My thoughts about books, writing, life and so many other things….Judy Leigh/ Elena Collins.
The winter is always great fun. First you get Hallowe’en and Bonfire Night, and the dark sky is our best friend, a backdrop of stars while we’re out trick-and-treating, or filled with billowing smoke and fizzing rockets in all colours. The smell of baking potatoes hangs on the air, fried onions, spicy parkin – whatever …
Continue reading You know it’s spring when…(A UK perspective.)
Dear readers, reviewers, authors – friends, family! May I thank you for all your support this year, for reading my books, my blog, and for generally being lovely. It has been an incredible year. 2023 has been about the joy of feeling safe and happy among special and valued people whom I respect and love. …
Tom Hardy the actor embodies what I love about all arts....
Friends and family -despite distance, time and change, we are there for each other.
Now it's 2023, I've been thinking about my hopes for the new year...
Like many people, I have dreamed and planned for a long time what I’ll actually do to celebrate when the time of Covid restrictions comes to an end. I haven’t spoken to most of these people face to face, of course, but at a social distance and, more times than not, over social media. There’s …
Continue reading Note to myself as this time of restrictions comes to an end…
This week I finished writing a novel, some 97, 000 words that I'm quite pleased with. It's a story of a woman and her neighbour on a quest to discover something new after a life-changing event, and it contains a secondary character I love to bits, an impressive lady who speaks her mind and is …
I often cast films in my imagination. If I read about a character in a book, an actor will come to mind and I think ‘he or she would be perfect for that role.’ Many times, I’ve considered actors who might be in films of my own novels: Brendan Gleeson and Julie Walters feature a …
Continue reading So, who is the best actor to play Lemmy in a biopic?
‘You’re doing fine. Keep going. You’re nearly there. You’ve got this.’ I remember repeating this to myself on a long walk in the Lake District a few years ago: having climbed Scafell Pike and Great Gable, I ran out of energy on the descent with three miles to go. It took sheer willpower to drag …
Continue reading How can we deal with the whispering voices of doubt?
Many of us might have noticed that we are dreaming a little differently in these strange times. These dreams are often surreal, often presenting the most unlikely scenarios. They are very vivid and packed with detail. These have been called ‘pandemic dreams’ and the reason we’re experiencing them is because the situation we find ourselves …
That quintessence of dust 