My favourite childhood book? This is a tough question. I have been an avid reader since the age of four years and have so many favourite books that narrowing it down to one seems quite impossible.

So instead of trying to determine which of The Enchanted Wood series; The Mallory Towers series; the St Clare series and the Wishing Chair series all by Enid Blyton or the Sue Barton series; the Pollyanna series; the Anne of Green Gables series or the Emily of New Moon series was my actual favourite [you get the idea of how hard this is], I am going to tell you about two of the books I remember having the biggest impact on me from my childhood.

Mary Poppins in the kitchen: A cookery book with a story

Blurb

Get a unique glimpse at the famous Poppins cast as the spit-spot English nanny and the Banks children take over the kitchen for a week. With the help of familiar visitors like the Bird Woman, Admiral Boom, and Mr. and Mrs. Turvy, Mary Poppins teaches her irrepressible young charges the basics of cooking, from A to Z. And young readers can re-create the week’s menus by following the thirty different recipes. Kitchen adventures were never so much fun!

In full color for the first time, this enchanting new edition will delight both old and new fans of the inimitable Mary Poppins.

Impact on me

I remember my three younger sisters and I have amazing fun making up these recipes. We had a little oven that worked with globes and cook tiny trays of food. We spend many pleasurable hours reading this book together and mixing up the recipes for our many tea parties.

Der Struwwelpeter (English version)

The blurb

FULL COLOR, ENGLISH TRANSLATION. By Heinrich Hoffmann. First published in 1845, Der Struwwelpeter is without question one of the most popular children’s books ever written.

Each of its ten illustrated rhymes contain clear moral lessons—and shows, in an exaggerated way, the consequences of bad behavior.

Read about the boy who would not brush his hair or cut his nails—Shockhead Peter.

Read about the boy who would not stop sucking his thumbs.

Read about the boy who would not eat.

Read about the boy who would not look where he was going. . .

And many more!

A great classic which children of all ages will enjoy time and time again.

This edition contains all original 25 color images, and the special bonus image created for the books 100th edition in 1876.

Impact on me

This book is weird and creepy and it scared me to death when I was given a copy as a young girl. Strangely though, it fascinated me, and I read it over and over again. My favourite of these stories was called Harriet and the matches. I found it as a Youtube video:

If you listened to this video, you will understand what I mean by weird and creepy and why this scared a small girl of about eight years old. What were my parents thinking? Well, my dad had this book when he was a young boy so why would he think it was an odd choice of gift for his daughter who loved to read. Maybe this book is the reason I can think of such spooky and creepy stories now that I am an adult.

Would you give this book to your child? Let me know in the comments.

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From their advantageous position above the town, Robert watched an engine run two trucks full of dynamite that had standing in the railway station, up to a northern siding. Wise to get those clear of the town.

As he watched, the Boers engaged the engine and trucks about eight-miles from the town, firing on them with field guns. From a distance, he could see the engine moving back towards the town. The Boers continued to bombard the trucks, obviously thinking they were full of soldiers. The dull booming report of their guns floated on the still air.

Moments later, the trucks exploded with a tremendous whirr-rump sound. The enormous sound rolled across the barren countryside like thunder. The two balls of flame that had been the trucks burned with a brightness that Robert couldn’t look at. Dark, oily fumes rose in the air, fanning out into a huge mushroom cloud that hovered above the veld like a malevolent genie in a children’s storybook.

The tiny figures of the Boers scattered, all running in different directions. Out of the corner of his eye, Robert caught Richard gazing in astonished horror at this unexpected inferno. He put a comforting arm around his shoulders. “Go down to the town and tell them what has happened.” The look of relief and gratitude in Richard’s eyes causes Robert’s own eyes to mist up slightly. It is a terrible thing that these young boys have to witness such vicious scenes of death and destruction.

Later that afternoon, Robert was among the men who went out in the armoured train to inspect the damage. A large hole in the ground, surrounded by displaced earth and twisted chunks of metal, denoted the site, but, as the tracks had been pulled up, the train had to stop some distance away. A group of Boers mounted on horses, were gathered around the hole. Robert and his peers proceeded to fire on the gathering with a Maxim from the cover of the train. Two fell from their horses in a shower of red and the remainder hurriedly galloped away towards their laager to the north east of the town.

I have shared this short extracted from the as yet unedited A Ghost and His Gold for Sue Vincent’s weekly photo challenge. You can join in here: https://scvincent.com/2020/01/02/thursday-photo-prompt-fume-writephoto/

When Mosiko arrives for work shortly, she will ask him to help her carry the cages from the barn, and assist her in setting them up, one at a time, in front of the chicken coop door. A bit of food sprinkled on the ground would be enough to attract the stupid birds out of their chicken coop and into the cage when she released them from captivity by opening the door. Once safely inside, Mosiko would then help her carry the occupied cages back to the barn, ready to be hung under the wagon before the family trekked.

This piece of 99-word flash fiction was written for Charli Mills’ Flash Fiction Challenge. You can join in here: https://carrotranch.com/2020/01/03/january-2-flash-fiction-challenge/

In South Africa, we refer to a chicken run and a chicken coop rather than a chicken hutch.

Happy New Year to all my blogging friends, I hope you have all had enjoyable festive periods and enjoyed Christmas, if you celebrate.

We had a lovely Christmas Eve celebration at my sister, Hayley’s, house. She is the third daughter of four and has two sons, Ryan and Ben, who are great friends with my two boys. She served a most delicious meal of gammon, beef and roast chicken with some lovely salads. I did some experimenting with breads and made a pumpkin seed and honey wholewheat loaf and a cheese and olive loaf, both of which were delicious. I was off the hook for puddings this year as everyone else had offered to make so I didn’t feel a need to make one.

Christmas day was celebrated at home and we had two of my three sisters over with their families as well as my parents, my aunt and my husband’s grandmother, mother and sister. It was a wonderful day and we all ate well and relaxed. Our Christmas menu was a bit different this year and we had gammon and baked fish served cold with a selection of salads. I did more bread experimenting and made a pumpkin seed and wholewheat yogurt loaf and a cornbread loaf. Everything was delicious.

Our New Year has been very quiet as first Terence and then my son, Greg, went down with a stomach bug. We had to cancel our dinner plans for last night and tea with the family today. Such is life. I have spent a lot of today washing soiled bed linen and towels. At least everything is crisply clean for the new year.

On the writing front, I had a good year, publishing my first full length young adult supernatural fantasy novel, Through the Nethergate, in October. I have had some lovely reviews and am very satisfied with this book as a first novel and plunge into a different genre.

I also participated in three anthologies this year. Death Among Us, edited by Stephen Bentley, came out in June and is now available as an audiobook as well as a paperback and ebook. I have three supernatural murder mystery stories in this anthology.

In October, Nightmareland, edited by Dan Alatorre came out. This horror anthology has reached the number 1 bestseller spot in its genre twice in the past few months. Nightmareland, in which I have three horror short stories, is the sequel to Dark Visions, horror anthology, in which my first two horror short stories were published in 2018.

In November, Whispers of the Past, a paranormal anthology edited by Kaye Lynne Booth, became available as an ebook. I have two short stories in this book.

During the second half of 2019, I wrote the first 40 000 words of the first book in a new series I am planning. The book explores a future world where the population is dealing with the effects of climate change and the fourth industrial revolution. I have put this one aside to finish my historical supernatural novel about the South African War of 1899 to 1902 which I wrote as a short story while Through the Nethergate was with my editor.

It turns out that my three ghosts from this period have an awful lot to say about their experiences in the war and my modern character, Michelle, is also in a pickle and needs a lot of words to get her out of it, so this short story which started at 5 000 words and then grew to 30 000 words is now approximately 55 000 words and still going. I have added 22 000 words to this book over the past few weeks of the year end holiday period. The historical nature of this book has meant a lot of research so it is a bit of a labour of love, but I am enjoying it tremendously. So far, I have used over 20 diaries and thesis’ as well as other internet sources to build up the story line based on actual facts. The book presents both the British and the Afrikaans points of view, in what I hope is a balanced and fair way.

I am hoping to finish this book by the end of February and send it along to Esther Chilton for developmental editing with the aim off sending it to my publisher by the beginning of May. Esther has already looked at the 30 000 word version and given me comments which I have incorporated into my re-write. I got some of the inspiration for the two additional ghosts, Robert the British soldier and Estelle, the Boer girl poltergeist as a result of her comments so developmental editing is definitely worth it for me.

I am also planning to submit two short stories to Kaye Lynne Booth’s 2020 WordCrafter short story competition. I already have my ideas for these two stories, both of which will be about the days of the settlers in South Africa. If you want to enter, you will find the details here: https://kayelynnebooth.wordpress.com/2019/12/09/announcing-the-2020-wordcrafter-short-fiction-contest/

I have my work long leave of an extra 22 days coming due in May this year so I hope to take two weeks off in June to start working on the second book in my mother’s fictionalised biography which will be called After the Bombs Fell.

What are your goals for 2020? Let me know in the comments.

Look carefully at

any offer made to you

the base may not be

as reliable as you

would have thought or expected

by Roberta Eaton Cheadle

Written for Colleen Chesebro’s weekly poetry challenge which you can join in here: https://colleenchesebro.com/2019/12/17/colleens-2019-weekly-tanka-tuesday-poetry-challenge-no-158-photoprompt/

What Amazon says

Lynn Hill left a difficult childhood behind when she turned eighteen. The 1980s were going to be the beginning of a great life. Then what started as an ordinary evening out with her best friend, Stacy, turns into a nightmare. Lynn hears warnings: “Go!” “Leave!” Believing she is hearing things after partying too much, she goes back for one more drink before going home. That decision sets off a chain of events that nothing could have prepared her for. While humans and not-so-human beings are attempting to either help or harm her, Lynn risks everything to find the only person she trusts, Stacy. Who can help her? The stepbrother who shows up right when she needs him or the attractive, helpful bartender who gives her his phone number? Lynn must learn to trust again. Her survival depends on it in this paranormal thriller.

My review

Lynn has grown up in an abusive family with a mother who drinks heavily and a step-father who is physically and verbally abusive towards both Lynn and his biological son, Warren. She escaped home as quickly as she could and is living on with her best friend, Staci, and working as an assistant hairdresser.

Unknown to her, Lynn has a pair of guardian angels who have been watching over her for years. The angels are aware that terrible events lie in Lynn’s immediate life path and they are tasked with trying to help her avert the worst outcome. The angels can only guide and are unable to overtly change the course of Lynn’s life; she has to make her own choices from her own free will.

One evening Lynn goes out partying with her friend, Staci, and things get wildly out of hand with alcohol and drugs. Lynn wakes up in a strange house next to the body of a dead young man. Staci has disappeared subsequent to leaving the bar with an unknown but gorgeous stranger. Lynn decides against reporting the death to the police and this decision sets in motion a series of events which may or may not have turned out differently had she made a different choice. Lynn is pulled into a frightening struggle to find her friend and save both their lives with a little bit of help from her angels.

I enjoyed Lynn’s character and how she stepped up as the plot unfolded, learning to rely more on her instincts or the guiding voices she hears and learning to first love and secondly forgive. The book has quite a significant family drama side story and I enjoyed discovering bits and pieces of information about her family and seeing it all come together neatly at the end.

Kent, Lynn’s friend, cum boyfriend, is a lovely character. Patient and kind he evolves as the perfect soulmate for Lynn and it is pleasant to watch their romance coming into fruition.

The supernatural elements are clever and well written, making the story quite believable. Aside form the angels, there is also the evildwel that takes possession of “host” humans whom it can manipulate into fulfilling its evil desires. The descriptions of the evildwel were deliciously creepy, especially the glimpses of it that Lynn catches in the eyes of its current host who is stalking her.

All in, a fast moving and entertaining story which lovers of paranormal thrillers will enjoy.

Purchase The Button by D.L. Finn

From a distance the numerous lights on the tree blend together, creating an interconnected and continuous display of light that shimmers in the darkness of the dim room. A series of interesting kaboom sounds simultaneously fills the room.

Janet smiles as her twin sons, Shane and Ryan, gasp with delight when the lights flare up even brighter than before. In the large tank next to the Christmas tree, the electric eel is feeding. He chases through the dark water emitting high voltage shocks as he tries to stun the pieces of food before consuming them.

“How does it work?” Shane asks the man in attendance, his voice shrill with excitement.

“Whenever the eel discharges electricity, sensors in the water deliver the charge to a set of speakers”, the man says. “The speakers convert the charge into the sounds you can hear and the flashing Christmas lights. The sounds are loudest and the lights brightest when he is eating or excited.”

“Wow, Mom, this has got to be the bet Christmas tree ever,” says Shane.

“Yes,” says Ryan, “the next step is to harness the charges from all the eels in the aquarium to power the lights and the other fish tanks. It’ll be the most innovative and environmentally friendly system in the world.”

This post was written for Sue Vincent’s weekly write photo challenge. You can join in here:  https://scvincent.com/2019/12/05/thursday-photo-prompt-shimmer-writephoto/

This is the last post in my series about the Brontë family which Sue Vincent has kindly shared on her fabulous blog, Sue Vincent’s Daily Echo. Anne is the least well known of the three sisters and died the youngest, but her books are also enduring and ahead of their time. Thank you, Sue, for hosting me.

The Brontë family

Charlotte Brontë’s amethyst hair bracelet, Photo credit: Brontë Parsonage Museum, J14, © The Bronte Society

Anne Brontë

Background

Anne Bronté was the youngest of the six Bronté siblings and she was only one year old when her mother died. Anne’s two novels, Agnes Grey, based on her experiences as a governess, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, which is considered to be one of the first sustained feminist novels, are both classics along with the works of her two sisters, Charlotte and Emily.

Following the death of her sister, Emily, in December 1848, Anne, who was particularly close to Emily, was grief stricken. This is believed to have undermined her health to such an extent that when she caught influenza over Christmas, she just didn’t rally. In early January, a doctor diagnosed her condition as consumption or tuberculosis and gave her a poor prospect of recovery. Anne expressed frustration at her diagnosis to her friend Ellen Nussey by saying:

“I have no horror of death: if I thought it inevitable I think I could quietly resign myself to the prospect … But I wish it would please God to spare me not only for Papa’s and Charlotte’s sakes but because I long to do some good in the world before I leave it. I have many schemes in my head for future practice –humble and limited indeed – but still I should not like them all to come to nothing, and myself to have lived to so little purpose. But God’s will be done.”

It was during her last days that she wrote the poem, A dreadful darkness closes in, the first three stanzas of which are as follows:

A dreadful darkness closes in

On my bewildered mind;

O let me suffer and not sin,

Be tortured yet resigned.

Through all this world of whelming mist

Still let me look to Thee,

And give me courage to resist

The Tempter till he flee.

Weary I am — O give me strength

And leave me not to faint;

Say Thou wilt comfort me at length

And pity my complaint.

Carry on reading here: https://scvincent.com/2019/12/06/guest-author-robbie-cheadle-anne-bronte/

Open, Shut: A Short Story by Nonnie Jules

What Amazon says

Darcy Lynn has a few problems. Her sister, Lola, killed by a drunk driver, leaves her with an eerie message right before her death; her parents are atheists; her father drinks a little too much, and her brother, Bud, is just annoying. But, her most pressing issue is that things are mysteriously opening and closing around her and she hasn’t a clue as to why…or how.

In this short “sad but uplifting story with a wonderful message,” as one reader tags it, Author, Nonnie Jules flexes her writing chops once again, by introducing her readers to a normal, every day family, whose lives are altered, not once, but twice by unexpected and unusual circumstances.

If you came into this story only believing in things seen with your own two eyes, you walk away with a new and refreshing added sense…the ability and the courage to change, based on where your heart leads you.

My review

This is the first book I have read by Nonnie Jules and I enjoyed it a great deal. Darcy Lynn and her younger brother are the admiring younger siblings of Lola. A bright and vivid personality with an ever ready smile, Lola is the heart of their family. She is an extraordinary girl with a real sense of family and lots of time for her younger siblings.

One dark and dreary morning, the three siblings are walking to school when a terrible car accident claims Lola’s life and her family are left to deal with the fallout. Darcy’s parents are atheists so they do not have Faith to turn to during this time of trouble.

A few years later, Darcy is feeling despondent, the effects of the loss of her wonderful older sister still hang heavily over her family with her father having found solace in alcohol and her mother maintaining her sister’s old bedroom as a shrine. Darcy goes into her dead sister’s bedroom and finds and reads her diary. This action hugely impacts on her life and that of her family, allowing them to re-discover their lost Faith and move forward along life’s path in a positive way.

I liked the style of writing of this book and the inclusion of the diary entries which are read by Darcy during her time in her sister’s bedroom. The ending is rolled out cleverly with the positive outcomes highlighted in a clever and natural way.

Purchase Open, Shut: A Short Story

Jewel by Jan Sikes

What Amazon says

For almost eighteen years, Jewel has known little beyond hopelessness and hunger. Barely existing in a ramshackle cabin, on the edge of a Louisiana swamp with her little sister and their mother, she sees no way to stop the downward spiral. When her mother falls gravely ill, Jewel learns that her life is about to take a drastic turn. But will it lead to joy or more devastation?

Take a heart-warming journey with Jewel as she struggles to rise from the clutches of poverty and shame.

My review

This is an enjoyable short story about a young girl, Jewel, whose family experiences extremely hard times following a work accident by her father. He finds solace in drinking and his family slides further and further into poverty as his ability to support them declines. Their circumstances take a turn for the worse when he suddenly disappears, never to return.

Jewel realises that her mother is very ill as she has a hacking cough and knows that something has to be done to save her younger sister, her mother and herself. She persuades her mother to go into the town and see a doctor. Her mother, however, returns with finery for her beautiful daughter, Jewel, instead of the expected medicine and the two girls soon realise that their mother, who is dying, has given them away to the best takers she can find.

Jewel goes to work for a Madam in a brothel and her younger sister is put into foster care. Interestingly, Jewel doesn’t fight against her fate, seeming to quickly accept that she has no other options for the time being.

Jewel becomes an object of interest for one of the brothel’s wealthy clients. Will she find happiness or will she become just another mistress to be cast aside when her admirer looses interest? You will have to read the book to find out.

Purchase Jewel