The first day of a new month, and autumn is a week old already. But do not despair, there are so many things to keep us occupied and out of mischief for the next couple of months while we wait for winter and Christmas to arrive.

Such wonderful things as Halloween, which is coming up fast and, as such, also for those of us who love to doodle and draw, #Inktober. Then, at the end of the month, there’s, #Spooktastic, for those of us who love to read all things fantastical. 

Then, not to be out done, November rolls in with #SciFiMonth for those of us who want to read and watch all things science fiction and fantasy and finally, there’s #NaNoWriMo. Which, as most people know by now, is all about writing a 50K novel (however badly) in just 30 days!

I mean, come on, what more could you ask for? There’s art challenges galore, from reading, to writing, to scribbling, to doodling, to watching your favourite Marvel movies (do they count for SciFiMonth?)

Whatever your choice, there’s something for everyone to take part in, should you feel so inclined. Find something for you, and have fun.

And so, it begins.

Another year around the sun and here we are, planning and prepping for SciFiMonth 2026. If you love all things science fiction, reading, writing, art and movies, then this is the month-long celebration you need to join in on.

The Co-Captains running the show, Imyril, Annemieke, Lisa and Mayri cordially invite you to sign on as Crew, and join in the fun. 

I feel like one of the Chosen Ones, picked to go on a quest, or something esoteric, finding myself over on a very new website whose sole purpose is to connect us all to one another by a single pixel. A simple piece of art that is both fun and yet, purposeful.

I feel seen. 

Seen at Pixel Area.

Today I thought to do my version of Tiny Things I Like and then I thought, why not go big, after all, I’m a BIG kinda Gal. So here we go:

BIG Things I Like:

• Beds

• Cups of tea

• Breakfasts

• Newspapers

• Books

• Couches

BIG things I don’t like:

• Crowds

• Personalities

• Egos

• Cities

• Airports

• Events

Someone recently asked me, what rules do I try to live my life by? Good question. In no particular order:

• Do no harm

• Be kind at all times

• Ask yourself, is this helpful? Whatever this is

• Don't put off difficult tasks

• Face your fears and understand them

• Try to learn new things

• Try to set yourself realistic goals

• Figure out your purpose

• Think before you (re)act

• And always, always, listen first

Of course, this is just the basic list, there are more I could add but, these are been a good start. And you, what rules, if any, do you try to live your life by?

These are always fun to do, like a reverse wish list of things you haven’t done yet but, might be tempted to do at some future point. Or, maybe not.

Never have I ever:

• Ridden on a camel in the desert

• Smoked pot/ganga/weed

• Drunk a gin and tonic

• Danced the highland fling in a kilt

• Played a penny whistle

• Been scuba diving

• Flown a helicopter

• Swam the English Channel

And you, what have you never done?

Reading one of Robert Birming's post, We Live and We Learn, made me think of something my mother once told me and I don't know if it was something she learnt or was told, but I distinctly remember her saying to me one time:

One of our greatest gift is our ability to forget.

It wasn't till much later in life that I fully understood what she said in the context of why anyone would want to forget, especially the good things in life, but after a handful of painful events in my life I realised her words made perfect sense. While we might not forget the essence of something that happened to us—a car accident, the loss of a parent, a nasty breakup—time and fading memory do a good job of lessening the emotional impact of these events, which is what I think my mother was trying to convey. That, while at the time we're feeling an unimaginable pain or hurt, time really does make the emotion of that moment fade to somewhat acceptable levels.

I think it's one of life's greatest gifts and, in truth, gives us the ability to carry on. So please remember that sometimes, it’s quite okay to forget.

Dear Writer,

While it might be true, you are the next Truman Capote, budding Frank Herbert, or even maybe the Ernest Hemingway. You really should know that I am unable to give you any advice on how to outline, write, rewrite, market, or even sell your book. I no longer have the connections to refer you to the best literary agent, let alone a competent one. Besides, my limited time does not allow me the luxury of reading any and all material you decide to send me, unsolicited, let alone give you an opinion on. And even if I could, there are only so many hours in the day and like any of my species (a one-time over-worked editor) I have a limited life span. Which, I might add, is getting shorter by the minute having to answer your questions and emails.

Reading a manuscript, appending tracking notes, and giving pertinent advice about it, is not only time-consuming, but is a paid, skilled job performed by professionals. My advice to you is not to ask an editor to do this job for you, for free, unless you're friends, and I mean, a really close friend. Otherwise, you should be willing to compensate the editor as you would your lawyer, your dentist, or doctor, when seeking their professional advice and help.

If you are still looking for free advice and some pertinent articles on writing then, by all means, become a subscriber to my blog.

Yours sincerely,

Alexandra
a retired ex-editor

I read two very interest interconnect blog posts this morning from Jim Mitchell and Sebastian¹, both talking about the why and way they blog. Which, of course, got me to thinking about how others blog and, in particular, how I now blog. 

After a lot of starts, stops and even going as far as to delete various blogs over the years. I think I’ve finally found what works for me: The Garbage Can approach.

Pretty much everything and I mean, everything I want to write about, goes on this blog. A personal post, check. A film review, check, a post about blogging, check. I realised the reason I kept starting and stopping was I was trying to force each blog I started into a tiny set of parameters. 

And me? I like to colour outside the lines. A lot. 

It took me a long while, but I think I’m there. Now I just write what I want. When I want. About what I want. However I want. 

This blog is both my online journal and a place to share things, but also a place to archive thoughts, events, notes and observations. As much is it is about writing in reply, like this post is, to other bloggers.

Why can’t it be everything? 

I found by limiting myself to either one thing or the other, I was putting too many constraints on how our minds work, our thought like butterflies, flitting from one thought to another, and back again. 

So that it, that’s how I write. Whatever it is that pops into my head, when it pops into my head. I’m sharing it all with you, and, of course, for prosperity.

After all, it’s not written in stone, right? Right? 

𖡼.𖤣𖥧𖡼.𖤣𖥧

1. By the way, we all seem to envy how neat and tidy Darren Hester’s blog is, and dream of being this organised and creative. Maybe … one day …

Brevity is underrated.

It’s customary for participants to write an introduction, mostly for new readers rather than for those who are regulars to this blog. But, either way, I hope you find it interesting, if not, funny. So, for new readers to this blog, here we go:

• I’m a viviparous mammalian, carbon-based biped.

• I’ve been a military analyst, air traffic controller, and a book and magazine editor.

• And yes, I still love reading. I used to read mostly scifi and fantasy but over the years have diversified into crime fiction, but nothing too grim or violent. I enjoy mostly cosy mysteries and suspense with a few political thrillers thrown in for good measure.

• Words and flowers are two of my biggest passions, as is photography. I’m a happy snapper who loves to take floral portraits. As a result, you’ll find a lot of words and flower photos on this blog.

• I’m also a foodie who loves to cook and create chaos in the kitchen. 

• And, at one time, I use to travel a lot. I’ve lived in and or visit over 37 countries. 

• And yes, it’s true, I love Marmite.

And there you have it. If you’re feeling brave enough, you can also check through the Lists category to find more random facts about me.

Every year for the last few years, Mark Temple (Belghast) has prompted us to join in and write throughout the month of August as part of #Blaugust month. I was sorry to read yesterday that Mark sadly passed away on July 2, but cheered to read that others will carry on with the #Blaugust Festival of Blogging and keep this wonderful tradition going in his honour.

If you want to know more, pop on over and read the blog, or, if you already know what’s what, go and sign up for this year’s challenge.

You can also check out who the other participants are in this month’s challenge.

Other than that, write, write, write and, of course, do your best to help promote other participants posts and foster community.

This novella may only be 102 pages long, but each and ever page of In Shadows We Fall drips with palace politics, intrigue, and deception. Madson’s Aurealis award-winning prequel to the Vengeance trilogy, rips along at a blistering pace leaving the reader no time to pause and catch their breath. Let alone stop to reflect as, in a pitched battle of wits, the Empress Li plots the downfall of her God-Emperor husband, the Emperor Lan.

Madson literally drops us straight into the heart of this story from the outset, with the Empress plotting against her cheating husband with two of her trusted guards, Cheng and Koto. And before we know what’s really happening, Li has murder two people in the dead of night. I mean, come on, this woman really wants revenge.

“My knife failed to glint dramatically in the light, but it did not fail to pierce the soft skin of the man’s neck. His throat offered resistance like aged meat, but I had no time for finesse. I ripped the blade through it, spraying blood. His eyes opened. He wheezed. Bubbled. Failed. Crimson spilled upon the page before I could snatch it away, though snatch it away I did. Just as wide, fearful eyes found me they began to roll back, though whether he recognised my face I would never know.”

Just as quickly, we begin to understand why—not only has the Emperor found a replacement for his wife in the form of a younger more amenable paramour, one he even flouts in open court to humiliate her. He’s plotting to betray his own country, using mercenaries, thereby plunging Kisia into a prolonged war with their northern neighbour, Chiltae. A war Li knows her country can ill afford to wage, let alone its people.

In Shadows We Fall delivers brilliantly on both world building and plot, and while others have said the weak link is characterisation. I beg to differ. I think the whole concept is one long character study, done at its best, I might add. In which we get to grips with Empress Li, her motives, her pain, the turmoil, and more to the point, just what she’s willing to do and sacrifice in order to bring down Lan. And if that means using her 3 year-old son as an assassin, then so be it.

The writing is effortless and at all times we are fully engaged in events as they move at a brisk pace. Everything unfolds in Li’s last few days in the palace, to quite the unexpected, explosive end, in which fate has the final word.

For me, this novel is a masterful exposition of a moment in time, encapsulated in blood-dripping violence and intrigue that will leave you breathless at the end.

While Andrew Taylor beautifully evokes the stifled atmosphere of New York City under siege during the War of Independence (also referred to as the ‘Revolutionary War’). And gives us a plausible enough character in the guise of Mr. Edward Savill, a clerk for the American Office based in London. The over-all arcing storyline could have done with some judicious (if not) ruthless editing to bring the unwieldily mess into a more manageable read. As it stands, The Scent of Death meanders all over the place, so much so, that at one point I had to abandon it.

It wasn’t so much from boredom, as tedium from an over abundance of exposition and story lines, that could have, IMHO, been a little more succinct and to the point. It’s one thing to describe a place, in detail, and evoke a sense of being there, and then, quite another to drown the reader in minutia.

That isn’t to say I didn’t, in the end, enjoy this historically set mystery, just that I would have liked to have arrived at its conclusion a lot faster than I did. Especially as at the latter stages of Savill’s journey of discovery, it feels like the author suddenly rushed the ending, in comparison that went before.

That said, the characters were, for the most part, well-drawn and delineated. As was the setting, from the gritty, realistic brutality of Canvas Town, down to the rest of the city struggling under shortages.

Much of the intrigue and mystery of the novel is centred around the Wintour family which Savill is lodging with, rather than the war itself. But this too suffers from a meandering narrative that fails to deliver any real surprises at the book’s end.

All in all, while The Scent of Death may be well researched and accurate in certain detail, it suffers from glacial pacing and unsympathetic characters who lacked any emotional depth to make the mystery worth bothering about.

I so wanted to ‘like’ EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE by Peter May but, in the end, this one was a little too staged, with sluggish pacing. Moments that could have and should have been tense, and dramatic, were lost amid the travelogue descriptions that sucked up more than their fair share of page length. It’s all very well to set the scene, but quite another to go on and on with too much incidental detail, that it becomes tedious.

The characters themselves were under developed and, at times, a little too opaque, if not, obvious. The plodding French detective who smokes too much. The far-left leaning reporter who dresses like a film star. To the femme fatale psychologist MacLeod falls in love with who seems to be as clueless as Enzo. Never mind that one too many of the situation they found themselves in—whether finding convenient clues on Google, to someone standing on a plaque dedicated to a dead dog—were all a little to contrived for my liking.

The lead character of Enzo—has already enjoyed an amazing life with two daughters by different women, a divorced wife, a dead mistress and a drastic career change resulting in moving to another country. All this before the book even starts—sounded too much like a drop-out hippie (think Scottish comedian Billy Connolly) rather than the respected forensic specialist turned professor he’s supposed to be. And for someone who was supposed to have been at the top of his game, a specialist in his field, he doesn’t know how to use a computer, is somewhat laughable. Suspension of disbelief is stretched to the max.

Add in the fact that he’s perpetually being on the derogatory side when in the company of women, from eyeing and ogling a 23 year-old student’s breasts to lusting after a woman he’s only just met, and the ex of one of his (supposedly) closest friends. It make the man come across as lecherous. Or, as a Scot might say, a dirty old man! Maybe the author was pouring a little bit too much of himself into Enzo than is considered healthy. Either way, it didn’t endear the character to me in any way, shape, or form.

That said, if you like the simplistic kind of murder mysteries, where the befuddled hero steadfastly unravels all the arcane clues to their conclusion—contrived or otherwise—then you might like this. Otherwise I suggest you look elsewhere.

The Last Smile in Sunder City is a dark urban fantasy and the first book in a planned series, the Fetch Phillips Archives, which promises a great deal more in depth world building and character development. And, even for a debut, Arnold packs it in—for a world that once ran on magic nothing will ever be the same. Every conceivable magical creature, and there are some that even defy imagination, the loss of magic has been devastating. Some died instantly, age catching up with them, while others linger, clinging to the vestiges of their past lives, caught in something of a twilight world.

Enter Fetch Phillips, a man for hire, and a habitual drunk, with a mysterious past that haunts him.

At the beginning, Fetch is hired to find a missing professor, an ageing vampire, who has suddenly vanished. And, as he begins to investigate this seemingly benign case of a missing person, we’re treated to a great deal of delicious world building, intriguing back story, and the current lay of the land. Including introductions to some of what, I assume, will be supporting characters in subsequent instalments to come.

Arnold unravels the story through two timelines, the first of which focuses in on Fetch locating the missing professor. And, the more he stumbles around Sunder City hoping to come across clues, the more we get to know Fetch, the city, and those who are left clinging to life. Told in the first person POV—in an almost noir detective style—Fetch Phillips is imbued with a great deal of disparaging observational wit.

What’s also obvious from the get go is, Fetch Phillips is a broken man.

Just how he got there is explained in the second thread, set in the past—in flashback—giving us glimpses of what led up to his participation in the loss of magic—and the tragic events that brought about the downfall of magical creatures and, of course, Fetch Phillips himself.

Full of intriguing world building, and a number of interesting characters, The Last Smile in Sunder City is a thoroughly engrossing read. And while there is little to no action, that in and of itself is not a bad thing. I only noticed near the end when we did have a flurry of activity, that little had gone on beforehand. But, going out in a blaze of glory or is that, gore? Fetch learns the hard way what happens when hope rears its ugly head and offers a chance at redemption.

Not to spoil things, Fetch finds his man, or is that, vampire, and the truth about the young woman the professor was tutoring. And thus, we know from events set in motion, that there is a lot more yet to come, both from the past and in the future.

My only complaint is that I would have liked to have seen a little more depth to the supporting characters. But, as it is, I’m sure we’re going to get more as the series progresses. Other than that, I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know Fetch Phillips, Sunder City, and the denizens of this lost world.