A lovely review

The Escape Velocity Anthology got a great review on Amazon. And I particularly liked what she said about my story.

"Scream Quietly" by Sheila Crosby was one of my favorite stories. Told by way of letters from the perspective of a young woman in 1849 England. This story depicts the intricacies of alien contact and space/ time travel. It's a wonderfully heartwarming tale with a great twist at the end.

A new web site

Galaxy M 83

I haven't been making much stuff up lately. I've been writing non-fiction instead. Want to learn about amateur astronomy on La Palma? Well, at last, my new website is open for business. Star Island is designed to be a window on the universe, and a show case for astrotourism on La Palma.

In future, I hope to sell advertising on the site, but for now, it's just for people to enjoy.

And now, back to work on my non-fiction book about the astronomical observatory here.

The Cat's Eye nebula

Sales!

My story, "A Face Worse than Death" is out in the anthology Probing Uranus from the Library of Science Fiction and Fantasy

As you might guess from the cover, it's humourous SF.

And another of my stories, "Muddy Holes" will be in "People's Friend Fiction Special No. 49 " on sale July 14, 2011. As you might guess, that's a gentle, mainstream story about archaeology in the Orkney Islands.

Paw Prints in the Sand

"I'm going to get rich," announced my boyfriend. "I'm going to learn wordpress, and start a webpage about dogs on the beach. It's the perfect subject."

"Why?" I asked.

He stared at me, and then spoke very slowly. "Freedom. No responsibilites. Playing with your dog on the beach is the very opposite of nine-to-five in a suit and tie."

I thought about it. He hated his job in a bank. I hated my job in an advertising agency. "So the idea is that we start the website, and when it makes enough money, we dump the day job and write the posts from the beach?"

"Any beach! Anywhere in the world."

It sounded good to me. As it turned out, it sounded good to plenty of other people. We wrote for hours every week, and soon we hit 10,000 subscribers.

The trouble was, dog-on-the-beach people are happy, but not rich, so advertisers aren't interested. We had 10,000 subscribers and no money.

One evening I showed my boyfriend the statistics. "Stuff this," I said. "Let's dump the webpage and go down the beach with the dog."

Right?

A wheelwright makes wheels, and a shipwright makes ships. So obviously a person who creates ceremonies would be a ritewright.

And the best person to create a ceremony for producing literature would be the right write ritewright.

Right?

Muddy Holes

People's Friend are buying my story "Muddy Holes". I don't know when it'll be published, but obviously I'm chuffed.

A Dotty Ditty

To the tune of "Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud" by Flanders and Swan.

Life, life, glorious life!
It would be boring without all the strife.
So laugh at your trouble,
Fight through the muddle,
And you'll enjoy double
Your glorious life.