Gina Collia-Suzuki's Blog

I'm posting this video clip this evening for no other reason than it contains one of the greatest songs ever written, sung by one of the greatest singers of all time. Yup, I'm a whopping great Bowie fan... and this is the song that my husband and I think of as 'ours'. Listen and enjoy...

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Our roof's in a bit of a bad way at the moment (understatement of the century), and it's going to need extensive repairs (and when I say 'extensive', I really mean 'expensive'). Having said that, the need to get the roof looked at produced some lovely shots of the view from amongst our chimney stacks.

I never get tired of living here, which is unusual as my husband and I have moved about a fair bit over the years. Each day I discover new things to love about the place, and I can see us ending our

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I've been asked this question a lot recently, and without giving it much thought I always say 'yes'. Having reflected further, however, I realise that this wasn't always the case. In actual fact, before the age of five I wanted to be a pirate captain and have my own ship. I was planning to put to sea before my fifth birthday, but then someone told me about swabbing and scurvy... neither sounded very pleasant, and the latter sounded decidedly itchy. So, I was in the market for a new profession by

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Weston-super-Mare, the town I call home, has a wheel... a forty metre high one, positioned on Weston seafront and visible all across town. It opened just before the Easter break, and during its first day in operation 1,700 people tried it out. The wheel, which is open from ten o'clock in the morning until eleven o'clock at night, is proving to be amazingly popular, and many locals are hoping that it will stay beyond the November date that was originally set for its departure. It has thirty clima

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As anyone who's read my Japanese print blog most likely knows, I was incredibly fortunate in having Jack Hillier as my mentor. He was a scholar and a gentleman and a very dear friend. I can't even begin to count the ways in which knowing him impacted, and continues to impact, upon my life. Well, a wonderful thing happened today. I was attending a book signing for 'The Wonderful Demise of Benjamin Arnold Guppy' at Waterstone's in Wells, which is about an hour from my home, when a couple approache

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I have a few blogger blogs, but I don't generally duplicate content. Today I'm going to make an exception and post a radio interview that I did last week that I'm also posting on my Benjamin Guppy blog. I was interviewed by BBC Radio Gloucestershire on April 24th, and the interviewer was Dave Smith, a very nice chap, He sent me a recording of it today, so here it is...


Click here to listen to the WAV version

Click here to listen to the MP3 version

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The book trailer for The Wonderful Demise of Benjamin Arnold Guppy is up for the award for most intriguing trailer at The New Covey Trailer Awards (it's entry number 3). I'd be much obliged if everyone in the world could vote for it, but I realise that I'll have to settle for only half that number, tee hee! In case you haven't seen it before, and don't want to make the six inch journey down the left side of this page to see it there... here it is:

src="http://www.youtube.com/v/xYZyShXtnqU&hl=en&f

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I picked up a copy of Waterstone's 'Books Quarterly' today, within which there's a small article about Christian, a lion who was born in captivity and sold by Harrods, in 1969, to John Tendall and Ace Bourke, before being set free in Kenya in 1971. A Youtube video was mentioned, so I looked it up... and here it is, the reunion that took place one year after Christian's return to the wild, when he'd become the leader of his own pride:



For more about Christian, visit The Born Free Foundation.

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'What's the hardest part about being a writer?' It's a question I've been asked quite a lot recently. I think that those who ask expect an answer that's related in some way to the actual writing process. Sometimes they'll make suggestions whilst awaiting a response... 'Is it coming up with ideas?'... 'Is it killing off characters?'... 'Is it editing umpteen times?' In truth, I can't think of a single part of the process that is anywhere near as difficult as going public.

Imagine the scene... a w

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It doesn't matter how many times I see this, it always makes me laugh. William Shatner is just so funny.

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