Author: Cathy Speight

Reviewer Cathy Speight is British and lives in England. The Kindle revived her passion for reading and after stumbling on a Facebook group of independent authors, she now does her best to encourage and assist indies as much as possible. Books by indie author form the majority of her collection. Cathy shares her views on the books she has read on her blog.

Spotlight on…Christmas fiction

It’s that time of year…Christmas. You either love it or you hate it. Or you hate the toil and trouble, the trailing around the shops, trying to find something for Great-aunt Alice that isn’t yet another pair of fluffy slippers or that she won’t put in the drawer and try and remember to put on display every time you call round. It’s all a mad silly rush and you vow, yet again, that you’ll be more organised next year and start in May, roundabout when you’re starting to think of your summer hols.

My recommendation? Well, aside from sorting dear old Alice out with a Kindle/ereader and a few respectable books (or grabbing a passport and escaping to Timbuktoo), let me suggest sitting down in a nice comfy armchair beside a pleasantly glowing fire with a cup of deliciously steaming-hot cocoa (or if it’s after six, some mulled wine maybe?), and forget about the festive lunacy and escape for half an hour with a seasonal short story. It’s safe, it’s legal, it’s cheap, (well, depending on the number of glasses of mulled wine you have), but more importantly, it’s a tried and tested (by me) remedy to help prevent loss of sanity.

Two authors and four books spring to mind for this little home-grown cure. Continue reading “Spotlight on…Christmas fiction”

A Helping Hand…that which who are is…

I was summoned. The EM wanted to see me. I knew what it was: my dress code. Well, I did get Madonna’s cone bustier cheap on eBay—I was so very sorry about the EM’s eye. Or perhaps it was my body-piercing. Look, I found this dinky little stud with the initials ‘EM’ on it. Okay, perhaps the tongue wasn’t the best place for it, but you can’t dithcwiminite againtht thomeone jutht becauthe they have a sthpeeth impediment. Oh, I know…it was the tattoo. Come on, the tattooist was 93 and a bit deaf. How was I to know he’d misunderstood ‘Indies R Us’? I did tell him Indies started with an ‘I’ not a ‘U’….anyway, it was a bogof and the tattoo on my—oh, never mind.

Anyway I was a Very Worried Minion, and I was trepidating (is it only me that thinks trepidation should have its own verb?). I slunk into the EM’s bunker and there he was. Sitting with his head resting limply in his four hands. He’d written ‘Help’ with all the red M&Ms and was sucking the others up with a straw and pea-shooting them at his statuette of Popeye: I think he was trying to get them into his pipe. He was whimpering pathetically.

“Cathy, I’m confused, I’m nonplussed, I’m addled, I’m perplexed, I’m puzzled, I’m baffled and befuddled, I’m confounded, I’m flustered, I’m…”

Oh no. Oh no, no, no, no, NO. It was worse than I thought. He’d swallowed the thesaurus.

“Help me, Cathy,” he continued after I’d wiped the dribble off his chin. I left him to digest, with Mr Pish sitting on his lap, rather worryingly scratching the EM’s ear, and I tried to make sense of his dilemma…

He was addled by two things—that/which/who, firstly. Continue reading “A Helping Hand…that which who are is…”

A Helping Hand…dot dot dot, dash dash dash…S.O.S!

The hyphen, the en dash, the em dash, and the ellipsIs. Probably the least understood (after the comma!) members of Team Punctuation. Also the ones I don’t often see used correctly.

So, we’ve learnt how to use semicolons (here), and we’ve learnt how to use apostrophes (here). And we’re doing it right, aren’t we, children? Of course, you are!

I’ll do my best to keep it simple and identify a few main simple rules. Continue reading “A Helping Hand…dot dot dot, dash dash dash…S.O.S!”

From Me to IU

Dearest IU (and all IU readers/fans/idolaters)

Since my brain is missing the part that generates imagination, wit, and style, I’m going to make this very, very short, but very, very sweet. I can’t let this auspicious day go by without saying a few words, so if you were thinking about making a quick cuppa or taking a pee break, then now’s the time to do it, and then you’ll miss this. Continue reading “From Me to IU”