Today my short story collection Tidalscribe Tales features on Smorgasbord, Sally Cronin’s very popular blog. She is a great supporter of fellow authors and regularly promotes their books. In this blog you can read Sally’s review and also an extract from one of the stories.
https://smorgasbordinvitation.wordpress.com/2026/03/04/smorgasbord-book-promotions-2026
Turn to my Books page to see all my novels and collections.
‘You’re moving where?’
‘Puddleminster-on-Sea.’
‘Is that an actual place?’
‘Yes, I have bought a cottage there.’
‘But Lottie Darling, you can’t leave London.’
Lottie almost faltered under the withering gaze of her agent Felicity Buchannon, but it was too late to change her mind.
‘Felicity, it was you who said I must take a break after losing Callum.’
‘A break, not permanent exile.’
‘I’m hardly leaving the country, it’s a lovely little place where I can get away from everything.’
Charlotte stopped typing. She had set herself to write the opening page of her Lottie Lincoln novel, now all she had to do was decide in which order to put all the chapters she had written so far. She could well imagine the reactions of Felicity and Lottie’s friends. She recalled her boss’s reaction when she had handed in her notice.
‘Where on earth is Hambourne?’
Once her boss realised Hambourne was not within Greater London, Royal Berkshire or Surrey, she lost interest and obviously decided Charlotte was a lost cause and did not try to dissuade her. After that, the longer Charlotte left it to explain to people she was moving away, the harder it became to tell anyone, let alone mention David’s situation. Her best friend from school days had recently departed to live in New Zealand with her new partner, so there was no need to reveal her change of address, thank heaven for emails.
So here she was in Hambourne writing, which was more than Lottie was doing as Charlotte had given her writer’s block. She started typing again.
When Lottie’s mobile rang and she saw Felicity’s name, she was tempted not to answer, but Felicity had been a good friend to her, she deserved better.
‘Lottie, how are you, we’re worried about you.’
‘I needed time to think.’
‘Did you ring that number I gave you for the grief counsellor?’
‘I don’t need counselling, a walk by the sea helps.’
‘So how’s your novel coming along?’
Novel? She hadn’t even unpacked the few chapters she had written, so much had happened to her, Puddleminster was not the quiet place she had expected. After Callum’s tragic death some people had advised her to have a complete break from writing and work, while others had insisted she must keep busy, keep writing.
‘Are you still there Lottie? I don’t want to push you, but we have got a publishing deadline to meet.’
‘I can’t do it Fliss, maybe I’ve got writers’ block. If I do write it will be something dark, this is such a strange place it’s given me new ideas.’
‘Darling, we don’t do DARK, what on earth would all your readers say, they want romance and escapism.’
‘I’ll write under a pen name then, look I have to go, I have an appointment…’
Five minutes later Lottie was on the beach and happy to bump into Geoff the pathologist out with his friend’s dog.
‘Hello Lottie, my wife was just talking about you, wondering when your next book was coming out.’
‘Oh dear, my agent just rang with the same question. I think I’ve got writer’s block. Maybe I should write something different, about a pathologist or a forensic scientist, what is the difference?’
‘For a start hasn’t that already been done and my wife certainly doesn’t want to read about bodies, being married to me. Mind you, I have got an interesting case on the slab, elderly lady, quiet life, living alone with her pot plants, not an enemy in the world and she has been poisoned with a very unusual substance, the sort of thing arrows in the South American jungle were tipped with…’
Lottie wasn’t sure if there was a code of conduct among pathologists and if he should be telling her this, but her interest was piqued.
‘Ohh, was it a local lady?’
‘No, no, way the other side of town. I would not be telling you if it was local.’
‘Are you sure she was murdered? Would the plants still be in her house, did she have exotic plants?’
‘No idea, why?’
‘My aunt had plants, house like a jungle my father used to say. Anyway, she liked her tea brewed properly with freshly boiled water, so she would empty her kettle before using it, distilled water for her beloved plants. If your lady had an exotic plant and the kettle spout touched highly poisonous leaves, is it possible the poison might end up in her tea….’
Geoff laughed then looked thoughtful. ‘I am not an expert on tropical plants, but it would be amusing if an episode of Gardener’s World was devoted to plants that killed their owners.’
‘Oh yes, those viewers’ homes where they can hardly move for plants.’
‘…and you were right about the headless body in the park…’
Charlotte passed for a moment, what fun, this could be a further step to Lottie becoming an amateur detective.
Two weeks had passed with Lottie writing not a single word, while frantic emails from Felicity became more and more frequent. She had joined a walking group and a widow’s support group, where she was of great interest because of her novels and the unusual circumstances of Callum’s death. But she had to face the fact she had no idea in what direction her life should go.
As she walked on the beach one morning she looked up to see Geoff striding purposefully towards her waving.
‘You were right, house full of exotic plants. More than one type highly toxic. A gradual build up of poison in her body, it would not have killed you to have one cup of tea with her, but… ‘
Charlotte closed her lap top, no need to decide tonight how poor Callum had died or what might happen next in Puddleminster-on-Sea.
What if you woke up one morning and couldn’t think what to write or blog…
Revolutionary new technique shows what the inside of a writer’s mind actually looks like.
When your home made Christmas cards go wrong.
When you are tasked with finding the venue for your club’s Christmas Do
What a writer’s mind looks like when they are asleep.
When writers are distracted from writing
A day in the life of a writer’s computer
Cartoon courtesy of Big Issue magazine.
Random ponderings on First World Problems and out of world experiences.
Miserable November afternoon
Happy November morning, welcomed by a Robin singing his heart out.
It has been a discombobulating month so far. WordPress would not let me download new photographs; how could I go on any walks if I couldn’t use my photos! The naughty elf who runs WordPress seemed to be suggesting my gallery was too full. I deleted lots of pictures to no avail and causing havoc to my posts and pages. To be fair to WordPress this was on my desk top computer which is still on Windows 10, now no longer supported, whatever that means. Cyberson2 had suggested I didn’t need to worry or at least there was no point in doing anything, as my old computer would not cope with Windows 11. He had downloaded extra protection when they were visiting recently… And hey ho, I have heard scary things about Windows 11… So I created a test blog on my iPad and whoopee, pictures were accepted, so now I download pictures to the gallery then do my blog on the computer where my word documents are…
Anyway, back to real life. One of our local towns is in lockdown or gridlock… there are always road works somewhere, but this is work on the bypass that does not bypass the town, but ends at the roundabout. Only one side at a time is being closed over the next three weeks, but apparently locals could not drive or catch a bus with any hope of getting there. No problem for me, I don’t drive, don’t live in the town and I walk there. But it turns out walking across the river to your writers’ group or coffee morning is not much good if nobody else is there. Like any group we arrive from all directions to a central point.
Meanwhile, no such problem in Southbourne for our monthly book club, only one person absent. The only problem being half of us had not read the book and only one person loved it, nobody else liked it! After the previous month’s enjoyable hardback in good print size, we were faced with a thick paperback in small print. This is a famous novel many people have loved over the years. Find out what it was at the end of this blog. With two lots of visitors staying and blogs to write, I started reading, but decided I must abandon it. I met one of the other members out and about and was relieved to hear she had not read it either.
It is looking like autumn, but too mild. I have just given my so called lawn its third final mow of the year. Talking of global warming, we seem to have heard too little about Prince William’s Earthshot prize and ten year project. While world leaders preside over wars and destruction, clever people are working and innovating to look after the planet.
And talking of the planet…
Years ago my husband came back indoors one night and said he had just watched the space station fly over Ken’s garage. He had asked another neighbour why he was staring above Ken’s garage. We hadn’t known we could go on line and track its many differing orbits. After that we were obsessed for the period it was passing over Southbourne, or Dorset or England…
The International Space Station, that shining beacon of humanity, science and international cooperation is coming up to retirement or abandonment. My scientific knowledge usually comes from tuning in to the middle of intelligent radio programmes, so it may or may not be true that a space station does not stay in orbit of its own accord and is reliant on the occasional blast of propulsion, worked by the Russians. To bring it down safely to some remote Mexican desert is not guaranteed, dependent as it is on international cooperation. Russia’s MIR was successfully brought down in the desert, but Skylab was scattered over Western Australia in 1979. To have a piece of ISS come down in my road would be blogworthy, but possibly more inconvenient than work on the bypass.
Possible scenario of bits of ISS falling on Bournemouth seafront.
The novel was Catch 22 and the person who loved it also loved my novella Pandemonica and gave it a five star review on Goodreads, so she is obviously a good judge of books...
Have you read Catch 22… or Pandemonica?
Have you spotted the space station or perhaps even been to the space station?
Following on from yesterday’s Halloween theme tale, take a stroll through the setting.
You can read yesterday’s tiny tale here.
https://tidalscribe.com/2025/10/31/friday-flash-faction-moving-on/
Do you like wandering around graveyards, do you have a favourite? Are you as fascinated by the lives of writers as much as in what they wrote?
Someone’s on the move, who is it this time?
Tom again, another investigation. If they had just listened to him this could all be avoided.
Yup, he has been trying for years to tell them what really happened.
When Mary sees all this activity we’ll have to hear for the umpteenth time how she was moved from Saint Pancras.
Do you remember last year, the whole evening spoilt when Judith’s family decided it was time she moved closer to them? Wonder how she’s getting on. The last thing she wanted was to be reunited with her husband. She was so glad to come here and have some peace.
So what are we going to do this year then? We never plan early enough then it creeps up on us.
We must do something to cheer Tom up. All this investigating is going to bring back the bad memories.
Hmmm just when he was coming to terms with his situation.
Let’s all go into town, Tom won’t have to leave till the morning hopefully.
Yes a change of scenery is what we all need. Wonder if there will be much going on in town this year?
There will be by the time we’ve stirred things up, giving that Danny Robins more than enough material for his next series.
But we’ll have to start off in Mary Junior’s pub…
…and have to listen to her going on about the year with no summer and how she got the inspiration for her novel?
Yes and then she’ll get all sentimental and beg Percy to recite one of his poems.
… and one will lead to a dozen.
…and he will drift into melancholy and declare his heart always belonged to Mary and England.
At which point we will move on and see what’s happening elsewhere in town.
‘I don’t think October 31st is a very good night for doing this Boss.’
‘It’s a perfect night for exhuming a body, the locals will be keeping away from the graveyard, even if they claim not to believe in all that stuff.’
‘Why are we digging him up?’
‘His family still want answers so he can rest in peace, though he’s not getting much peace if we keep digging him up. Poor chap, last time there was no DNA, not sure what they hope to find in his bones, but that’s not our job. Ah here comes the vicar, no cracking jokes, this is hallowed ground.
‘I’m not laughing I’m feeling sick.’
‘You will have to toughen up if you want to be a grave digger.’
‘I did not want to be a gravedigger, couldn’t find another job. And I thought I would be burying people, not unburying them.’
‘Half the people in this churchyard have been moved from elsewhere, someone has to do it. Evening Vicar.’
‘Boss, did you hear voices?’
‘Nah just get on with digging.’
‘Vicar, did you hear that voice?’
‘Well um, that’s why I am here, to pray for any unquiet spirits.’
‘Such as poor Tom who was viciously murdered?’
‘But at peace now…’
Footnotes
‘Mary Wollstonecraft was buried at St Pancras old churchyard with an epitaph reading ‘Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: Born 27 April 1759: Died 10 September 1797.’
‘Famously, Mary Shelley spent many hours in the graveyard that held her mother’s remains and was said to have professed her love for Percy Shelley, her future husband, there.’
‘Wollstonecraft and her husband William Godwin’s remains were moved in 1851 upon the request of their grandson Percy Florence Shelley, thanks to the imminent railway works across St Pancras.’
‘Today, their remains can be visited at St Peter’s churchyard in Bournemouth, where the family tomb holds the remains of William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, grandson Percy Florence Shelley and his wife Jane Shelley (1820 -1899).’
Is this tale true?
‘Percy drowned while sailing his boat, the Don Juan, through a summer storm across the Gulf of Spezia in Italy. When his remains were found a few days later by friend and novelist Edward John Trelawny, a fire was built on the beach and he was cremated. To Trelawney’s surprise, however, Percy’s heart would not succumb to the flames. The hardened remains of Percy’s heart were plucked from the ashes and, after an argument over who would keep the remains, were eventually given over to Percy’s wife, Mary Shelley.’
Is his heart in the family tomb?
Back to the 21st century Danny Robbins presents ‘Uncanny’ BBC radio series, TV series and podcasts investigating many strange occurrences…
With real humans visiting I have not spent much time in the blogosphere, but luckily I have an extra hour this weekend… and time for a tiny tale…
Back in Time
It was Edward’s second favourite night of the year, staying up till 2am to watch the changes and do the alterations. An ancient ceremony to be revered, conducted for over one hundred years.
Edward’s home was analogue and digital, flashing on the cooker, ticking on the wall; a grandfather clock and his grandfather’s pocket watch he used to joke and promised he would leave his grandson the first digital watch he saved up £50 to buy…
Watching the time on his iPhone change, alert to see if this time it would change at 01.59 or 02.01 but it never let him down. Clambering up the folding steps in several rooms… adieu BST welcome back GMT. His son said he did not need a clock at all, let alone his horology collection. After all, he had the time on his smart phone and Fitbit, so he did not need to risk life and limb, especially to reach the grandmother clock high up in the stair well.
The night the clocks went back, changing from British Summer Time to Greenwich Mean Time, would be no fun without his beloved clocks. He was never ready for sleep after all the excitement and anyway, everyone was getting an extra hour in bed. He would go on the computer and check the time in other European countries changing their clocks.
He could not lie in for long in the morning as he always went round to his sister’s house for breakfast; more clambering on wobbly steps to change her clocks and the all important reconfiguring in her bedroom. He had bought her one of the first digital radio alarm clocks and after all these years she still had not figured out how to change the time.
Of course Edward’s favourite night of the year was when the clocks went forward in spring.
Facetiming is tricky at this time of year when you are talking to other countries, even other states, let alone other hemispheres. Some change, some don’t, not all choose the same weekend. If and when are you changing your clocks? More importantly, are you gruntled or disgruntled with the whole procedure?
Visitors coming and going Chez Tidalscribe, but here’s something to think about while I’m busy…
While I was away I was idling away a few minutes on my phone and was surprised to get on ChatGPT. I had no intention of asking it to write my novel for me, but I would just see if it would make a picture of flowers and bees, perhaps a picture of a woman enjoying gardening ( age inserted ) – doesn’t look like me.
How about a beach hut, me at my beach hut, ask for purple hair and round down my age...
She looks fun, but it’s not me.
I’ll ask Chatterbox how to use my own photos… oil painting that looks better than my real garden.
Now my nineties friend wants a painting of her garden and thinks I’m very clever… I tell her AI is the clever one.
This is fun, could be addictive…. I have so many photos I could transform into art.
Or I could become an avatar. This really is addictive, I could turn all my family into Avatars, all my local scenes into an art gallery…
BUT of course this is dream land and it comes with guilt. We’re all using electricity and The Cloud is not really fluffy white and Artificial Intelligence uses a lot more power and water for cooling… Not to mention the ethics of presenting ChatGPT’s words as your own. Chatting to real people, it seems people are using ChatGPT for all sorts of useful things; asking it questions instead of Googling information, writing reports…
The above is all I have done on ChatGPT, using my own photos, except the one of me…
A real drawing by a human boy, Alex.
Have you used ChatGPT, if so how? Is it any different from all the other tools we use on line to create our blogs etc?
Lottie had not intended to search the beach for a silver spoon and told herself she was merely there for her usual early morning walk, but keeping her eyes peeled just in case. The beach was busy already. The metal detectorists would not have an advantage unless the mystery spoon was only silver plated.
A local author had planned the treasure hunt to publicise the latest novel in his Kitchen Sink Drama series. The Curse of the Cutlery Drawer was the fifth book, so presumably he was quite popular, though Lottie had never heard of him. Perhaps his fame had not reached London and the literary elite.
The author, Guy Forks, had been featured on the local news last night, though he was not seen, an actor read his words while a camera panned round his kitchen. Lottie could only wonder what the outside of his home looked like as he wished to keep his home location secret. The kitchen was unusual in the extreme. Bundles of herbs and strings of onions dangled over a huge slice of tree trunk that served as a kitchen bench. On the bench was road kill being prepared for dinner as far as she could tell. A collie appeared to have just given birth to puppies in a basket in the corner, next to a wood stove on which bubbled a huge pan with a couple of paws sticking out.
Before Lottie had a chance to peer closer and work out if the scene was actually for real, the view changed to the beach at Puddleminster-on-Sea. The actor’s voice declared that this was where the treasure was to be found and the clues were in the book. Whoever found the silver spoon would be united with the rest of the canteen of silver cutlery.
Against her better judgement Lottie had downloaded the Kindle version of the book and found herself googling the author. There was little to be found out about him.
It was an entertaining morning at least and the strange atmosphere and antics of all the beachcombers emboldened her to walk on further to the restricted area where she had nearly been arrested. There had been no more protests, as locals were now convinced they would become radioactive if they went too near. Lottie wondered if Guy Forks would purposely hide the spoon in this area. As she pondered, she found herself stepping through a gate that had been wrenched open. Locals had protested they did not have access to this part of the beach. Now they did, though it was a narrow strip. Behind a huge fence were forbidding looking buildings. Lottie thought she had better not linger, but as she turned to look out to sea she caught something glinting in the low morning sunlight. A thought popped into her head. She and her late husband had enjoyed visiting Liverpool and seeing Anthony Gormley’s statues standing on the sand and in the sea, disappearing and reappearing as the tides went in and out. The tide was going out so perhaps there was a statue under the water holding a spoon. That would be a challenge to retrieve.
Lottie wondered how long she had been staring out to sea before she was sure there was something emerging. It wasn’t a head… could it be a giant spoon? Guy Forks was obviously a big joker, was he also an artist trying his hand at installation art?
Lottie looked around nervously, expecting some official to say she was trespassing. How long before the tide went out far enough to reveal the strange object? She was only certain of one thing, she could not retrieve it and she had no desire to own a giant silver spoon, let alone a canteen of giant cutlery. She walked briskly, heading back to the main part of the beach, planning to tell the first familiar local she met.
Coming towards her was Geoffrey Good, the pathologist she had met at the police station, that bizarre time when a body was stolen from the mortuary. He had his friend’s dog with him, no doubt to look like he was walking the dog and not interested in treasure hunts.
‘What were you doing in the restricted area?’
‘Just having a walk, the gate was open, but I must tell you what I saw, you must come and look.’
They both looked and agreed the bowl of a huge spoon was emerging from the sea.
‘Do you know this local chap, Guy Forks?’ said Lottie.
‘Not till I heard about him on the news last night, even my wife wouldn’t read his rubbish.’
‘Oh it’s quite good actually, I mean I downloaded his book on Kindle last night, purely out of professional interest. I did fall asleep reading it before I found any clues… but whether he’s a good author or not, he has certainly created interest. He could be lurking behind a beach hut watching them all digging in the sand with no idea it will be easy to find. I know what we should do, lets tell everyone, play him at his own game.’
Geoffrey was better at commanding attention than Lottie as they started approaching people, but soon everyone was drifting to the area where the handle of the spoon was now beginning to emerge. Some people were angry at being conned, while others pointed out that Forks never said what size the spoon was. Geoffrey insisted there was no point in arguing about who could claim it until low tide was reached and they could see how the spoon was fixed to the sea bed.
People started paddling, then wading, few knew how deep the sea was or how tall the spoon handle might be. No one had thought to bring their swimming gear, but a couple of young men stripped down to their boxer shorts and discovered it was further out than they expected and out of their depth. When the police arrived to clear everyone from the restricted area, they had not heard about the treasure hunt, but decided boat reinforcements were needed to check the spoon. As everyone was now paddling in the shallows and they did not want to get their boots wet, the officers did not try to arrest anyone.
Lottie was excited to watch the early evening local news with Puddleminster being the first item. Guy Forks was unavailable for comment and nobody could retrieve the spoon as it was embedded in concrete. There was much speculation as to how it had been secretly erected overnight and other beach visitors interviewed thought it should remain as a local tourist attraction. Lottie had been interviewed briefly when Geoffrey pointed her out as the finder, but they had cut out her mention of the fact she was also a local author.
Five years ago there was a dark cloud hanging over us.
In 2020 life changed in ways that affected the whole world, how each country directed it citizens to fend off a world wide pandemic varied greatly. In a town in England in March 2020, Cassie is looking forward to her first day working from home. But life for Cassie and other locals soon becomes strange as they try to obey and adapt to the continually changing rules issued by the government, often with amusing results.
In 2020 life changed in ways that affected the whole world at the same time. Confined to our homes many of us were glad to have the internet; Facetiming family, working from home and for entertainment. Writers could still write and bloggers were glad to link up with each other and not feel isolated. I enjoyed writing blogs, especially short fiction about ordinary folk, inspired by what was going on around me or related to me by others. Most of my tiny tales featured the same few families and neighbours in an English town that perhaps you know. Looking back at these stories, all written in real time, I was amused at the strange regularly changing rules we had to adapt to. The stories naturally formed themselves into a novella. I have not altered them, but I could not resist finding out what has happened to the main characters since. Most of us could not have predicted the upheaval of this current decade, but some people have taken the opportunity of such disruption to change their lives.
The second half of the book is an eclectic collection of stand alone tales, also written in real time. We may have avoided the future portrayed in the final story, or have we?
In March 2025 we were remembering the official start of Lockdown and for the first time I looked back at what I had written in my blogs.
These were strange times with unusual sights to photograph on our permitted exercise walks. Cruise ships moored out in Poole Bay.
Strange happenings, but maybe not as strange as the pandemonium at Tidalscribe Head Office, creating a book and hopefully remembering how I tackled Kindle Direct Publishing for Tidalscribe Tales back in February. Three things are needed for an eBook or a paperback; a title, a manuscript and a cover.
The Covid Chronicles was my working title, but that had been snapped up long ago and there are plenty of books with pandemic in the title, so how about a word that means pandemonium in a pandemic? PANDEMONICA – All I have to do is remember what I called it and how to spell it.
I could not find my word document for the very first story, no problem, copy and paste from my blog – Do Not Try this at home.
I remembered from last time that if you use your own photographs you need portrait shape, not landscape, all of my Covid pictures were landscape. Hmm, how about a desolate promenade at sunset, you might just spot a lonely jogger… it popped onto the Kindle cover no problem. If you like doing the technical side of photography you will know about strange numbers and letters telling you something or other about your photo, or you can just try a photo and KDP will either accept it or reject it. The cover of the paperback evolved to look nothing like my original idea, the sunset was rejected, but how about a desolate beach in sepia tones instead?
An extract from Chapter Two
After two years she now had the house just as she wanted, but that didn’t alter the fact that her independence had been swept from under her feet, transformed overnight by Boris Johnson from a fighting fit recycled teenager into a vulnerable over seventy. As if that wasn’t bad enough, her son had moved back in ‘for a week’ after his divorce, just in time to find himself locked in, locked down, or whatever they called it. Left to her own devices she would have sneaked out, but James was on guard, no doubt on instructions from his sister.
Pop through the ether to have a look at Pandemonica
Times and Tides of a Beachwriter 