I read so much that I have finally decided to go beyond just recording titles via GoodReads or in my journal and taking time to properly review books. This book by Plum Johnson is a thought provoking memoir, which many readers will enjoy but which will resonate particularly for those of us of a certain age who have recently lost parents ( Read more... )

Although I still have been reading LiveJournal,I was shocked that I have not posted here in over a year. Sometimes, it seems there are just too many ways to reach out. I have been getting to grips with FaceBook, Twitter and GoodReads. Now that someone has introduced me to HootSuite, I intend to cross post and want to concentrate more on books that ( Read more... )

Next big thing: What I’m working on now…

Writers are tagging each other with a questionnaire about what they’re working on now. I was tagged by Gary Barwin.
I would like to tag Anne Grey, Kurtis Scaletta, Ann Ewan, Geraldine Durrant and Gisela Sherman.

What is your working title of your book? 
Not the Slightest Chance

What is the one-sentence ( Read more... )

papersky's post prompted me to post after such a long silence. I have been reading LiveJournal, but somehow the imperative to post has been missing in action.

So, Thanksgiving . . .  It's one of those holidays that still seems alien to me, even after twenty one years in Canada. I like the concept, but the actual trappings have never worked. Initially, ( Read more... )

He was the middle of three children, born in London as a new year dawned.  From what he said, Jimmy's childhood was not unhappy, but he gave the impression that he didn't get on with his own father particularly well and his mother, although much younger than his father, was largely crippled due to severe rheumatoid arthritis. Little things added up ( Read more... )

Back at last. So much going on, none of it dreadful, but I have not felt the urge to post at all.
The good news is that the 1812 book is done, I think. The second lot of revisions went back mid-week. Now I can concentrate on the semi-secret project.

The following was gakked from matociquala and it amused me to do it, since I grew up reading Gollancz science ( Read more... )

When she arrived in England from South Africa in 1945 her new family thought she was glamorous and exotic and looked like Dorothy Lamour.

How strange it must have been leaving the warmth of South Africa and coming to a drab, war-wracked Britain where rationing still ruled. For a city girl who had grown up in Pretoria, it must have been stranger ( Read more... )

He was twenty when they met. He had somehow escaped from the Fall of France in the summer of 1940, more by luck than anything else, but that's a story for another time.

Jimmy Durrant, Curly to his mates, went on a blind date organised by his friend, Ace. They were young Englishmen in South Africa at the end of 1941, working as gunnery instructors in ( Read more... )

It was the right cousin and he passed my e-mail over to his sister-in-law who was visiting him in South Africa. She has been researching the Flaherty family for some years and once she is home and has access to her notes, she will e-mail me. I have so many questions about my mother's family - some about my mother and some more mundane ones such as ( Read more... )

I am still in limbo as I have not received the edits due back in September, but I am not chasing them at the moment.

Since my return from my father's funeral in England in the summer, I have been thinking a great deal about how easy it is for us to lose our histories. It became clear as we prepared for the funeral that we all had pieces of our ( Read more... )