Reblog

Upcoming Anthology Publication: Oct. 1, 2022

~ beetleypete ~ 28 Comments

A new anthology containing two stories from the talented writer and blogger, Liz Guffreau. It is available on the first of October. Please read the original post for more details and buying links.

Elizabeth Gauffreau

Click on the above image to preorder the ebook from Amazon.

I am very excited to share that two of my short stories will be included in an upcoming short story anthology, Distant Flickers: Stories of Identity & Loss: 

  • “Norfolk, Virginia, 1975: East Ocean View”
  • “Diary Omissions: The House on Edgewood Road.” 

To get a feel for the anthology as a whole, check out the video. I’m in very good company!

Would You Like to Help Spread the Word about the Anthology?

The Distant Flickers contributors are looking for a few blog “spotlights” to help launch the book during the months of October and November. To make it easy on anyone interested in doing a spotlight, we will provide the following:

  • Blog Header Graphic
  • Smaller Graphic
  • Book Cover
  • Book Blurb
  • Book Trailer
  • Short Excerpt (A different one for each spotlight post)
  • Universal buy link for the anthology
  • Meet the Contributors’…

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New Release – ‘Falling’.

~ beetleypete ~ 11 Comments

A new book from the talented writer and blogger, Stevie Turner. If you pre-order before the release date in October, it is great value too!

Stevie Turner

My new novel ‘Falling‘, a women’s fiction romance (contemporary/enemies-to-lovers), made the finals of the 2022 Page Turner Writing Award, and is now available for pre-order at the special price of just $0.99/£0.99. On October 7th it will be published and the price will increase to $2.99/£1.99. You can find ‘Falling‘ here.

Thanks to Teagan Geneviene for the cover and for the promotional banner.

Death seems preferable to wasting what remains of his youth in prison.

James Hynde, fortified by several tots of whiskey, climbs up onto the roof of Parker Mews’ multi-storey car park and peers over the parapet. The game is up. The police will soon seize his millions, the Maserati, the London townhouse, and the Caribbean mansion on Windjammer Island.

Should he jump feet first or hold out his arms and topple over and over like a somersaulting gymnast? He closes his eyes…

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How many solar panels can you eat?

~ beetleypete ~ 19 Comments

Another great post from Jim. Whatever your views on environmental issues, remember that we cannot eat trees or solar panels. There has to be more balance.

Jim Webster

It’s interesting that both Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak have spoken out against covering farmland with solar panels. You do wonder if finally, people are beginning to wake up a little.

Personally I think that, whether he intended to or not, Putin has created a watershed in history, but not perhaps in the way he intended.

If we go back to the start of the century, Ed Miliband put the green levies on energy. But at the same time a lot of other things were put in place, all nicely set ten, twenty or even thirty years ahead. Politicians were kicking unexploded bombs into the long grass secure in the knowledge that by the time these things happened and the public started feeling the pain, they’d be long retired on a good pension and their successors could take the flak.

When they were announced, the ban on the installation of…

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Regency Lady Detective

~ beetleypete ~ 14 Comments

Do you like audiobooks? This new one is narrated by the excellent Pippa Rathborne. Full details on her blog post.

Pippa Rathborne

“This is my investigation”

A Seacoast Promenade Fashion for October 1809. Fashion plate engraving from La Belle Assemblée.

“Maylene says it’s all a matter of logic and reasoning,
but I always believe there’s another force guiding her, a talent.”

Miss Treadwell’s Talent by Barbara Metzger,
narrated by Pippa Rathborne,
is now available as an audiobook
on AUDIBLE US, UK, GERMANY & FRANCE,
AMAZON & iTUNES

Lady Caroline Lamb in page’s costume, painted by Thomas Phillips, 1813

Dash it, would this dinner never end?…
There was not even going to be one of the baroness’s bogus journeys beyond for entertainment.

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60 Feet Under

~ beetleypete ~ 31 Comments

Some time ago, I sent Shaily a first line suggestion for a fictional short story. She had a great idea for using it, and produced an outstanding story.

Short Stories | Fish-eye Perspective

Author’s note: This is short story based on the first line suggested by Beetleypete.

It was so hot there, much hotter than I could ever have imagined it would be. I had always expected it to be cool below the surface since the desert sun couldn’t get to you. But apparently, I was wrong.

It was stifling hot and suffocating, even though, I didn’t need to breath anymore. The casket I was lying in was rather stuffy. May be a walk in the tomb would help.

It was just as dark outside. There was no way of knowing whether it was day or night. Who would want to live for eternity stuck in a hole where you could see neither the sun, nor the moon and stars. Not that I needed light to see. My eyes adjusted to the dark just fine but it didn’t take away the…

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Shotgun Blogging

~ beetleypete ~ 14 Comments

As it is too hot to finish off my serial fiction post, here is a reblog from 2015. Many of you will have seen it.

beetleypete

I have been perusing other blogs of late, and drawing some personal conclusions about the nature of many blogs, including my own. Some of my favourite blogs publish articles of great import, sparingly posted. They are usually sumptuously illustrated, or have accompanying photographs, generally of high quality. Although they do not appear that often, the response from their audience is always immediate, and in great numbers. These bloggers are at the high end of this pastime, the careful craftsmen in our blogging community. They have experimented, worked hard and meticulously, and achieved something enduring, with work to be proud of. I think of them as the Guild Bloggers, masters of the art.

Then there are the Niche Bloggers, predominantly photographers, poets, or writers of published works. They post only about their subject of interest. We might see something of their travels, or their personal developments in their chosen field, but…

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Is There Still A War In Ukraine?

~ beetleypete ~ 32 Comments

Reblogging this from my other blog because I want more people to see it.

REDFLAGFLYING

I know, silly question.

But if you had been watching all the main news channels here for the past week, you might be forgiven for thinking that Ukraine and Russia had called it quits.

Boris Johnson, lies in parliament, resignation, who wants his job. Big news. Bigger than a war that might escalate across Europe, even become a world war?

Well the mainstream media obviously thinks so. Even the Wimbledon tennis and Women’s football took precedence.

Then the former prime minister of Japan was assassinated.

But they had to cut back from that to the ‘Breaking News’ that Keir Starmer was not going to be charged with any breach of lockdown rules.

Ukraine? Nothing. I sat through a few main bulletins hoping to be told what was going on, but all I got were updates on who was going to stand for election as Conservative leader, then some lightweight stuff…

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Being invisible

~ beetleypete ~ 28 Comments

Pippa does not allow Likes and Comments on her blog. She posts rarely, but always has something to say when she does. So I have decided to reblog her short post from today, to make more people aware of her many talents.

Pippa Rathborne

“Acting for me was a salvation into which I fell, a piece of the family puzzle that was given to me, and I snapped it in place, and there was now a whole image, a fuller person, something where previously there had been nothing…. acting affords me the luxury of metaphysical time travel….of living within someone else’s skin…

Acting is the only way I know of in which we can live the fantasy of being invisible.”

Alec Guinness, in an interview with James Grissom, 1991

Thalia drops her mask for a moment and, believing she is unobserved off-stage, looks disillusioned and exhausted.
She wanted to practise her ancient art invisibly, not sell it in the modern industry. I know how she feels.

Thalia, sculpture by Giovanni Volpato. 1790s Bisque, Liebieghaus, Frankfurt. Image: Web Gallery of Art

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The Revenge of the Malthusians and the Science of Limits

~ beetleypete ~ 9 Comments

Words of wisdom and warning from Lara. Find out more on her site.

Lara Trace Hentz

Repackaged system of EUGENICS?

This Borg-like deterministic faith in the human-machine synthesis that pervades the thinking of all modern transhumanists is both cultish, creepy and just plain wrong. However, without a proper evaluation of the historic roots of these ideas, which threaten to push global civilization into a dystopian nightmare, it is impossible to understand anything fundamental about the past 250 years of human experience, let alone see where the fatal flaws lie within the Great Reset/Transhumanist operating system. That system, of course, is simply a repackaged system of eugenics under a new name that was developed in the aftermath of World War II.

Please read this. It’s really important.

This is HUGELY important to know – the “who” and “how” we are/were controlled as useless eaters and disposables. I just finished compiling a book “Finding the Invisibles” about these very same guys.

READ: https://williambowles.info/2022/07/02/the-revenge-of-the-malthusians-and-the-science-of-limits/

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