Ring out the old, ring in the new...  Is it too early for an end of year review? I’ve had such a productive year that I really do feel I’d like to shout about it. It began with the publication of Poppy’s Seed in February 2017. It’s an amazing feeling when you finally see the book you’ve worked so hard on. Read More

The Mysterious Mr.Mitchell 

Slade House was the first book I read  by David Mitchell. Not at all my usual genre I nonetheless found it refreshingly different and I loved the idea of a house that wasn’t there in the centre of London and the mysterious people who inhabited it. Compared to his others, this is quite short novel but it largely keeps to the same main protagonists and it is easy for the reader to understand quite quickly what was going on. It was eerie and spooky and I would recommend it to anyone. So having read reviews of some of his novels on Amazon...

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The life and Travels of a 20th Century Engineer

My cousin Brian Gregson, now in his eighties, jotted down his memoirs some time ago, always meaning to write them up into some coherent order. When he read my novel, Counting the Days he asked if I could take a look at his notes with a view to publishing them. The notes came to me in several separate parts: his childhood memories and school...

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Book Review City of Friends Joanna Trollope I wouldn't say that Joanna Trollope is one of my favourite authors but I have certainly enjoyed some of her novels, particularly Other People’s Children and Marrying the Mistress, both of which could be said to have influenced my own novel on divorce, re-marriage and step-children Out of Step. Jonanna Trollope’s novels are well-crafted....

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http://jennykane.co.uk/blog/interview-with-bethany-askew-poppys-seed/  

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Holiday Highlights

Since visiting Bruges in April we have had two more trips away. In May we had two nights in Stratford-upon-Avon followed by two nights in the Cotswolds and we have just returned from a week in the Lake District. The trip to Stratford had been long postponed. For several years we made a habit of going up once a year to see a Shakespeare play and only stopped because of the refurbishment of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. Then it took us until this year to start going again. In January we looked at our diary and the performances that were on and opted for Antony...

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  Click the link below to hear the interview: Interview with Steve Yabsley BBC Radio Bristol 24th May 2017 

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Bruges in April

  Bruges by Eurostar was always something we had wanted to do. One of our daughters lived near the Ebbs Fleet Eurostar station for years but strangely we never took advantage of going either to Paris or Bruges while she lived there. Maybe it was because we were working at the time and it seemed simpler and quicker to drive up to Bristol Airport and hop on the aeroplane. We used to do a lot of city breaks when we were working. Holidays were definitely mote important then. We were incredibly well organised about them and at the start  of every year we sat down...

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