RichardB

Thank you, Sandra, for a prompt that actually got me writing. It’s ages since I last entered the monthly comp, possibly not since the Cloud imploded.

Just to clarify, this is a prequel to my earlier stories about Rebecca rather than a continuation, set ten years earlier. Rather like Athelstone with Teabreak, I can’t leave her alone. I love her to…[Read more]

This is in response to the original prompt, ‘What becomes…’
599 words (Phew!)

Glan-y-Nant

She’s the reason I’m so far from home in this quiet corner of Carmarthenshire where the tourists don’t come, driving along this grass-grown lane to nowhere, neither knowing nor caring where I’m going. Walking-on-air. light-in-the-face, ice-in-the-heart…[Read more]

A bit off-topic, but hey, this is the coffee shop, right?

I too have a huge amount of respect for Emma Darwin. And she gave me the happiest moment of my writing career.

The only time I went to the York Festival I (naturally, considering what I’ve just said) booked a book doctor slot with her. Mine was the first slot of the day, and as we sat…[Read more]

I’m glad you copied this, Libby, because you saved me the trouble. Your comments should definitely be an integral part of this thread. And I’m glad, too, that the poem seems to have had much the same effect on you as it had on me.

There’s more, much more, than ‘yet another translation.’ There’s a page with over forty, ranging from Catullus’ Latin…[Read more]

Rather annoyingly, shortly after posting this I came upon another translation. Annoyingly, because its publication on a page headed ‘The Center for Hellenic Studies,’ its juxtaposition with the Greek, and most of all the clumsiness of its English suggest to me that it is the closest to a word-for-word rendition of Sappho’s original that I’ve yet…[Read more]

Stephen King, Ath? He’s said that he never knows what’s going to happen when he starts a novel, and he’s published nearly seventy of them.

Your method (if we can grace it with that name), Ath, sounds very much like mine: a rough idea of the story arc and the ending, and not much more. The nearest I ever got to planning was to write out the rather…[Read more]

Burkhardt’s first reaction to the disaster was to lay the blame on Harding (now there’s a surprise…). This, after Harding had expressed concerns about the locomotive, which were dismissed, and made his offer to go and check on the train, which was also dismissed. The transcript of the phone call makes his anxiety plain. After he’s told he’s not…[Read more]