hello vonnie
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Sade Olutola
almost home
Love Begins
titsay
oozey mess
shark vs the universe
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Jules of Nature
will byers stan first human second
PR's Tumblrdome
#extradirty
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Xuebing Du
art blog(derogatory)
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Three Goblin Art
trying on a metaphor
roma★
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@jodanilo
'While you live, shine.'
I fell in love with a song by Gyða Valtýsdóttir a few months ago, and have been annoying the whole family by playing it way too much. It’s haunting and unusual, and in a foreign language. As the artist is Icelandic and I don’t know any Icelandic, I presumed the song was in her language. I was very wrong. The title started me thinking. It looked very Greek. So I searched it up and found that the…
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A Clever Bird Thing
I’ve had several odd encounters with birds over the years and I’m always on the lookout for interesting bird antics. Last week, I witnessed something I’d never seen before… Driving home through the countryside, my car caught up to the bright flash of a white seagull flying above the road, level with the treetops. There was no traffic behind me, so I knocked my speed down to keep up with the…
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Run, run, run, run, run, run away!
In which an annoying coincidence occurs, featuring a bad song and a good book… There are no mistakes, no coincidences. All events are blessings given to us to learn from.” – Yeah right, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross* Hate is a strong word – a word I rarely use – reserving it for objects without feelings, like certain foods (doughnuts and tuna), the fork we own with a middle tine slightly out of line,…
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Saddle Up for The Territories West
Incredibly proud of my eldest son today, who has just released his fifth album aged just 20 years old. He’s a musical storyteller, and goes all wild west with this one. If you’re looking for music to write your Western-themed novel to, try this one 🥰 “With new, 12-track album, THE TERRITORIES WEST, the listener is invited on a journey through the wide, evocative landscapes of the Midwest. The…
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Satisfying Sentence: Man of War
Satisfying Sentence: Man of War
Because some sentences need more attention… Some song lyrics are just irresistible, and this one always jumps out at me as being so dramatically macabre. The gloriously unexpected combination of baking and the death of enemies is strangely quirky and satisfying. Radiohead wrote ‘Man of War’ way back in 1995 in a homage to the James Bond films. While they performed it live a few times, they…
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Mrs Holloway's Annual Parade of the Brightest and Best
Mrs Holloway’s Annual Parade of the Brightest and Best
“The brightest and best of you,” says Mrs Holloway, clapping her hands with palms flat and fingers pointing upwards, so that each clap is a prayer of thanks. And so begins the Annual Parade. The rest of us, who don’t fit into the category, watch the usual suspects leave their seats and walk towards the stage. Mrs Holloway’s clapping is an unspoken command that we should clap too, and the names…
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Odd Writers #9: Balzac's Fuel for Thought
Odd Writers #9: Balzac’s Fuel for Thought
How much coffee is too much? They say three to four coffees a day is a good number but twenty-five is judged by the experts to be too much. If twenty-five cups sounds like a hell of a lot of coffee, I’d like to introduce you to prolific, 19th Century, French author, Honore de Balzac…. Voici Monsieur Balzac (1799-1850), who apparently clocked in at cinquante cups of coffee a day for around twenty…
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Short Stories from around the world
Short Stories from around the world
Many thanks to Allan Hudson from the South Branch Scribbler, who chose my short ghost story ‘The Saturday Girl and the Heavy Breather’ for his regular feature – ‘Stories from Around the World’ – in which he shares a new tale every two weeks. He also does lots of other things on his website that are worth checking out, and I’ll be sending him a ‘Story Behind the Story’ next week. Visit his…
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The best modern fairy tales to make you believe in magic again
The best modern fairy tales to make you believe in magic again
A couple of months ago, I was invited to put together a list page for the new-concept, book-discovery website shepherd.com. It’s a cool idea, with lots more features planned. Authors recommend a list of five good books that are similar to one that they wrote themselves, and readers can search up the name of a book they enjoyed, and instantly get reliable suggestions for their next read in the…
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Satisfying Sentence: This Blue World
Satisfying Sentence: This Blue World
Because some sentences need more attention… I could pick hundreds of satisfying sentences from Elbow songs, written by Guy Garvey. As NME magazine once said “Garvey is a poet, and one of the most creative and goddamn heartbreaking wordsmiths we have in the UK.” This is my all time favourite… While three chambers of my heart beat true and strong with love for another… The fourth, the fourth is…
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Not Today...
Not Today…
“The world is full enough of hurts and mischances without wars to multiply them.”J.R.R. Tolkien I had a post lined up to share- a frivolous one about nothing much – that may have coaxed a smile from you. But it doesn’t seem appropriate. Not today. Today’s thoughts belong to the people of Ukraine. Today’s thoughts scribble furiously over Russia with a thick, black marker pen. There will be no…
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The Long and the Short of It
The Long and the Short of It
In which we look at old novels with much longer original titles than the short title they are usually known by, often extending to several sentences, that effectively give the plot away and even, on occasion, the ending, so you are left wondering if you should even read the book in the first place because, well, isn’t half the fun in not knowing the ending? Or is it more about the nature of the…
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Groundhog Night
As it’s Groundhog Day, here’s the story-behind-the-story of my book, ’11:42′ – not because of the cute little woodchuck that predicts the arrival of Spring every Feb 2nd in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. But because of the awesome time-loop film that Bill Murray was in, which famously made the term ‘Groundhog Day’ synonymous with recurring situations. ’11:42′ is more of a ‘Groundhog Night’, with a…
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Satisfying Sentence: Never Let Me Go
Because some sentences deserve more attention … ‘Never Let Me Go’ takes you completely inside the head of a young woman as she navigates an unimaginable life without knowing she is living one. As a result, her thoughts are uncluttered, her sentences simple and mostly unemotional. Yet the story she tells carries significant emotional undercurrents and unanswered questions, drawing the reader…
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The First Published Novel in English?
The First Published Novel in English?
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Satisfying Sentence: The North Water
Satisfying Sentence: The North Water
Because some sentences deserve some attention … ‘The North Water’ is not a ‘nice’ book, and I can’t stress this enough. It is crammed with cruelty, violence and death. So when you come across a sentence like this one, it stands out – a beautiful sentence in the middle of all the horror. Balanced on the rim of the western horizon, the narrow Arctic sun glows and fades like a breathed-on emberThe…
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Odd Writers #8: Hemingway the Crazy Cat Lady
Odd Writers #8: Hemingway the Crazy Cat Lady
‘Papa’ Hemingway was as tough as old boots, devilishly handsome, and as macho as they come. It seems the die was cast in his early years with a mother who dressed him as a little girl and called him ‘Ernestine’, and a broken heart that coloured his whole romantic life. Perhaps to (over)compensate, he filled his life with masculine pursuits and many wives… Amongst other extreme life experiences,…
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