Creative Transformation: In this creative writing exercise we are going to be allowing ourselves to go into positive, rewarding, uplifting territory. That doesn’t mean we deny that terrible and horrendous …
Wildflowers – folklore, literature, language
Here is the support material and the resources for my video about Wildflowers in Shropshire Folklore on the #Folk Community Group’s Facebook page and Youtube channel. Available from 12 June, …
Ancient Trees – Writing prompts and Resources
Ancient Trees Resource Pack: to be used in conjunction with the video on the Facebook Folk Community Group site https://tinyurl.com/y7yps43s The Shelton Oak by David Parkes – 19th century Fairy Folk by …
Digging up the Graveyard
“Once people come here, they never leave. It is the graveyard of ambition.” When I first came to live in Shropshire, I heard this quite a lot. Now that I’ve …
A Tempest for our times
I do hope that all my readers are staying well. I imagine that, like me, many of you are feeling hemmed in by the worries and restrictions of this time. …
A light in the darkness
A week of isolation (in the broadest sense, as I am sharing the property with 3 teenagers, a dog, 4 chickens – and even, occasionally, my doctor husband) is already …
Hopefully not a thousand and one nights in lockdown
Distraction. It can be good, it can be bad. We probably all know a bit about distraction on social media. When I’ve spent too long scrolling through Twitter or Facebook, I …
Reading through Lockdown
Who knows when our lives will feel ‘normal’ again? I suspect that there are certain things we will never, ever take for granted in the future. A drink with friends …
Bad Guys Make Good Plots
Recently I was asked to contribute a guest post to the fabulous ‘History Girls’ Blog. This is a group of best-selling writers of historical content, fiction, non-fiction, for children and …
The Cartography of Leaving
It was early December 2018, and I was in Shrewsbury Library filling a rare empty half-hour between appointments. I often gravitate to a particular reading room in that library – …