The Fantasy Castle came about as it was what I saw in the picture, before I saw its caption. This week's Crimson’s Creative Challenge is both uplifting and sad. I’ll take the uplifting bit. It's 150 words. Plus 45 I couldn’t cut out. CCC064 - the Fantasy Castle A walk before dusk. What was hidden in the trees, a fantasy castle?

My Year in Books is a fun thing which I do every year. I’d like to encourage more people to do it. Just copy the categories and add appropriate titles of books you've read this year. It's supposed to be funny, or at least slightly amusing. I link them to my reviews on this blog. All thanks are due to the…

My December 25 Homework report! I'm doing this on the second Monday of the month... to avoid coinciding with the IWSG post in the same week. It can't be third Monday, because that is currently MMGM day. The Homework Report schedule I have a stack of things on my to-do list, which I often indicate at the start of the year.

Holidays and Homicides is on a blog tour with Great Escapes Virtual Book Tours from its publication on 2nd to 15th December. As you can guess, it's a seasonal anthology, and most of the authors are in the Sisters In Crime network in the US. Holidays and Homicides by Rosalie Spielman, Catherine Bruns, Gin Jones, Annie McEwen, Lena Gregory, Jennifer Fischetto, Anne Marie Stoddard, Kelly Rey, Misty Simon, Christine Knapp, Jamie L.

Giftmas is a fundraiser by Rhonda Parrish, a blog hop that aims to raise money for the Edmonton Alberta Foodbank. You may feel up to donating to the foodbank, through the link below, but if not, please consider donating, in cash or kind, to your local foodbank, or any other charity of your choice. This fundraiser closes on December 9th, ie.

It's finally happened! I'm now on Draft2Digital. You may have been there for two years, I know, but there was a hitch for those of us that had publisher accounts AND author accounts at Smashwords. I'd been 14 years with Smashwords almost to the day. It was December 2011 that I published the Princelings of the East on Smashwords. So what difference does it make?

I always need a Book Review Round-up of some kind, every year. There are always ones that got away, short books that I didn't have much to say about, collections that should be treated together. This one started with my reading Prime Meridian, then led on to others from the same Storybundle purchase, and the one two years later. Still working out the theme, but may have been international spec fic.

This week's Crimson’s Creative Challenge takes us to Cromer, and this shop with pistachio and pecan goodies. I've been reading Slow Gods (review next month), and the two sort of merged together into something nutty. It's 159 words. With another 100 left on the cutting room floor. I could have got under 150 by cutting the pronoun explanation, but you probably need that.

Last time I went down the TBR Hole my list ended at 914 (plus 7 in currently reading). I'm pruning things from my TBR list I am never going to read, realistically. I am posting monthly for a bit, then whenever I want to take some older books off my TBR shelf.  Down The TBR Hole is a meme created by…

Artificial Evolution is the third book in Joseph R Lallo's Big Sigma series. The previous were Bypass Gemini and Unstable Prototypes. He's also responsible for the Free-Wrench series, and you know how much I loved that. This is more straight science fiction. Artificial Evolution (Big Sigma #3) by Joseph R Lallo Artificial Evolution is the third book in the Big Sigma series, building upon the story and characters introduced by Bypass Gemini and Unstable Prototypes.

This week's Crimson’s Creative Challenge takes us to a telephone box in the middle of Ringland woods, not far from where I used to live. This might not translate too well for US readers, but then again... It's 195 words, sorry. CCC061 - Telephone Box He emerged from the time machine clutching his customary black bag. It held everything a traveller could possibly need, even in 1980s England.

Yertle the Turtle was added to my TBR in desperation as I searched for a title beginning with Y for my Alphabet Soup reading challenge. You may find it hard to believe, but I had never before read anything by Dr, Seuss. He may be the mainstay of children’s stories in the US, but I was well past that age before his work crept into British bookshops and libraries, so all my knowledge of the Cat in that Hat, Horton and Whoville, have all come to me third hand, often through quiz questions!

Given how much time I spend trying to communicate with my animals, What Sheep Think About the Weather appeared to be the ideal book for me. The blurb promises ideas and techniques to understand animals better, to see things from their point of view. Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the advance copy, and to Amelia Thomas for writing it.

This week Crimson’s Creative Challenge gives us good vibrations in the woods on Mousehold Heath, just outside the City of Norwich. You get a fabulous view of the city from there. The beech trees with their mounds and neighbouring paths are reminiscent of those in Epping Forest. This piece draws on my knowledge of both areas. It's 147 words. CCC060 - Good Vibrations…

Jane Austen and me. We would have been well acquainted, I think, although I would need to be rather more ladylike to fit into her friendship circle. Would she have been generous with her writing advice, or was the critique of works of fiction restricted to trusted family? On finding Jane I was lucky enough never to have had an Austen novel as a set book in school.

A Homework report! I never tell you what I've been up to behind the scenes with any regularity, and it doesn't show as outputs (unless I direct you to it), so I decided to do a new feature on the second Monday of the month - my Homework report. Logically, it should be the first Monday or the last Monday of the month...

I have 2 time travel reviews for you today. The Book of Lost Hours is recommended by Net-galley and the publishers for lovers of The Ministry of Time and the Midnight Library, among others. Hmm, that sounds like me then. It was published on Thursday. Thank you for the ARC. The Frozen People is the first of a new series by Elly Griffiths, focussing on an investigator in her fifties, Ali Dawson, who aims to solve cold cases.

A tapestry of colours in this week's Crimson’s Creative Challenge. Although...it's not one of the Challenge photos, it's one from the Sunday post that inspired me more. It's what happens when you decide you need more coloured pencils to do justice to your autumn art efforts. And there's very little fiction in this story. It's 150 words.(gold star) CCC059 - Tapestry…

The IWSG question of the month for November asks about life as a writer. I had a look at all the other things that go on at IWSG as listed in the monthly email. I wonder whether I really want to be bothered with any of it? Coupled with, am I getting too old to be writing MG now? Or indeed doing this?

I've completed five and a half Booker Prize Winners for my Reading Challenge, mostly obtained from the library, either as books or ebooks. I'm combining reviews of two here: Heat and Dust, and Atonement. Library books do not count in my TBR Mountain challenge, more's the pity. Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Set in colonial India during the 1920s, Heat and Dust tells the story of Olivia, a beautiful woman suffocated by the propriety and social constraints of her position as the wife of an important English civil servant.

This week's Crimson’s Creative Challenge is a hut in the woods. I had a little trouble getting inspired by the choices this week, but I've been reading time travel books, so my head wasn't in the right places. It's 170 words. CCC058 - Diary of a woodsman Fall kinda crept up on us this first year. We got the shelter assembled, once we’d made out the instructions on the flat pack.

The Salt Oracle turns out to be a second in series, We Are All Ghosts in the Forest. I received an ARC from the publishers and Netgalley without appreciating that. At one point I stopped to read the blurb of its predecessor. I decided that it might have explained more about the dystopia, but not much. But it might explain some of my ambivalence.

A gull, on a buoy. I saw a fair number of gulls at Pagham Harbour this week, the day before the storm. The clouds were magnificent. But back to work… This week's Crimson’s Creative Challenge is light on words, but hopefully long on emotion. I was going to say pathos, but I realise I’ve never used that word in text, and I need to check I understand it correctly and I don’t get back from my holiday until Friday afternoon.

Kiwi in the Realm of Ra is the fifth adventure in the world of Kiwi, a cat with a secret life, as well as the standard nine. Kiwi in the Realm of Ra (Kiwi #5) by Vickie Johnstone Inspired by the film Back to the Future, Whiskers invents The Time-Squeaking Mouse. He plans to take his friends on a fantastic trip to celebrate Amy's thirteenth birthday.

Not Another Bloody Christmas was offered to me by the publishers and Netgalley as I'd thoroughly enjoyed Jo Middleton's first book last year. It may not match Happy Bloody Christmas, but it's well worth a read! Not Another Bloody Christmas by Jo Middleton When Anna decides to take her family away for Christmas to avoid a repeat of the 'dead man in the larder' debacle, she finds herself plunged into another festive fiasco when a body turns up in the library of their supposedly 'idyllic' rural retreat.