Stuart Aken's Blog, page 5
October 5, 2024
#ScenicSaturday October 5th 2024
This continuing series of posts depicts our beautiful world, encouraging people to share them and maybe even help save our unique home planet from human carelessness and indifference. Today’s photo was taken in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, from a walk near Conistone, looking toward Kilnsey Cragg. The area is a beautiful place for walks. …
September 28, 2024
Our Fragile Moment, by Michael Mann #BookReview.
Our planet, the only one we have, has been around for 4.54 billion years (4,540,000,000,000 years). The very first proto-humans emerged around 2,000,000 years ago, and human civilisation (such as it is) has been around for under 6,000 years. Only for 0.00001% of the history of the Earth have modern humans been around. And look …
Continue reading Our Fragile Moment, by Michael Mann #BookReview.
#ScenicSaturday September 28th 2024
This continuing series of posts depicts our beautiful world, encouraging people to share them and maybe even help save our unique home planet from human carelessness and indifference. Today’s photo was taken during our holiday to celebrate our Wedding Anniversary, last year, on the lovely Greek island of Zakynthos. We’d walked from our comfortable hotel …
September 21, 2024
#Short Story: The Best Possible Time
This story was first published in the now discontinued Writers’ Forum magazine in May 2007, when it won the 1st prize in their monthly short story contest (£300.00, quite a generous sum). The story was, at that time, part of a romantic thriller I was writing, and altered to stand alone as short fiction. This …
#ScenicSaturday September 21st 2024
This continuing series of posts depicts our beautiful world, encouraging people to share them and maybe even help save our unique home planet from human carelessness and indifference. Today’s photo was taken during our stay in Italy, where we celebrated our thirtieth Wedding Anniversary, way back in 2018. The lake is one of a series …
September 18, 2024
Oddities Observed On Outings #23
In this rolling series I’m looking at ‘odd’ things discovered when out walking. Some objects will be familiar to some readers, but many are likely to be unfamiliar to most. I’m presenting those that caught my attention through incongruity, idiosyncrasy, or simply their odd appearance. I came upon this on a walk from Rocky Valley …
September 15, 2024
Further Progress on the #WIP
Still working on the first edit of the initial draft that I finished, at 84,141 words, on 14th May. On 7th September I let you know I was well into the first edit of the WIP, when the word count had reached 57,341. I also promised to keep you up to date with progress at …
September 14, 2024
#ScenicSaturday September 14th 2024
This continuing series of posts depicts our beautiful world, encouraging people to share them and maybe even help save our unique home planet from human carelessness and indifference. Today’s photo was taken along a rough road in the Forest of Dean. It serves English Forestry and their contractors when they’re felling, planting, or thinning the …
September 9, 2024
Oddities Observed On Outings #22
In this rolling series I’m looking at things seen when out walking. Some objects will be familiar to some readers, but many are likely to be unfamiliar to most. I’m presenting those that caught my attention through incongruity, idiosyncrasy, or simply their odd appearance. I came upon this birch leaf on an autumn walk through …
September 8, 2024
Short Story: A Change of View
This story was published in Words, a quarterly magazine sold in aid of the Winnicott Baby Unit charity. It appeared in issue 57, in early 2006, and was published before I started to write under my usual pen name of today. I received no fee (not expecting one) but did get a free copy of …
