Christmas Market

We visited the Edinburgh German Christmas Market today and enjoyed apple strudel with cherries and a mug of mulled wine with kirsch and watched the rain come down.

1000 creative writing prompts

1000 Creative Writing Prompts: Volume 2: More Ideas for Blogs, Scripts, Stories and More by Bryan Cohen.

This gem of a book is packed full of creative prompts designed specifically to make you think and create blog posts, articles or stories, to explore issues, stimulate conversations or to share in creative writing classes.

The prompts are arranged in thematic chapters: Time and Place; People and Creatures; The Body and the Brain; Concepts; Money; Love and Entertainment and Mixed Bag. This is a useful way of organising your browsing through the book.

As i said at the beginning of the review, these are thought provoking prompts, designed to explore ideas rather than technique. Examples include:

When historians talk about the present day, what nickname do you think they'd give it and why? Would that nickname effectively convey the world you lived in? Why or why not? 

**
During the oil crisis in 1973 and 1974, 20 percent of gas stations had no fuel at all to provide consumers. How would your day-to-day life be different if you and your family simply couldn't get gas? What changes might you have to make during such a crisis and why?

Each prompt can probably be used to good effect many times over, so this book is a great resource for any writer.

Thanks Story Cartel for my free download of this book.

The Fall of the Stone City by Ismail Kadare

I realised Ismail Kadare was a great writer when I read his novel Broken April, which tells the story of blood feuds in the mountains of Albania. I've been waiting for him to win the Nobel Prize for Literature ever since.

The Fall of the Stone City is set in Gjirokastër, Albania, birthplace of both Kadare himself and the Albanian communist leader Enver Hoxha.  The story starts in September 1943 as Nazi troops prepare to bombard the city. However, something stops them and it turns out that the Nazi colonel remembers he has an old friend from University living in Gjirokastër, Big Dr Gurameto, one of two surgeons in the city (the other who is also called Dr Gurameto). A reunion dinner ensues which leads to the doctor being considered a traitor, but then the hostages are released, soi perhaps he's a hero?

The story continues through the city's changing political fortunes. It's a city that has been invaded by foreign powers many times and is used to this, the residents carry on as though nothing has happened even as leaders come and go.

This is a enigmatic and intriguing novel that illuminates a key period in Albanian history, while asking questions about the nature of truth, power and loyalty, lightened by a dark humour. Any reading of it probably benefits from some knowledge of Albanian history, customs and folklore and some knowledge of Kadare's other novels.

Thanks to Jim Murdoch, who sent me a spare copy of this novel and who wrote a much longer review of it last year!

The Fall of the Stone City by Ismail Kadare, published by Canongate. 

As ever, coloured text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more. 

Risks

She, your daughter or perhaps your niece,
has worked with refugees,
sewn on limbs blown off by mines,
read homelessness in women’s eyes –
the pain of the dispossessed.


You, an insurance man, say
‘they should better have weighed
the risks, avoided the temptation
of escape, stayed at home
for goodness sake!’


Safe and bored in suburban freedom,
you cannot imagine danger
surrounding your home
with paralysing fear
a time-bomb slowly ticking.



previously published on Catapult to Mars

shadowy reflections on a window

for Weekend Reflections and Shadow Shot Sunday

Fragments by Hugh Irvine

Fragments is a collection of eight very short vignette-like short stories, that give the reader windows onto various people's lives. The stories are set in various stages of life, childhood, work, holiday and terminal illness.

The two stories that stood out for me are 'We are so Sorry' which offers a touching indight into the relationship between a terminally ill man and the nurse looking after him and 'Humidity' in which a boy realises his cat has found the best way of dealing with hot and humid weather. 

The stories are very readable, seem true to life and are written with a good eye for detail.Their short length makes them ideal to read when you have a spare couple of minutes.

Disclaimer: I received a free e-copy of this book via Story Cartel.

She Thought She had Lost Something

When she was five, she thought she had lost something.

She wasn't sure what, the pain and discomfort were overwhelming and no-one told her anything.

When she was twelve, she thought she had lost something.

The blood dripping slowly, every month five days of fever and pain.

When she was eighteen she thought she had lost something.

Feeling only pain, as her husband cut her open again before penetrating her, no love in the act.

When she was nineteen, she thought she had lost something.

Cut open to give birth to a daughter, sewn back again, months of fever and pain.

When she was twenty-four, she thought she had lost something.

Bringing the circumciser round to cut her daughter with unsterilised glass.

When she was still twenty-four, she knew she had lost something.

Watching her five-year old daughter bleed slowly to death in fever and pain. 

**

You can read more about female genital mutilation on the WHO website.

**

This is an entry for the FEMFLASH 2013 writing competition from Mookychick Online. Enter now.

**

As ever, coloured text contains hyperlinks that thae you to other webpages where you can find out more. 

Vienna

Seeing the film Museum Hours, which I reviewed yesterday reminded me of my trip to Vienna in 1998. Here are some of my favourite photos from the trip:

The Hundertwasser House, designed by architect, artist and ecologist Hundertwasser.

A wonderful and fascinating building!

Schloss Schönbrunn.

The Glorieta at Schloss Schönbrunn.

Karlsplatz - an Underground Station that became a cafe.

a pretty street corner

does anyone know the name of this building in the centre of Vienna?

Albertina Platz Memorial against War and Fascism

By Austrian artist Alfred Hrdlicka [1928-2009]. This square is the site of a massacre in 1945 when an Allied bomb killed an unknown number of civilians taking shelter in the basement of a building.

As ever, coloured text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more.

Museum Hours

Museum Hours is the story of Anne, a Canadian woman in Vienna to care for a distant relative who has fallen into a coma. She speds a lot of time in the city's Art History Museum and is befriended by one of the guards there who acts as her unofficial guide to the museum and to selected aspects of the city.

The two discuss the meaning and value of art, politics and their life experiences, while wandering round the Museum, various coffee shops and the wintry streets of Vienna.

The film sometimes feels like an advert for the museum and in particular its Breughel collection, though the wider city doesn't come out of it looking quite so wonderful, as the clouds never seem to lift and the camera lingers on building sites and run down street corners.

However the film is a particularly intelligent tour guide, juxtaposing as it does scenes from the museum alongside the flea markets of the city centre and taking a tour into the underworld of a lake grotto just as Anne's relative slips into death.

Its a lovely, meditative film for anyone interested in art history or in Vienna.

Museum Hours is on at Edinburgh Filmhouse until Thursday 26 September. 

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The film reminded me of my visit to Vienna, many years ago now and I may see if I can transfer some of my photos onto the computer and write about the visit!

City Centre Reflections

I took this photo from the bus as we waited for the lights to change.

This street used to only be used by a few buses, but since the saga of Edinburgh's tram works began, diversions have been in place and all buses in this area of town now use this street.

Apparently the trams will start running next Spring.....

For Weekend Reflections