 'beep' in my ear.  After some minutes, I began to see how prolonged exposure to high-pitched sound might have some useful application in a hostile situation and went on to wondere whether smoke alarms are covered by the Geneva Convention.  Finally, I climbed down from the chair and abandoned my efforts.  I took to sleeping with a plug of cotton wool stuffed in each ear.

Then, to my rescue came my cousin, Kim, who works for the Fire Service in Essex.  Showing considerable resourcefulness - and no small amount of kindness - she telephoned her colleagues in Cornwall and arranged for two ot them to call on me and my errant smoke alarm.  They came this evening, just after eight, and showed me how to fix it.  One of them was tall and handsome with broad shoulders and extremely good teeth - in short, everything one would hope a dashing fire-fighter would be.  The other was sweet and friendly - and he had nice eyes - but, compared to his colleague, he was - there is no was to say this tactfully - positively diminutive. He couldn't reach the smoke alarm either, not even when he stood on the chair.


Now, surely, this can't be right, can it?  In the event of an emergency involving a fire (rather than a smoke alarm) there would have been more chance of me carrying him than of him carrying me.  Or am I just hopelessly behind the time?  Is this, perhaps, a new breed of firefighter, one that has been developed for emergencies in mine shafts, tunnels and other confined spaces?  Is it the Jack Russell of firefighters, as it were, tiny but tough and ferocious?  If there are any firefighters out there reading this, then - really - I need to know!

In the meantime, I am hopeful that I will soon be able to dispense with my cotton wool ear-plugs.  Tomorrow, I will buy a new battery - and now I know how to put it in.  Of course, I may still need someone much taller to complete the operation.  Would it be rude and ingracious, if I telephone the station, to ask them to send the larger model?

New Link to More of Abigail's Poetry

At present, I am obliged to stay in all day because of flu-like symptoms that might, just might, prove to be the dreaded Swine Flu - although I really think that, if it was, I would feel a good deal worse than I actually do.  Already today, I have done some writing and some reading and completed one of the tasks for the course (A363) so I am now distracting myself by adding a new page to my blog, one which I will give over entirely to bits and pieces of poetry that I have gathered over the years.  In the list of 'Links', there is now a new option to go to 'More of Abigail's Poetry'.  As I write this, there is only one poem but there will be more soon, I promise.  please do look in and feel at liberty to comment if you wish.

'Fool' in Word Salad Poetry Magazine

The new edition of Word Salad Poetry Magazine is now on line. You can find the poem by following the link provided and clicking on 'Poetry'. Scroll down to find 'Fool' which is, I think, Item 35. My thanks to the editors of Word Salad for taking this poem which has a particular and very personal significance for me.

'Earth Love', a good cause...

I have heard today that 'Earth Love' have accepted four of my poems. They are to appear in the November and February issues respectively. 'Earth Love' is a small but well-established outlet that is passionately concerned with the natural world and ecological issues generally. This concern is reflected in the kind of work it accepts but, if you have something suitable - and especially if you are just beginning to submit - you could do worse than give them a look. They like postal submissions but you will find more information at the link provided. Good luck with it!

'Tempest-tossed' - or, perhaps, 'The House at Sea'

It has been a difficult few days. No need to say more. Today, I am physically tired but, mentally and emotionally, more settled. It has been a measure of the force of my particular and personal 'tempest' that, for some time, I have found it hard to settle to my writing. On a more positive note, however, I have toyed with some of the less intimidating exercises at the start of the sacred 'Blue Book'. For the benefit of any readers who are in possession of this volume, let it be a matter of record that I am weary of violins already.
Earlier, I made the mistake of venturing onto Amazon to investigate a notebook someone had mentioned online. I did not order the notebook but I did fall foul of a book that promises advice and guidance from Ted Hughes on the subject of making poetry. I have also ordered a book about writing for radio. What on earth possessed me? I can scarcely afford the fees for this course much less additional reading material, no matter how enticing. Heeding the advice of those who have gone before, I have tuned my radio to Radio 4 and have set the recorder for the 'Afternoon Play'. I shall aim to listen to as many as these as possible since it seems a relatively painless way of learning about the medium. Time now for a light lunch. Is there anything left in the fridge?

Hystories and Herstories

Sunday. I have been to the gym and the boot sale. The dog has been walked - in fact, jogged - twice and the evening stretches ahead. I ought to be writing but I have neither the will nor the discipline to do so. Instead, I have been walking my crying path and listening to the wind.

I have finished 'Hystories', the Showalter book. I wish I had not read it. If I had not read it, I could have the pleasure of reading it again. For me, it is a great book. It has stirred my mud in the direction of greater clarity. As I grow older, I find that the books that do this are less and less likely to be novels. So many novels now I never finish: is the fault in me or in them?

There are a number of people I can think of whose lives might be the better/easier/more honest for reading 'Hystories'. Two of these have hurt me badly and, while it is my sincere hope that I do not seek revenge, I could wish that these people might be properly tried and sentenced to the reading of this book. If any of them should happen to read this blog, then I most heartily commend the book to them. It is available from the library at Camborne College Cornwall. I send it with my love.

No other news except that 'Word Salad Poetry Magazine' have accepted my poem, 'The Fool'. I am told that the new edition will be available online from 21st September. 'Word Salad' is a very reputable magazine and I am delighted that they have taken my poem. Still, I cannot help but wish that I had never seen 'The Fool' in question.