You’ve Got a Friend

Writing should be like your best friend. It should be easy and comfortable with a strong connection that pulls you together.

Your friend should allow you to be your authentic self, allowing you to be free to express your views and ideas in every way without judgement, completely accepting you as you are. If there are times when you are apart, your friend should welcome you back so you pick up exactly where you left off last time. Your friend will forgive your imperfections and challenge your opinions and hold you accountable for the things you say. Your friend will help you be a better person, strengthen your values and solidify who you are, and your bond will be unbreakable. Your friend will only ever support your dreams and help you achieve your goals so that you find happiness.

So give writing time. Develop, nurture and care for it. Express your love for it and never give up on it. Through the good or the bad, it’s there for you always. You’ve got a friend!

Read Full Post »

Hero

‘Hey, Dad,’ the boy said.

‘Hi,’ his father said, standing from his chair to embrace his son.

His father was a tall man, solid, with hands as big as baseball mitts—hands that had picked up his little boy and thrown him a million miles into the air, watching the tyke laugh and flail with glee before catching him. The boy smiled, remembering, and the man smiled too, perhaps with the same memory surfacing in his mind. There was safety and security in his father’s arms, a love expressed through action, and that had made up for all the absent days, the boy reflected.

His father’s smile was easy and his expression genuine, yet his hazel eyes were deep and serious and watchful as though every movement came under scrutiny, and maybe it did. His voice could command a room, if required to do so, and those large hands had been known to silence a disrespectful few, if also required to do so. He was old fashioned, moulded from old fashioned values and a man true to his word. This earned him the respect he required but it was his kindness and integrity to do right that made him a good leader and a hero in the boy’s eyes.

Excerpt (novel) – The Wish List – Grant Ackermann

Read Full Post »

Here Comes Trouble

It wasn’t until my third blood nose that Mum decided, with temper at boiling point, to go and speak to Johnny Lindell’s parents. She dragged me by the arm, the tissue paper still plugged into my nostril and hanging from my nose, and marched up the road in a lengthy stride and charging demeanour, which would have frightened even the biggest herd of on-coming stampeding buffalo, to the Lindell’s place. I jogged to keep up, matching my two or three steps to Mum’s one, and I knew that Mum meant business. I had never seen her this fired up before.

Afternoon had not yet settled to dusk, and the sky flared deep oranges and pinks from the lowering sun. We reached the small brick house with our cheeks flushed and our faces glistening with sweat. Rubbish and toys lay scattered across the front yard. The tall, tangled grass desperately needed a mow and graffiti marked the dirty white walls of the front of the house in a colourful tag of scribbles and letters. A window was open and we could hear heavy-metal music and voices from within. Mum pulled back the mesh of wire that served as a front screen and banged on the door. Specks of brown paint floated to the floor, settling with others that had already made the journey down from where the paint curled back and flaked away from the corroding wooden door in protest.

Excerpt (novel) – Insane Truth – Grant Ackermann

Read Full Post »

Tuesday Trivia Answer

Robert Louis Stevenson

Read Full Post »

Tuesday Trivia

Who wrote the book The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde?

Read Full Post »

Tuesday Trivia Answer

Beowulf

Read Full Post »

Tuesday Trivia

Which is possibly the oldest surviving long poem in Old English, consisting of 3182 alliterative long lines?

Read Full Post »

Good Old Dad

I resent my dad. Well, there’s not much to tell except that I vowed never to be like him. Any decent man steps up and takes responsibility, right, Doc? Not my father. He walked out on us, the coward. Didn’t even try to reconcile with Mum. I wonder if Mum tried? She never did say, so I guess not.

I remember the rain bucketing down that night he left. My father’s tall, dark frame cutting through the torrent, deflecting the heavy rain drops that bounced off him like bullets against Superman’s body, disappearing from the view of my bedroom window, vanishing into the darkness.

He didn’t even look back. If he had, he would’ve seen my face, wide-eyed and curious, pressed up against the glass, bewildered. At the time I thought he was coming back, probably just gone to the shops, or gone to see a man about something or other, as he would always tell Mum. Little did I know it would be the last time I would ever see him, and not even a goodbye. I mean, what am I supposed to think? The man I loved and adored couldn’t give a damn about his own flesh and blood. What kind of a man is that? Certainly not the man I want to be.

Excerpt (novel) – Insane Truth – Grant Ackermann

Read Full Post »

Tuesday Trivia Answer

Becky Thatcher

Read Full Post »

Tuesday Trivia

What is the name of Tom Sawyer’s love interest?

Read Full Post »