Ragtag Giggagon

The Unforgiven Anthology Enter the twisted, talented minds of J.L. Clayton R.L. Weeks K.L. Humphreys Aaron L Speer Becca Moree Valerie Roeseler as they bring you six horrifying tales of woe and malice packed with monsters seeking revenge. These original short stories will have you looking over your shoulders and cowering under your covers in fear of what lurks in the dark. #Unforgiven           Like The Unforgiven Facebook Page:           Seeing Red By J.L. Clayton All her life, Challis has been bullied by the people around her, and now the thin string holding her sanity intact has snapped...The only thing she sees is crimson. They say revenge is best served cold, but Challis will take hers: hot, sticky and red! Come along for one horrific ride as author J.L.Clayton takes a forsaken girl and turns her into a heartless killer. Seeing Red has never looked so frightening. Twisted Insanity By R.L. Weeks Author R. L. Weeks brin...

Lullaby of the Dead by Lynn Lamb, available at Amazon , features a big cast of characters from both the living and the dead. Landry Sinclair is in effect a ball-busting corporate down-sizer, keen to distance herself from her dirty work. She has to meet a quota at her department, and - although she's not happy about it - relieves near-retirees of their positions, often at a distance. A thorn in her side is one of the QBs (or cubicle workers), an ambitious and manipulative slacker whom she would remove if he wasn't quite so good at corporate politics. Next, t he entire office is investigated for murder. Her slacker underling sleeps with her after this tragedy at the workplace. And, as it was Landry who found the body, she falls under suspicion. What could have been an industrial espionage / corporate thriller type novel suddenly shifts focus to turn the book into a ghost story, where we meet a host of spirits who can observe the murderous goings-on of the psychopath respo...

Caroline Stanley and Friends of Merlin Woods are seeking your signature for their petition . She writes: For fours years we have fought to preserve and protect Merlin Park Woods and its meadows from development. In Feb 2014, we successfully had a planned bus corridor/road through Merlin Park Woods and its meadows removed from Galway City Development Plan. Our locally elected Councillors voted unanimously to have it removed and also to wors towards the protection of the woodlands and the meadows by pushing for it to be designated as an SAC, SPA or NHA. We have built up extensive knowledge of the wildlife in the area and have come to realise even more the value of these lands to all: both people and wildlife, such as such as the Red Squirrel, foxes, rabbits, butterflies, bumblebees, orchids and much more. To our dismay in July 2015, we discovered that Galway Hospice were to purchase 15 acres of land from the HSE who managed half of the woodland and the meadows. We reached ou...

Surrealist poet Kevin Bateman held an event in mid-July in Merlin Woods, Galway, attended by a number of poets and writers, who read their work in the middle of the forest. Kevin read a number of poems himself, and his poetry is impressive, with lines of both humour and vitality alongside an urge to embrace darkness elsewhere. A “translucent water spirit” visits the narrator of one of the poems, invisible to all, and the narrator “felt calm and had peace”. “I for one do not believe in delusions,” he says in another, and as a surrealist poet he would seem to re-define the idea. Of what could be an ex-lover, “We awake and look to the other side of the bed and see a pig.” This form of love poetry indicates that we all feel hurt by those who are "selfish" enough not to love us enough – the inclusive “we” suggests that many have been victims in the heartbreak. Indeed, many of us have also been on the other side of the fence; the pig may be potentially a reflection of the narrato...

You. Hey you! I'm talking to you - take off that lumberjack shirt and c'mere to me for a second! Do YOU have a big beard? In Ireland, if you have a BIG BUSHY BEARD, then YOU qualify for a mortgage!  DO YOU THINK I'M KIDDING? Here's how the banks have worked it out, based on multiples of income and the value of the property: If you farken have                      a big farken bushy farken beard,                                               then you farken qualify. Look it up online if you still don't believe me.     See? EXACTLY. SO GROW THAT BEARD OUT!   There's no need to do a big song and farken dance about it UNLESS YOU WANT TO!  Y...

From the Crime Writer’s Association New Blood Dagger Award shortlisted author of The Strangler Vine … Published by Fig Tree   Thursday 27 th October 2016 | hardback | £14.99 THE DEVIL’S FEAST by M. J. Carter A BLAKE & AVERY MYSTERY London, 1842. There has been a mysterious and horrible death at the Reform, London’s newest and grandest gentleman’s club. A death the club is desperate to hush up. Captain William Avery is persuaded to investigate, and soon discovers a web of rivalries and hatreds, both personal and political, simmering behind the club’s handsome façade – and in particular concerning its resident genius, Alexis Soyer, ‘the Napoleon of food’, a chef whose culinary brilliance is matched only by his talent for self-publicity. But Avery is distracted. Where is his mentor and partner-in-crime Jeremiah Blake? And what if this first death was only a dress rehearsal for something far more sinister? Praise for The Printer’s Coffin : ‘An entertaining stew of blackmail, murder...

You've got to love the idea of the sole remaining member of the old gang now being a gatecrasher. Natasha Helen Crudden's thematically diverse collection of poetry, Barbed-Wire Cage ( available at Amazon ), is full of rich imagery like this. In a piece that could be characterised as love poetry, an addressor appears to take responsibility for the addressee’s heartbreak, heartache or mistreatment. In another piece, the speaker appears to express gratitude at having known the addressee. There's a respect here for the feelings of others, and the emotional intelligence of these lyrics gives other pieces - where she is less generous about the subject or target - more depth through contrast. There's a personal authenticity to most of the poetry - with any overt politics rare. Each piece has its strengths and its rhythms. Natasha uses alliterative and assonant (frequently internal) rhyme, combining clever phrases that often confound expectation and play down cliché.   The poe...