Any favourite authors who are out of print? Anne Hepple. I adore her book, “The Mettlesome Piece”, a mid-Twentieth Century Scottish romance. A wounded hero and heroine and how they heal and find each other. As with all Hepple’s books, other plot strands wind through the romance. Sweet, but not cloying. Emma Lathen is just…

Have you ever noticed how one sentence can change a novel? Maybe I exaggerate, a couple of sentences. Ilona Andrews’ “Magic Bites” is my most recent example. I was finding her heroine, Kate Daniels, tough going and then I read: “The bravado is amusing, but it becomes tiresome.” I sighed. “I’m a merc. I walk…

A tentacle is expendable,re-growable,agreeable to be useableto poke unknown things.

My surrender is desperate. Not to choose,but to pause in tiredness. Face against the pale trunkof fresh peeled river gum. Its leaves whispering, “Let go. Let the hurts fall away.Let life trace new patterns.Draw courage from the earth,from gentle rain and brilliant sun,from the river ever running.” Accept my abandonment, O God.Stripped of all, I…

If you’re looking at the photo of me, I’m not actually a golden retriever. The clown laughing back at you is Toby, my dog, who shames me on a regular basis by not running away from cameras as his cowardly owner does.