Tuesday 2 January 2024

Advent Story 2023 - Bianca's Tale

In December I decided to write a story day-by-day on social media (posted on Bluesky, Instagram, and Facebook each day), for advent. Having completed the tale on Christmas Eve, I'm collating the whole thing here - and it starts like this...

A hillside covered in rusty orange vegetation, at sunset. The sky in the background fades from blue down to gold along the horizon.

It was winter, and the naked trees reached for the cold sky with twisted fingers. Bianca had wrapped up warm but the chill crept in around the edges of her clothes and worried at her skin. She knew it would get worse before it got better, for the night was only just beginning.

Thursday 29 December 2022

Lit Mag Advent A-Z: The Full List

So I had an idea for a series of Twitter advent posts of stories/poems I love from different online lit mags, and for an added challenge I figured is could be an A-Z (so would actually end on Boxing Day). They are all on Twitter under the hashtag #LitMagAdventAtoZ, but if you missed any of them they are all listed here as well, for completeness.

I dug back into stories I had bookmarked in the past, so they are not all from 2022, although some of them are. Quite impressed I managed the whole alphabet, considering I didn't have a full list prepped when I started. And some letters had more choices that others, so the number of pieces/lit mags featured each day ranged from 1 to 5.

Anyway, without further ado, here they all are...

Friday 12 March 2021

September-November Reading Round-Up

Still playing catch up from the end of 2020 here, so you get three months' worth of online bookmarked loveliness for the price of one. Lucky you!

(I started reading several new books over this period, but didn't actually finish any of them. There'll be one in my post about December though, coming soon...)

Anyway, here's what I do have to share with you:

Wednesday 30 December 2020

August Reading Round-Up

Can't believe it's nearly 2021! And here I am backtracking all the way to August... but in August I did a lot of reading 😊 I finished three whole actual books, and bookmarked a whole bunch of great stuff I found online!

First, the books...

Sunday 27 September 2020

July Reading Round-Up

Playing catch up again, because life has got away from me a bit recently... No books in July, but I can tell you there will *definitely* be finished books in my August post! And yes, that's books - plural 😃📚

Anyway, here's what I read and bookmarked online in July:

Saturday 8 August 2020

Lockdown Crafting

Look, a post that's not about reading! (Not that there's anything wrong with posts about reading, of course.)

I thought I would share a little bit about some other creative pursuits I've been indulging, of the crafty variety. Anyone who knows me well, knows that I am a very sporadic crafter and also easily distracted by shiny new crafts, and I have a bad habit of doing nothing at all for months on end and then taking on a massive, complicated project (usually with a tight deadline) - example: I made my own wedding dress, and a few years later made a wedding dress for a friend (way more nerve-wracking than making your own, believe me!)

Anyway, ignoring the fact that I have a heap of WiP craft projects, I thought I'd start with something I *have* finished.

Tuesday 21 July 2020

June Reading Round-Up

June was a pretty full-on month work-wise, so didn't finish any books (although I did squeeze in some reading along the way). 

The problem(/benefit) of following a lot of wonderful writers and small/indie presses on Twitter is that I keep coming across new and exciting books and adding to my TBR pile (it's getting pretty precarious), so I really need to make some quality reading time and dig in to some of them! I have this week off work, so this will be me for some of the time at least:


But I did still collect some links to things I stumbled across and loved, to share here, so without further ado here are my June recommendations for stuff you can read online...