C.L. Davies's Blog

A Tube of Toothpaste / A Mother's Love

My mum gave me a tube of Sensodyne Pronamel toothpaste the other day. Random? Totally. I hadn’t asked for one, and she certainly doesn’t shop for me.

Confused, some lines from Resonance came to mind:

‘You never stop worrying about your children, never stop wanting the best for them, and never stop trying to protect them.’

I never understood before. I even remember thinking, in the outrageous egocentricity of the teenage years; But why a Mother’s Day, why not a Daughter’s Day? Being a mum and doing all those things is just her job.

I didn’t ‘get it’ until I had a child of my own. I tried to put how it felt to be a mum into words, in the same book:

‘… she just wanted everything in Jacob’s life to be perfect. Perhaps that was the wish all mums had for their children. She had never appreciated the depth of that wish before she’d become a mum. Her desire for Jacob to never suffer, to never worry, and to never be upset was all-consuming.’

But I hate those lines, always have. No matter how much I worked on them, they just don’t get the point across at all. The feeling of being a mum, the meaning of being a mum, cannot be put into words.

If it is her ‘job’, then its contract is written in blood, its bindings set to endure even when our bones are but dust in the ground. To be a mum is to love and care forever.

I remembered that I’d mentioned my teeth were feeling sensitive. I’m 35 years old. No matter how old I get, I’ll always be my mum’s baby.

So Happy Mother’s Day, Mum. Thank you for the lifetime of love.

Please share your stories on being a mum, and leave a comment if you can. 

‘The Little Dudes’ Skool Survival Guide - BOOK REVIEW

The Synopsis.

This book is 'The Anti-bullying Guide' that manages to deliver a witty, sarcastic and sensitive read, on how to deal with 'Your Bullies' - it is also written by a child. It's realistic and full of wisdom, considering the author’s age.

The two book stars 'Billy and Ethan' bring the book to life with their different scenarios of 'Skool' life, that makes you feel you are there with them.

Billy and Ethan are two delicious characters who make you want to meet and know them again and again, they try their very, very best to get their message across on how to deal with 'YOUR BULLIES'



A Tweet about this ‘Skool Survival’ guide caught my attention, and I tracked down the 11-year-old author, keen to congratulate him on such an amazing accomplishment. Bullied in school, Harrison wrote the book as a way to help both himself and others. I knew the book would be an inspiring and useful read & review for my beloved Year Six class – themselves aged 10 and 11.
All the reviews were great, but I couldn’t publish them all and I ended up choosing six. Here are their wonderful words:

‘The Little Dudes’ Skool Survival Guide is about a boy who goes through bullying in his school life so he writes a book about to survive in school. I would rate this book 4 or 5 stars. I would recommend this book to my little cousin, because he is only in Year 1 so he will need to learn how to survive school in the future. 
     My favourite part of the book was when he mentioned the girl part, believe me girls are not like that and we are awesome! So that was my favourite part. The most exciting part of the book was the quizzes. I would change nothing about this story it was amazing!  - Holly Broadbent.

This book can be an extremely helpful book if you are having a bad time at school, and if not, it’s still a great book to read.  If you are still in Primary I would recommend this book to you, it could really help you out in a sticky situation. 
     This book is about two boys called Billy and Ethan who will tell you funny stories and give you excellent quizzes while teaching you how to be safe at school. In this book there will be scripts so you and a few of your friends could read it together. My favourite part of the book is when Billy thinks the laptop is fixed and says; “What does it say here?” On the screen it says: ‘This computer is overloaded and vulnerable to viruses, emergency self-destruct, KAAABBBOOOMMM!!!’
     This book is nice and simple to read, there are no tricky words so if you are not a confident reader this is fine to read.
 I enjoyed this book it was quite funny and I would like to read another of his books.  -  Jonty Bregazzi.

My review today is about a book called ‘The Little Dudes’ Skool Survival Guide. I gave it four stars because the author’s writing was fun and easy to read. The book was inspiring to me as I am in Year 6 and nearly going to High School! We had fun reading this book but the girls and I were a bit offended about what he had said about girls. I would have given it 5 stars!
     My favourite part was when the computer blew up – it went ‘Kaboom!’ It was so funny. I love this book because it’s got lots of funny parts! I would recommend this book to ten and over because it’s about moving up to High School. This book is written in a way that is easy for us at our age to read. - Alicia Nash.

This brilliant book is hilarious and exciting. And it’s amazing that the author is only 12 – 13 years old. This book includes fun quizzes, quotes, puzzles and raw rating. It tells you about the types of people like Heroes, Outcasts, Muscles, Specifics, Fair Players and Peacocks. It also tells you how to survive school without being bullied. 
     I didn’t really think this book was the best book in the world, but it was really good, and I think kids over 8 would like it. My favourite quote was; ‘children like you and me, running around, sometimes hurting each other and telling each other off, shouting all the time.’ I recommend this book to 8 year olds – it was easy to read.  – William Boyd.

‘The Little Dudes’ Skool Survival Guide was really helpful and I’ll try to put it to good use for this year and the years ahead. I’m a bit annoyed about the description of girls, I mean not at girls are like that! Except for that it was amazing I loved the pictures and it’s so cool how it was written by a kid who’s just like us. If it was written by an adult it wouldn’t be as good advice. I would recommend it to Yr 2 – Yr 9 as it’s full of info for both Primary School and High School. The only thing I can say is buy this book! – Megan Woods.

What I liked about this outstanding Survival Guide is that it really helps you, it’s good when you’re heading to High School, ‘cos of all the useful tips and advice. My favourite quote was ‘nice one Billy.’
 Also with ‘The Little Dudes’ Skool Survival Guide is it has story to it as well which makes it more interesting.
      I thought raw rating was rather funny, and Billy and Ethan. The illustrations were highly good.
      This book calmed me down a bit because some people in Year 6 dread High School ‘cos of pressure and strictness with teachers and so on, but I’m not as scared now. I loved ‘The Little Dudes’ Skool Survival Guide, and its helped me understand a bit more about school life.  – Aidan Gillen.

Resonance Cover Reveal

So I've surfaced from wave after wave of re-reads and edits, and reckon I know the damn book word for word.


But here's the cover! I'm more excited about the cover than anything else. Isn't is just beautiful?


It's the stunning work of amazing artist Kitster29, to whom I'll be forever thankful.


Some talent, hey? 
You can check out more of his mind-blowing work at: Kitster29 deviantART


Beautiful. Gorgeous. Stunning.
Thank you, Kit. You're awesome. 

A Bunch of Words ...

‘And they are all just a bunch of words. Cool huh?’ – so ended a conversation with a friend of mine – namely the lovely guy and author of amazing novel  Erasure ; A.T.H. Webber – which got me thinking about the power of words.

Cool indeed, because baby is joining in now. She has words!

After months and months of sometimes overwhelming frustration, with baby pointing at things and going ‘Uh, uh,’ me passing her everything in sight; usually met with a shake of her head and then a more persistent ‘Uh, UH,’ she can now pretty much ask for whatever she wants.

She says ‘dum dum’ when she wants her dummy, shouts ‘gate gate’ when I leave the gate open, ‘ball’ when she wants to play ball, you get the idea – no end of amazing words. Words that we take for granted, but without which the world is a confusing, frustrating place. Of course, people also communicate with sign language, which is perhaps even more amazing.

I likened the frustration of not being able to ‘talk’ to baby as how cavemen must have felt, left only with their guttural grunts. But after some good old Google searches, I discovered that although ‘the earliest humans did not use words to communicate, they used sign languages [although different from the sign language used today.] Similarly, body language was also used to communicate and pass on messages in the early humans.’ (from: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/who-invented-sign-language.html)

Then I realized that of course baby was communicating from the word go – with the touch of her tiny fingers, wrapped around my own, or a smile that evokes more emotion than a thousand words ever could. She even kisses us now! But I must admit I do love the words, and look forward to our first

Book Review: 'Sihpromatum: I Grew my Boobs in China,' by Savannah Grace.

The Synopsis
SIHPROMATUM (Sip-row-may-tum) is a memoir series of one family’s four-year backpacking adventure around the world. The first installment, "I Grew my Boobs in China", is the beginning of an intensely fascinating, sobering, and emotional memoir of Savannah’s introspective and innovative family adventure.

In 2005, 14-year-old Savannah Grace’s world is shattered when her mother unexpectedly announces that she and her family (mother, 45; brother, 25; sister, 17) would soon embark on an incredible, open-ended journey. When everything from her pets to the house she lived in is either sold, given away or put in storage, this naïve teenage girl runs headlong into the reality and hardships of a life on the road.

These pages do not describe a vacation to semi-exotic locales protected from the local culture by a veneer of private transportation, scheduled meals, and ritzy hotels. The family lives and travels as the local people do, a distinction that generates fascinating and unusual experiences rich in multicultural insights, as told from the perspective of a budding young author with a traveler’s eye for detail.

Built around a startling backdrop of over eighty countries (I Grew my Boobs in China relates the family’s adventures in China and Mongolia), this is a tale of feminine maturation – of Savannah’s metamorphosis from ingénue to woman-of-the-world. Nibbling roasted duck tongues in China and being stranded in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert are just two experiences that contribute to Savannah’s exploration of new cultures and to the process of adapting to the world around her.

The Review
I’ve never read a memoir or a travel book in my life, until Savannah Grace gifted me hers, in return for an honest review.

With honesty in mind, I must admit it took me a while to get into it, with the exuberant use of exclamation marks driving me mad. I was also crazed by the wails of distress when the author was told she was leaving her home for a year’s travel. I wished she could have been excited by the prospect of the trip of a lifetime, of escaping a year of school, of the promise of real-life experiences and sights and sounds; the likes of which most of us can only ever dream of.

But then, I realised, this was easy for me to say, sitting warm and snug in my king-sized bed, having never left the comfort of home for more than two weeks. And of course Savannah was only 14 years old when this happened to her. I began to realise that if the same thing had happened to me when I was that age (OK, real - never pretentious, or prettied up for our benefit.

I ended up totally enjoying this book, and loved seeing the world through the author’s innocent yet candid eyes. I wasn’t expecting it, but loved, that the story tells of so much more than the author’s physical journey. Savannah mentions in the book how much she missed her best friend, Terri. But if Terri has read the book, then she travelled with you, Savannah, as did I, every step of the way.

Book Review: The ABACUS Protocol, Sanity Vacuum, by T. Gregory.

The Synopsis

Vivian Skye just finished university, and landed a dream internship.

Not many would consider the distant and isolated Extra-Galactic Observatory cushy, but to Vivian it’s a dream come true. Hailing from the low-tech planet of Aurora, she studied for years to work on advanced quantum supercomputers. This is her chance to start a career and leave her past life behind.

Her assignment is simple: a routine upgrade for the station’s supercomputer, quIRK.

Her reception isn’t a friendly one, and she finds that her only friend is quIRK. However, the station’s administrator, Bryce Zimmer is obsessed with quIRK—he suspects that the AI may have achieved sentience, something explicitly prohibited by the ABACUS Protocol.

Bryce’s traumatic and privileged past makes him distrust Vivian from the beginning; his jealousy compels him to set Vivian and quIRK against each other. Deciding that the ends justify the means, his power-hungry sabotage threatens to consume the entire station and send them into the unknown void of intergalactic space.

Vivian must struggle to survive not only Bryce’s megalomania, but also the emerging artificial super intelligence that is quIRK.

The Review

Sanity Vacuum enthralled me from the very first page, where it wastes no time with its fascinating mention of an advanced computer intelligence that conquered planet Earth – the ‘ABACUS’ incident. Thereafter, quantum computers could not be allowed to achieve sentience, thus the ‘ABACUS Protocol.’ The idea of a futuristic global apocalypse brought about by an independent, intelligent computer is the stuff of true Sci-fi, and hooked me utterly into finding out more.   

Characterisation in this book is well-executed, with the author immediately aligning the reader in sympathy with main character, Vivian, as she is slandered unfairly as a ‘hick’ in the opening pages. Vivian, hailing from a ‘low-tech’ planet seems sometimes naïve and sweet, which goes nicely with her inner strength and determination, making for a strong female protagonist. We join her on her journey to the Extra-Galactic Observatory, where she is set to upgrade deep-space quantum computer quIRK. Meeting the amenable Alec, the potential for romance sparks. However, Gregory does well to avoid this cliche, allowing them instead to develop a good friendship. Before long, the situation on the Observatory becomes dangerous, soon spiraling out of control when it becomes clear that someone, or something, is trying to stop Vivian at all costs. Bryce, the station’s administrator, doesn’t appreciate Vivian’s presence from the outset, and Vivian must stay alive long enough to discover whether his dislike and distrust could make him murderous, or whether the truth is something entirely more sinister.      

It is quIRK, however, who totally steals the show in this book. Ordering kittens off the galactic equivalent of the Internet, declaring his favourite colour ‘antiblue,’ he lives up to his name in the most affectionate way. With his dulcet ‘voice,’ the computer put me in mind of ‘Hal 9000’ from Arthur C. Clarke's Space Odyssey series, although quIRK is infinitely more loveable. He’s also a sweet but tragic character, with modest and humble desires – I was moved to tears by his simple wish to see a tree. quIRK is so well written that, despite being a computer, he has found a place as one of my all-time favourite and most memorable characters.      

The Sci-fi element of this book is as epic as any episode of

Book Review: The ABACUS Protocol, Sanity Vacuum, by T. Gregory.

The Synopsis

Vivian Skye just finished university, and landed a dream internship.

Not many would consider the distant and isolated Extra-Galactic Observatory cushy, but to Vivian it’s a dream come true. Hailing from the low-tech planet of Aurora, she studied for years to work on advanced quantum supercomputers. This is her chance to start a career and leave her past life behind.

Her assignment is simple: a routine upgrade for the station’s supercomputer, quIRK.

Her reception isn’t a friendly one, and she finds that her only friend is quIRK. However, the station’s administrator, Bryce Zimmer is obsessed with quIRK—he suspects that the AI may have achieved sentience, something explicitly prohibited by the ABACUS Protocol.

Bryce’s traumatic and privileged past makes him distrust Vivian from the beginning; his jealousy compels him to set Vivian and quIRK against each other. Deciding that the ends justify the means, his power-hungry sabotage threatens to consume the entire station and send them into the unknown void of intergalactic space.

Vivian must struggle to survive not only Bryce’s megalomania, but also the emerging artificial super intelligence that is quIRK.

The Review

Sanity Vacuum enthralled me from the very first page, where it wastes no time with its fascinating mention of an advanced computer intelligence that conquered planet Earth – the ‘ABACUS’ incident. Thereafter, quantum computers could not be allowed to achieve sentience, thus the ‘ABACUS Protocol.’ The idea of a futuristic global apocalypse brought about by an independent, intelligent computer is the stuff of true Sci-fi, and hooked me utterly into finding out more.   

Characterisation in this book is well-executed, with the author immediately aligning the reader in sympathy with main character, Vivian, as she is slandered unfairly as a ‘hick’ in the opening pages. Vivian, hailing from a ‘low-tech’ planet seems sometimes naïve and sweet, which goes nicely with her inner strength and determination, making for a strong female protagonist. We join her on her journey to the Extra-Galactic Observatory, where she is set to upgrade deep-space quantum computer quIRK. Meeting the amenable Alec, the potential for romance sparks. However, Gregory does well to avoid this cliche, allowing them instead to develop a good friendship. Before long, the situation on the Observatory becomes dangerous, soon spiraling out of control when it becomes clear that someone, or something, is trying to stop Vivian at all costs. Bryce, the station’s administrator, doesn’t appreciate Vivian’s presence from the outset, and Vivian must stay alive long enough to discover whether his dislike and distrust could make him murderous, or whether the truth is something entirely more sinister.      

It is quIRK, however, who totally steals the show in this book. Ordering kittens off the galactic equivalent of the Internet, declaring his favourite colour ‘antiblue,’ he lives up to his name in the most affectionate way. With his dulcet ‘voice,’ the computer put me in mind of ‘Hal 9000’ from Arthur C. Clarke's Space Odyssey series, although quIRK is infinitely more loveable. He’s also a sweet but tragic character, with modest and humble desires – I was moved to tears by his simple wish to see a tree. quIRK is so well written that, despite being a computer, he has found a place as one of my all-time favourite and most memorable characters.      

The Sci-fi element of this book is as epic as any episode of

Book Review: 'Erasure' by A.T.H. Webber

The Synopsis

I remember but it is failing. I have strived to erase myself before I go. For as long as I remember Her, She can wait for me. For as long as I am remembered, I will have to wait.

Erasure’s secretive narrator leads us across cities, continents and decades, racing to grasp at the weakening threads that link to Her. Steps traced, data hacked, privacy shattered – life and death in the cloud. But what becomes of this digital cosmos of memories, part stolen, once we are gone? What powers does it hold?

Love and murder collide in this contemporary story that explores what might happen if the digital records of our lives linked us, not to our past, but to our future.

Baby, and other things beginning with 'b' ...

I was thinking about my baby, who has just been a birthday girl, when I realised she is many other things beginning with the letter ‘b’ …

Bum-shuffler: Despite being over a year old baby is not toddling, but does a brilliant high-speed bum-shuffle. Up go the gates and out-of-reach shelving. Up goes daddy’s blood pressure as I reel off all the hazards that he needs to sort.        

Beautiful: I know I’m her mummy, and that all mummies think their baby is beautiful, but oh, she is so beautiful.

Bonkers: who knew that placing a small plastic cow on top of my head could be so funny?

Blessing: As a sufferer of endometriosis, I was never entirely sure I would even be able to have a baby. She is a gift.

Box-obsessed: I was warned about this by practically everyone at Christmas; ‘She’ll play with the boxes more than the toys.’ Yeah, yeah, I thought, maybe you just got your kid naff toys. But I acquiesce, because she does love boxes! At the dinner table she used to moan and throw her bright toys on the floor, until we learnt to placate her with a tirade of empty boxes. Oh, to eat in peace.

Balance-challenged: She’s a bit like a Weeble, only she sometimes does fall down, bless.

And last but not least, Luther Vandross and Janet Jackson were singing the truth when they said, ‘The best things in life are free.’ I never used to get it; palm-lined swimming pools and luxury Villas aren’t free! What on earth were they prattling on about? I used to think happiness involved earning lots of money, and owning material possessions. But that’s not happiness at all. Happiness is smiling into your baby’s eyes as she falls asleep at night. Happiness is wrapping her up warm and snugly. Happiness is seeing her face light up and hearing her giggle when she sees me in the morning. Happiness is her.

And that’s the last ‘b’ – that she is the absolute best.  

Book Review: 'Truders, by Chandler McGrew.

At twelve Fane Smith’s IQ is off the charts, and since his father’s murder at the hands of Watchers he and his mother have been prisoners in their own home. But Fane has begun to experience nocturnal visits from a man named Joshua who doesn’t seem to register on the surveillance camera in Fane’s bedroom. Joshua warns the boy that time is running out and that he must be prepared when the Watchers finally come for him. At the same time an autistic genius named Shep Ward is taken to visit Joshua where he is held stories below ground in a secret desert facility. Shep’s mission is Joshua’s murder, but instead he kills his keepers and escapes into a world he comprehends only through data he has been absorbing all his life like a human computer. Both Fane and Shep are drawn back to the place of their origin, Rastley, New York, a near-deserted town of unspeakable evil run by Morgan Rastley, the man who made it so. A professional hit man waits for Shep and an operating table for Fane. And death waits for every human being on earth if Morgan is successful in his quest.