Authors
I want to kick off with a mention that Reflex Press’s anthology Volume Two, The Real Jazz Baby, has recently won the Best Anthology Award in the 2020 Saboteur Awards. My story Let Me Be Your Fantasy is featured, together with 160 other authors, and I’m very proud to be a small part of an […]
This month’s poem is inspired by both a trip during August to Northern Ireland, my journey of DNA discovery, and the depressing news cycle we watched when we (rarely) turned on the TV to catch the news while taking in the magnificent Causeway coast. I recently had my DNA ancestry traced on 23andMe and discovered that […]
We lived on a road at the base of the massive outcrop in the picture above which is, of course, Cave Hill. Straddling the skyline of North Belfast, it was immortalised by Jonathan Swift as a Sleeping Giant. The best panoramic views of the city and Belfast lough are from the peak by McArt’s Fort, or […]
…And the blackbird’s tune, And May, and June! – De Gustibus, Robert Browning I’ve added a lot of tags to this post; my four weeks away from writing and blogging generated quite a few thoughts and ideas, as well as […]
Philomena Who’s in that house there, look? I thought I saw a light flickering in the empty rooms; who’d be in there late on Saturday night? Who’s in that house there – that wee house belongs to my dad! No one lives there now. Should we go and check it’s nothing bad? Who’s in that […]
I’ve just discovered the poetry of Belfast-born writer John Hewitt, which is a shocking oversight for someone writing a novel based in Belfast during the Troubles. But then his name is somewhat overshadowed by those other dazzling Northern Irish luminaries: Seamus Heaney, Louis MacNeice, CS Lewis and Frank Ormsby. I read the poem below and […]
This month’s poem of the month came to me during a work meeting recently; it was a somewhat attenuated review of some annual targets, and the use of jargon and corporate buzz words led my gaze to fall from the screen and out of the window to the street below. Students from the nearby university […]
I’ve just created this new regular feature for 2019, after re-reading some of my favourite poems; it occurred to me that I’d discovered many of them by browsing around online on all sorts of sites, literary and otherwise. Some of these poems have become touchstones in my life, and I revisit them regularly to refresh […]
I’m not going to list out all the famous authors who had to persist through dozens of rejections until their magnum opus was snapped up. And I’m not going to name that Decca manager who rejected the Beatles as a passé guitar group on their way out. I’m not even going to dwell on Stephen […]
“The themes and tropes that interest, inspire or worry us are timeless” At her historical fiction blog, A Writer of History, author and blogger M.K.Tod (Mary) recently posed a series of questions to readers, and bloggers on the subject of what constitutes successful historical fiction. The questions posed by Mary were: What’s your definition of successful historical fiction? […]
I admit it, I’m currently on a real kick for Horror fiction in general and HP Lovecraft in particular. Maybe it’s the time of year; the evenings draw in, there’s a catch in your breath from the cold air, it’s Halloween season, and your thoughts turn to cosmic horror and undying gods beyond the stars and […]
![Cesare Maccari [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](https://i0.wp.com/margaretmcgoverne.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/512px-maccari-cicero-1.jpg?resize=512%2C319&ssl=1)
Would an enormously clever and talented, but relatively humble orator like Cicero rise to the top echelons of government today, or as in the time of the Roman republic, would that require huge financial backing? Has much changed?
