'Tasting Strangers'

 A friend in real life has just asked me if I'm keeping healthy and sane, to which I answered, 'Healthy? Yes. Sane? Most days!'

With all the doom and gloom that's going on in the public world and with the quiet, personal troubles that many of us are enduring, I feel rather awkward about announcing the publication of my new book: but here goes.

Tasting Strangers is a collection of short stories on the common theme of  people meeting, interacting and then moving on, sometimes together and sometimes apart. The title came from an exercise I did last year with Corby Collective Poets. We were working with a word bubble exercise on the theme of journeys, and the phrase came up in the discussion. Someone said it would make a good title, and so here we are.

I've gone with paperback and e-book via the mighty Amazon platform. For all its faults - and goodness knows there are many - it provides a very straightforward way to publish and, of course, there are no costs in the setup. If you would like to buy a copy, the link is here. Thanks in anticipation.

In other matters, I am reading two books at the moment. On the non-fiction side, I have Wanderlust by Rebecca Solnit, which is a beautiful account of the history of walking. In the page footers there are literary and philosophical quotes in a continuous thread, so it's almost like getting two books for the price of one. It's a slow read, but I'd definitely recommend it. On the fiction side I have The Promise, a psychological thriller by fellow blogger Sally Jenkins, whom many of you will know. I'm not very far into it, but I'm already gripped. Great stuff, Sally!

Finally, is anyone trying to use the new version of Blogger? If so, can you tell me how to get pics in the right place - that is to say, as on this post, in the top left with the copy starting aligned with the top of the image? I've reverted to the old version for now. Why do they have to keep changing things?