patsy

Wednesday word of the week – Yule

Yule-tide is an archaic term for the festival of Christmas. Yule is just a shortened form of that.

A Yule-log is either a real log, or one made from cake and covered in chocolate. Guess which is my favourite! (Coincidentally, the next word in my dictionary is ‘yummy’) Traditionally a yule-log really big piece of wood, which would be set alight on Christmas Eve to signal the start of the festivities, and would hopefully keep burning until twelfth night, when the feasting and frivolity would stop.

I don’t have any kind of yule log this year, but I do have a nice big tree stump, which would probably burn well – although I think it looks better left in the garden. This is it at the end of last winter.

patsy

Free ebook

My short story collection Keep It In The Family, is currently free to download. Offer ends 7th December. I hope you enjoy it. If you do, a review will be greatly appreciated.

Here’s the blurb – 

Alec thinks he’s suffered a medical emergency, Dr Kuttemopen says the same about his patient, and Jake and his granddad will be at risk from one if they carry on as they’ve been doing. With the support of loved ones, they could all put these predicted and suspected health problems behind them. Uncle Boris’s condition will never go away, but neither will Aunt Jonna, so he’ll not just cope, but enjoy doing so.

Everyone has problems or concerns from time to time. Some deal with them by always moving on and never looking back, others by asking the right question. They might try to keep them hidden, insist on bringing them into the open, or allow the sea to wash them away. Most will turn to their families for help, but all Miss Frencham’s are gone. All she can do, is tell people about the bodies.

Anne’s spent a lot of time waiting for her daughter; a whole lifetime, but it’s been worth every second. Daniel’s mother and Dizzy’s father-in-law won’t wait a moment for them, until they come to their senses and reunite their families. Stephanie’s waiting for the right kind of snow, and Adam’s waiting for the wrong sort of Santa. Their reward will be to know they did the right thing.

Families, whether we’re born or married into them, or choose them for ourselves all have stories to tell. This collection contains 25 of them.

Get it free here.

patsy

Wednesday word of the week – Gaff

A gaff can be either one of two horrible sounding fishing implements, or a slang term for a person’s home. Gaff can also mean a plan or secret, most often used in the phrase ‘don’t blow the gaff‘ which is similar to not letting the cat out of the bag. (English is fun, isn’t it?)

Don’t make the gaffe of adding an e – that’s a different word.

Threave castle was once the gaff of Archibald the grim. (Upsetting him was way more than a gaffe)

I wonder if he used a gaff to catch fish in his moat?

patsy

A few words on AI


I don’t use AI to write my books. My readers are real people and I don’t think it’s fair to ask them to buy a book and spend time reading it if I can’t be bothered to write it myself.
If you’d like to read any of my novels or themed short story collections, you can request them from libraries, order through bookshops, or buy them here.

patsy

Wednesday word of the week – Catchword

This book is ‘Display of Heraldry’ which was published in 1660.

Back then it was only the very rich who could afford books (the kind of people who had heraldry to display). It wasn’t uncommon for workers, even skilled ones to be illiterate. You can imagine this had to potential to cause problems when some of those skilled workers had the job of binding individual pages into a book.

To ensure the pages were stitched together in the right order a catchword was used. The last word at the end of a page would be repeated at the start of the next. This meant that even those who couldn’t read the text could match up these two words and avoid expensive errors.