A Walk in the Black Forest

 This tune pops into my head from Time to time. The first time I heard it I was at the cinema waiting to see Mary Poppins back in 1965. I was almost 10 years old. The sun is always shining when I hear this tune!

The story that was never written

This morning I was in the shower when a great opening line came to me. I was really proud of myself as I knew that from this one sentence a story could develop.  I made a mental note to write it down as soon as I could.

 Here I am, 6 hours later. I have just remembered that I’ve completely forgotten the words that came to me. The greatest short story ever written has disappeared forever.

My new book!

I'm very pleased to announce the arrival of my third book, Beausejour, available for Kindle on Amazon. I’m not putting a direct link for my book here as it won’t work in all countries. The best is to go to Amazon and search for my name, Angela Knutsen, in the Kindle Store.

If you’re interested you can visit my page at Author Central and order from there too.

Herbert George Wells

I’m reading ‘The Door in the Wall and other stories” at the moment. He really is a brilliant story teller and considering the book was written in 1911 had an almost prophetic view of the future.

Looking at his biography on Wikipedia is equally fascinating – He even predicted the second world war within a few months! When I was at school we read ‘The History of Mr. Polly’ which is completely different to the more scientific stories. I remember it as a really good read and will be looking it out to read again soon.

A first!

One of the books I’ve read recently was ‘The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman’ by Canadian author Denis Thériault. It’s a lovely story based around the art of writing Haiku. For the first time I really got the idea and now I understand how to write them. My daughter and a blogging friend have explained Haiku to me the past, but…

For about a week, when I’ve visited the town hall nearly every day to take the post to the post office, I’ve been treated to the pleasure of seeing the cherry tree in its autumn colours. How very Japanese to be inspired to write my first Haiku by a cherry tree. So here it is. I’m sure I’ve missed something, but it does have 17 syllables. It contains everything I wanted to say:

The Autumn tree 

Studies its reflection 

In a lake of fallen leaves 

 Now I want to read the book again – as it was written, in French.

 I can’t help wondering if some of the trees look down at the leaves beneath them and mutter “Wasn’t me”

A.H.W.O.S.G.

At the beginning of ‘A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius’ the Author Dave Eggars has added a section entitled ‘Rules and Suggestions for Enjoyment of this Book’. Rule 1 says ‘There is no overwhelming need to read the preface’. I took him at his word and didn’t bother to read the preface, it looked long and I don’t like long prefaces. I wanted to read the book.

I thought that I was reading a work of fiction – had I read the preface, I would have known that the book is autobiographical – give and take one or two changes. If I’d have known that it was a true story , I probably wouldn’t have finished it. I’m the mother of sons; the book hurts a lot. Dave has the job of bringing up his younger brother, Toph, almost on his own after both of their parents die of cancer. It’s brilliant and heartbreaking – I would love to meet this man and hug him.

Now I know about McSweeney’s

King Paul

The writing prompt I found today asked me to write about my first toy in 200 words:

The first toy that I really remember was a little Teddy Bear that I was given for Christmas by Santa Claus when he visited my school. I was only five years old at the time and I was overwhelmed when he called out my name and found a present in his sack just for me! He gave all of the children in the class a present, but I didn’t really expect one for myself.

My new Teddy Bear wasn’t very big and his head and body were quite hard – I suppose he was full of sawdust. I named him King Paul. I never ever slept with a soft toy as far as I remember, but know that he wasn’t far away when I was asleep. I would say that he was a very serious teddy from the expression on his face; well he was a King!

King Paul stayed with me for many years and my own children met him, though I don’t think they found him interesting, he was pretty grubby and thread bear – sorry bare, by then. He was getting on for 40 years old by the time it was time for him to go to teddy heaven.

One word over – how’s that? Creative writing prompts