Anita and Jaye are great supporters of fellow writers and between them have written a fascinating selection of novels. Today they are sharing their new review of my novel.
This is a 5* review for Janet Gogerty’s amazing book, Quarter Acre Block. Janet is a member of Verified Purchase Review Group.
If you would like to join Stevie Turner’s Group and gain reviews for one of your books, please click on the following link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/verifiedreviews/
In the nineteen sixties, many ‘ten pound pommies’ had never left England before and most expected never to return or see loved ones again.
George Palmer saw Australia as a land of opportunities for his four children, his wife longed for warmth and space and their daughter’s ambition was to swim in the sea and own a dog.
For migrant children, it was a big adventure, for fathers the daunting challenge of finding work and providing for their family, but for the wives the loneliness of settling in a strange place.
Our Review
I can remember the winter of 1962-63, also known as…
Sunday Salon today shares a blog from my fellow local writer and Remainer. Approaching the library from the opposite direction I missed the opportunity of a brief appearance on local news.
An interesting thing happened on the way to the library.
On Monday afternoon I set off towards our local High Street in order to attend my monthly meeting of our writers’ group, The Spokes, which meets on the third Monday of each month. The meeting date had taken me by surprise, being only two weeks in to October because the first Monday was the first day. The result of this was that my reminder email to our group was not sent until very late on Sunday night.
When I reached the High Street, market trading was well underway as usual for Monday, but with the addition of a large, white, double-decker bus, next to which a small group of elderly people bearing leaflets was busy faffing around.
On the bus’s side slogans of the ‘Brexit means Brexit’ type had been placed.
1.Do you live in a city penthouse forty floors up?
Take the lift down to the basement – wait, you don’t own a car because you can cycle and walk everywhere in the city? Take the lift back up again.
2.Has your remote jungle village been discovered yet?
No? You are not contributing to world pollution. Take the escalator to the top floor. Oh, you haven’t got an escalator…
3.Have you installed solar panels on the roof of your house?
Take a flight of stairs.
4.You have concreted over your garden to park three vehicles and a caravan.
Go down the Cobra.
Round Three: Food
1.Would you describe yourself as a subsistence farmer?
Ascend the marble staircase… but you chop all the trees down for firewood?
Sorry, slide down the Anaconda.
2.Are you vegan?
Climb up to the moral high ground.
3.Are you vegetarian?
Stay where you are.
4.Do you eat meat?
Slip down the throat of the Boa Constrictor. No wait, there has been an appeal. You farm hill sheep and preserve the countryside and use some of your land for a wind farm.
5.Do you grow your own vegetables and keep chickens in your suburban garden?
Yes, but you’re so busy you use disposable nappies. Miss a go.
No, climb two flights of stairs, easy for you as you are fit from walking everywhere…. but your partner has a car and chauffeurs you around? Topple down a flight.
2.You cycle everywhere and wear one of those vests that says oneless car on the road.
Excellent, you earn enough points to eat meat.
3.You flew on holiday to Disneyland, return to Go.
4.You took your private jet to the other side of the world to help refugees?
Gaia says return to Go.
Round Five: Power
1.Do you write about the environment in your blog and sign petitions? Does your computer work on solar power? No – miss a go.
2.You got arrested for protesting about fracking. Climb the ladder.
3.You live as a hermit on a remote island.
Excellent, but before taking your next go describe your contribution to society.
Winner
The winner, Mr. Everly Green, has a small house just the right size for his wife and two children. His roof has solar panels, he has eight rain water butts, grows fruit, vegetables and bee friendly flowers among which roam chickens to fertilise the garden and provide eggs and roast dinners. He walks to work and does not go on holiday as he can’t leave the garden.
But hold on, his win is being contested; that bouquet of flowers he ordered from the florist for his mother’s birthday was composed of cut flowers flown in from Kenya and his prize winning front garden display used plants that came in plastic pots and trays on a pantechnicon from Holland.
Mr. Green must take the serpentine descent of shame.
Sally Cronin is a great supporter of fellow authors and there is always plenty of interest to read on Smorgasbord. Today she shares reviews of three very different novels, one of them mine. Take a look if you want your imagination stretched and to be entertained.
‘The Write Stuff’ was one of the first blogs I started following when I joined WordPress. I enjoy reading Marcia’s books and her blogs. There is always something fun or interesting happening at her website. She also generously supports fellow writers, including sharing book reviews. Here is a review I wrote recently for Anita Dawe’s novel Secrets.
This morning, I’m happy to be sharing this recent review of Secrets by Anita Dawes. I know you’ll enjoy this one, and will share it on your favorite social media sites! Thanks!
20 August 2018 Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase
I finished reading this in the middle of last night; though it is not unsusual for me to turn my Kindle on in the early hours, this is not the sort of novel you should be reading in the dark watches of the night! It is a good paranormal thriller, but more than that it will make you reconsider all our childhoods. How responsible are children for what they do and what is really going on in their minds? In some ways I felt most sorry for Jack’s parents, a poignant back story gradually revealed, an event…
I follow Jaye and Anita’s blog regularly and today I was delighted to find a review of my novel. The best review for an author is when the reader really ‘gets’ their novel and enjoys it.
In the early years of the Twenty First Century, widow Susan Dexter has more to worry about than the recession. For thirty years she has kept a secret; she is not sure if her daughter is human. New events lead her to other people who need to find the truth.
How do ordinary people cope with the extraordinary?
Mystery, music and medicine are at the heart of this family saga; sub plots are woven amongst several very different love stories, as the characters question what it is to be human and what is reality.
Our Review
What an opening!
Spaceships, encounters and strange goings-on, all so much more interesting than the film with the similar name and as I read this story, I couldn’t help wondering how I would cope in similar circumstances.
Right back at the beginning of her marriage, Susan longed to be a mother, but it…
The United Nations’ (UN) International Day of Peace (World Peace Day) is celebrated on September 21 each year to recognize the efforts of those who have worked hard to end conflict and promote peace. I believe that the power to promote world peace lies within each of us. Together, we can transform the world!~Bette A. Stevens
“It is time all nations and all people live up to the words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which recognizes the inherent dignity and equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human race. This year marks the 70th anniversary of that landmark document.” — United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres
I’m glad I took time to read this instead of bookmarking for later. Many of us may not have a community or be bound to the land, but we all were originally. Jim manages to encompass our long past and our ever changing present poetically and humorously.
That’s what the meeting was about, although that wasn’t the title, that’s what it did and that was what drove people to attend.
And I drove up from the south, through St John’s in the Vale on a gorgeous September morning; the sort that you never get many of. The photo shows winter, still beautiful, but today the two crags at the front were bathed in bright sunlight. Blencathra behind was almost lost in a golden haze as the early morning sun burned off the last of the mist. It looked like nothing as much as a Chinese landscape painting.
And later in the day, travelling home, the good folk of the Vale were hard at work. Travelling up I’d seen one field that looked as if it might just bale today, and yes, they were hard at it. A tractor that was older than me pulling a baler which…
Robbie’s home is in South Africa and she has just been on a whirlwind trip to the UK. Her light hearted poem is a reminder to appreciate how much we have.
To organise a four day air festival with events on the ground and in the air, co-ordinating the military and private flight displays with the local airport, is a great feat. But that is nothing compared to the planning involved for families visiting or local households being visited.
Bournemouth Air Festival, now in its eleventh year, straddled the end of August and beginning of September, marking the end of the school holidays. With the generous four days there is a good chance of having at least one good flying day.
A clear day is perfect, heavy cloud means the Red Arrows doing a low level display and torrential rain grounds all the planes. This year we had four fine days and it was too hot at times. The only problem was where to watch from.
Wherever you are you will see some flying; young children on the cliff top will be happy just watching the planes fly by, some people sit in their garden, others go to Bournemouth Airport to watch planes take off and land. But to get the total experience you need to be between Boscombe and Bournemouth piers, on the beach or cliff top, to hear the commentary and see the centre of the display.
In Virginia Woolf’s novel To The Lighthouse, no one actually gets to the lighthouse and at the weekend I was beginning to wonder if I would ever get to the pier. Cyberspouse headed straight for the East Cliff with his camera and big lenses each day; as I only have a compact camera and missed all the best shots, I have borrowed some of his pictures.
For the rest of us Thursday was the beach hut day; convenient, a good view of passing planes or you can swim and watch them above you. There is one downside; every year the beach hut next to us is used by a family coming down to visit granny; she has lots of family, they are all odd and most of her grandchildren whine. The air festival family’s children have whined about everything in the eight years we have had our hut. Fortunately as they have multiplied they have spent more time spread out on the beach. The Red Arrows arrived at five thirty, the sun came out and the nine Hawk jets glinted high up in the sky as they made their graceful curves, swooped down for scary passes then signed off marking the one hundredth birthday of the Royal Air Force ( before that it was the army flying corps.)
Friday the visitors went into town to play crazy golf and enjoy the busy sea front. I didn’t even get to the cliff top as the garden needed to be watered and food cooked. I saw the Red Arrows from the back garden and got dinner early as Cyberspouse wanted to get back out for the after dark flying. Who is doing and seeing what and where has to be planned with military precision. The visitors went back to Bournemouth pier for the ten o’clock fireworks.
On Saturday the visitors were meeting friends and I went to the greengrocers and saw the Red Arrows from the front garden. I got to the beach hut for a late swim and on the way back up the cliff zig zag the Breitling Jet Team flew straight over my head. I stopped to watch their evening display and took pictures of smoke in the sunset. Dinner was late, but we had time to walk back to the cliff top to see the Saturday fireworks in the distance and enjoy the lights of Poole Bay all the way round to Swanage.
Sunday the visitors had to go home and I finally made it to the pier. The promenade was unrecognisable with fair ground rides, military stalls and food outlets; noisy and busy. It is worth hearing the commentary; what is flying, how fast, which manoeuvre.
Every year is slightly different; we always have at least one Spitfire, but the Lancaster wasn’t flying. Sally B was here again, but not the iconic Vulcan bomber or the Typhoon to deafen us. The Breitling team were on their first visit and they were terrific, at times within 3 metres of each other at speeds of over 430mph.
Friday Flash Fiction and Silly Saturday continue the flying theme.
Times and Tides of a Beachwriter 