A new friend!

London writers please boost: our workshop is always open to new members and anyone who would like help getting their novel over the line please get in touch

I feel like I’ve been revising this book for ever & yet it’s not getting any better & I don’t remember what happens in half of it & what’s my name again?

To celebrate Beetle Boy’s 10th anniversary, @chickenhsebooks are publishing a special edition with refreshed cover & exclusive new material. Available from June 2026 to coincide with National Insect Week. Cover art & internals: Julia Sarda Learn more: www.mgleonard.com/news/2026/1/...

Happy birthday J.R.R. Tolkien! Here’s my latest tribute to “On Fairy-stories” and the way it shaped the thinking (and writing!) of later fantasy authors. dimitrafimi.substack.com/p/in-tolkien... @tolkiensociety.org @uofgfantasy.bsky.social @uofgartshums.bsky.social

Snoooooowwww!

Admiring the nightingale amid roses in this restored 2,000-year-old fresco from the House of the Golden Bracelet in Vicolo del Farmacista, Pompeii (now in Naples Museum)

Lucien Levy Dhurmer, Constantinople (The Harbour) - Evening. Pastel on paper, undated

More cheerfully: resolutions! 1 Read at least 1 collection of poetry a month. 2 Read at least 1 non-fiction book every 3 months. 3 Be braver. 4 Shamelessly promote my children's book everywhere (it's being published in autumn 2026! My book! Fulfilment of a dream! & I hope the first of many!).

Supposed to be tidying up my study, mess has reached critical levels & it's hard to get in & out of it. But instead, thinking about the year. It's been dark in many ways & doing small good things is the only way I've found to make it bearable. (Trying to do them, anyway, failing a lot of the time.)

Anthony Theakston Sculpts a Spirited Flock of Bronze and Ceramic #Birds #art #sculpture Link for more #photos and information: www.thisiscolossal.com/2025/12/anth...

On the one hand, our Eurostar train was abruptly cancelled. On the other hand, everyone in the queue was delightful & helped each other with rebooking tickets & nice café advice. People are good & we will still reach the UK today.

It is said that if you stand in a certain place only two days from the shortest day of the year, the church will shimmer - and another, smaller, church will be revealed inside. (St Peters, Cambridge. Prism glass, wide angle lens taken on and then off during a 12 second exposure. All in-camera)

TS Eliot's 'Journey of the Magi' was original in taking their point of view on the divine birth. This year I'm thinking about the donkey's.

'Beach Fishing.' (c1950) Edward Seago's painting of England's east coast has an undeniable sense of calm; that large amount of open space draws our gaze towards the fishermen and to the sea beyond.

My god. It's full of stars. This sparkling #JWST stellar scene is Westerlund 2, a young star cluster only a few million years old and containing some of the hottest, most massive stars known. Westerlund 2 is situated within the Gum 29 stellar nursery, and is around 20,000 lightyears from home.

Christmas in Turnhout…

I was just thinking that too. It looks brilliant!

What I find as shocking as DW's behaviour is the utter lack of care for their junior staff people at HC seem to have had. They told them to work in pairs & never to go to his house! They paid off one person & arranged it so others didn't work with him! That's not OK!

Extra drama in our crib: will Baby Jesus escape before the aliens hatch?

I don’t support criminalising slogans, except when they’re directly used to harass or intimidate. But I think it’s a profound moral (and tactical) failure that campaigners didn’t stop using them long ago. www.thenewworld.co.uk/james-ball-b...

Every Wednesday, I’m going to post a children’s book I’ve enjoyed. If you’ve read it too, or you want to share another book, join in. The Snow Girl, by Sophie Anderson. Why do I like it? Read the alt text! #ukkidlit #kidlituk

Day 16 of the #HooklandChristmasTree. We take out linden carving of bells frozen in their tower. A long memory of the Great Frost of 1709 from Quinwood. A warding against the Queen of the Winter Court of Faery – still called Lady of the Blight Bells in that traumatised parish.

New on the blog today, Part One of my BOOKS OF THE YEAR, 2025 - favourites from a year of reading. Featuring books by Edith Wharton, Barbara Pym, Caroline Blackwood, Vivian Gornick and more! #BookSky 💙📚 #BooksOfTheYear #Books #BOTY jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2025/12/16/m...

Could your class unwrap a love of reading in 2026?🎁 Bookspark is our programme designed to build reading enjoyment in Key Stage 3, with a pack of 40 expertly curated books and accompanying resources. Order before Christmas to get yours in January! 👇 https://bit.ly/4oY4llN

I have placed a few sets of Hookland Bookmark on my online shop. * Please note, these are for UK shipping only * I am hoping to print more bookmarks in the New Year and ship them internationally then. www.maria-strutz.co.uk/product/book...

Helene Schjerfbeck, Fragment, 1904. Oil on canvas, 12 3/8 x 13 3/8 in. (Villa Gyllenberg / Signe and Ane Gyllenberg Foundation, Helsinki), from an exhibition of the Finnish painter now on at the Met

What a wonderful world for children’s comics right now. So many great new titles coming out I couldn’t fit all of February’s releases into one screenshot. A few years ago an article like this would have been absolutely unimaginable! 🤩💖

Should your vocabulary require a fillip, I recommend dipping into this coruscating review (though perhaps not staying for the entire thing).

Tulips and Snail with Dog and Hare Border, folio 7 (verso), from Florilegium (A Book of Flower Studies), 1608. France. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

If there’s ONE thing I would wipe from the face of the earth (apart from war, famine, people who disagree with me, cleaning etc.) it’s bloody Belgian duvet covers. Why oh why when buttons, zips & poppers exist, must you persist with your envelope closings? Why?

absolute bargain if any of yous have a use for 7,949,020,598 wasps

Celebrate St. Nicholas Day with one of my favourite @ashmoleanmuseum.bsky.social paintings, St Nicholas of Bari banishing the Storm [Bicci di Lorenzo (1373–1452)]

I agree. The big sell from AI is often to make your life easy, but building understanding, structuring your thoughts, is meant to be hard, and that is what changes you. i.e. if the product you care about is you and your brain, do the work.

Wins & losses 1 Found an advent candle, only slightly dinted! Better get burning, it’s already the 6th. 2 Which I had forgotten, so nobody put out their shoes for the Sint last night. This morning: scenes. 3 Needn’t fret that I haven’t taken down last year’s decs any more! Like these silver baubles.

Every Wednesday, I’m going to post a children’s book I’ve enjoyed. If you’ve read it too, or you want to share another book, join in. A Choice of Magic, by Ruth Manning-Sanders. A favourite from long ago & far away, when I was a child. Why do I like it? Read the alt text! #ukkidlit #kidlituk

Calling British short science-fiction writers who have had stories published this year - window closing soon for Best of British Science Fiction 2025. Get your story in under the door!

Look how beautiful!

Read the whole thread, it's fascinating & beautiful.

Technology should exist to solve problems. Writing a novel isn't a problem. It's joy.

Someone found a YT link, so here you go:

Born #OTD in 1898: C. S. Lewis, creator of Narnia! This hand-drawn map is his own sketch, later redrafted by Pauline Baynes for Prince Caspian. Spot Aslan’s How, Cair Paravel and Lantern Waste on the map. 🦁 Shelfmark: MS. Eng. lett. c. 220/1, fol. 160

This path leads to chaos.

Have just been to see the exhibition ‘The World of J.B. Stessens’ in Geel. He was a local artist & teacher. Truly a curate’s egg of an exhibition…

BOOK GIVEAWAY!!! I'm not on social media much at the moment, working hard on my new book, which I feel sure will be my best one yet when it's done! In the meantime, I'm giving away signed copies of all my books so far. Follow & repost to enter, and say which book you'd like & why. Closes Dec 5!

Our Power of Reading project offers unique insights into what makes reading teaching successful in primary schools. This free booklet shares what teachers say is needed to foster a lifelong love of reading. Download now: https://clpe.org.uk/research/reading-pleasure-what-we-know-works

Nearly one in four children’s books published in 2024 featured racially minoritised characters, a rebound from the sharp decline of the previous year 👇 #BookSky

Would buy.

I'm delighted to see that the #Creatives4Sudan has now raised over 7 grand! We're raising money for people escaping genocide in El-Fasher, Sudan, and every bid helps the Emergency Response Rooms there do their work. Bid here on mentoring from comics supremo! @nickabadzis.bsky.social bit.ly/4pxHBK7

Enjoyig Renaissance sea monsters this evening: