Blog: Mel's Muse

Big Book Sale: Stepfamilies - Practical Help To Build A Stable, Happy Stepfamily

How do you tell your children they are going to have a step-parent? How do you handle disagreements about access and money? How do you deal with past hurts and fears?

All families have their difficulties, but stepfamilies often face special problems. And with nearly a million of them in the...

Posted at 13:22pm on 7th February 2015

1 Comment

Creative Writing: Book Launch & Signing For Time To Shine

Not the best of photographs, but this is me telling my audience, at my Book Launch, yesterday, about my creative writing journey. My love of books began at the age of five, when my father used to read my favourite bedtime story, Oscar Wilde's The Selfish Giant from the leather-bound...

Posted at 14:59pm on 29th November 2014

2 Comments

What Is Your Author & Book Brand?

Have you ever thought, as a reader, about what attracts you to certain books, or particular authors? What makes you go for one rather than another? Is it the book cover? The price of the product? The publisher’s marketing ploy? The author’s nationality?

Somehow, I doubt it. Almost certainly, it will...

Posted at 02:03am on 21st November 2014

Time To Shine - Another Excerpt From My New Psycological Mystery

Josh was still in his pjs, lying on his bed playing some computer game or other on his cell phone when Carl went to tell him the good news. The boy seemed strangely lethargic. Hardly surprising, Carl supposed, given the state of the room - a stinking fug of yesterday's...

Posted at 07:40am on 15th November 2014

Time To Shine - A Mystery. A Marriage Mender. And A Mary Berry Style Bake Off

First in the Evie Adams series: Page one of my new book

Sometimes, when you're counselling a client and she lobs a direct question at you, protocol requires that you bounce it back to her. A case in point is my two-o'clock this Friday afternoon, a mother of three, early-forties, by the...

Posted at 23:25pm on 9th November 2014

8 Comments

Mel's Online Book Club: Questions For: Faith In The Fog: Believing In What You Cannot See By Jeff Lucas

FAITH IN THE FOG: by Jeff Lucas NB: Page numbers below relate to Kindle pages
Click here for Discussion Summary of Faith in the Fog 1. Time Trapped. 31-46 · Do we wish we could go back in time as the disciples went back to Galilee to fish? If so why? Isn’t our past shame washed...

Posted at 09:53am on 28th June 2014

1 Comment

Mel's Online Book Club: Discussion Summary Of Faith In The Fog: Believing In What You Cannot See By Jeff Lucas

Having prayed for absent book club members, particularly one, who is back in hospital on a second course of chemo, we started the evening with a general overview of Jeff Lucas’ book, Faith in the Fog. Without exception the group professed to having enjoyed it, though one person found his self-deprecation...

Posted at 09:36am on 28th June 2014

Writing Defines Who I Am, Not What I Do!

When Fay Sampson, an author I’ve known and admired for many years, asked me to take part in a blog tour, naturally I was delighted to accept. When I heard that Donna Fletcher Crow - another author whose work I love to read - had participated - that clinched it. Both have...

Posted at 00:31am on 12th May 2014

6 Comments

Mel's Online Book Club: Little Coffee Shop Of Kabul: A Debut Novel By Deborah Rodriguez

FRIENDSHIP: One of the joys of a good book club has to be in the friendship that develops between members, and the freedom that this gives them to speak their minds. And so it was that our discussion, yesterday evening, spiralled off in all directions, covering politics, faith v...

Posted at 10:01am on 29th April 2014

Mel's Online Book Club: Questions & Discussion Summary Of Simply Christian, By Tom Wright: Chapters 1-2

THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS & DISCUSSION SUMMARY ARE PROVIDED FOR MEL'S ONLINE BOOK CLUB and may be reproduced – see below. Please leave your comments so that further discussion may be promoted.

More than a dozen of us gathered to discuss Tom Wright's book, Simply Christian. Most of us had read at least...

Posted at 07:49am on 12th May 2013

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