‘Notification from Ms Paige Turner …’ by Jan Moran Neil
Hi,
If you have come through the link www.janmoranneil.co.uk/blog then please know: I have moved my blog to Substack as for some reason, known on another planet, the blog subscriber button here has ceased to work, having been fine since 2010.
All you need to do now is hit on the BLOG button on this website.
So off I go to Substack. See you there and many thanks to Mr Red Hat for sorting that for me.
As ever – Jan

‘Whistling in the Ocean Wind as We Send Our Words Out …’ by Ms Paige Turner
A bunch of my former Creative Ink students invited me to come and speak to them about RF Kuang’s novel ‘Yellow Face’. I have read the book and I have listened to Rebecca, the author speaking about it. She says that by the time a novel comes out, two years on, she’s pretty much forgotten it all: she’s moved on. Fair enough. But she did say she felt the novel was about friendship. Um. We, as a group, felt not. Rebecca Kuang knows her publishing stuff. She knows that if a big publishing house puts an army of marketeers and IT specialists behind an author, then we’re hopefully into big bucks. Kuang is undoubtedly writing about the perils of publishing and misappropriation: a minority author writing about a majority author plagiarising a minority writer. Phew. This book is not really about friendship, Rebecca.
I mentioned to the group that I have one former writing student who has that army of publishing marketeers behind her and her book, with life size ads on Oxford Street Tube station and a surefire show on Instagram. Good luck to her. I have another writing student who is self-published and posting beautifully on social media every day. I wonder who you think sells more books. Having just had the subscriber button on my blog collapse so that even former subscribers do not receive my lovely words (I’m still working on it) and have also just discovered that Amazon have removed the carefully chosen audio samples of my books and replaced them with the opening few minutes which must include the credits, I am feeling somewhat powerless. Self-publishing is a joy if you want to do it for friends and family and not all those buy, so be prepared to give away. But if you want to make money then keep hitting the big boy publishers and I wish you luck with that.
Reading ‘Yellow Face’ might give you some insight. RF Kuang got her first publishing deal on her 20th birthday. I suspect she knows little about self-publishing but she knows all about the infamy of success.
Here’s links to my chosen samples which now only exist on the Amazon Audible UK website and you also have to punch in the titles. You can buy and hear the opening on Amazon UK.

Red Lipstick and Revelations

Shakespeare’s Clock

Blackberry Promises

But without a subscriber button I might be whistling in the ocean wind.
Adult Learning Workshops
Saturday 12th October at Highcrest – ‘Humour – Writing Which Raises a Smile’.

Saturday 9th November at Beaconsfield – ‘Writing for Children’.
2025
Saturday 29th March at Highcrest – ‘Poetry with a Pen and a Passsion’.

Saturday 26th April at Gerrards Cross – ‘Get That Book Out of You’.

Monday 2nd June at Beaconsfield – ‘Life Writing – a Memoir for Your Grandchild, Posterity or Publication’.

Contact: studentenquiries@buckinghamshire.gov.uk

If you are booking, please contact Jan and let her know.

‘Klara’s Sun’ by Kazuo Ishiguro and ‘My Trips Around the Sun’ by Ms Paige Turner
Klara in Ishiguro’s ‘Klara’s Sun’ is an AF: Artificial Friend. I probably need one myself, not because I fear my own mind is yet deteriorating but because my blog is and I don’t know how to ‘fix’ it. The subscriber button doesn’t work and even my three faithful blog readers, seem, no longer to be receiving my words, so, as long-suspected, my written and spoken words fall on parched ground.
Back to Klara: one of my favourite all-time unreliable narrators, created by one of my all-time favourite writers, who I long had guessed was a ‘premise-driven’ writer. Having just finished ‘Klara’s Sun’ I typed his name into Google and up he popped, expressing within minutes that he is a ‘premise-driven’ writer. This latest novel is not really about AI. Klara, who views the world in boxes, cannot smell or taste, is born into the world in a shop window, waiting eagerly to be sold. Her computer brain life is short, so we witness, in short, a life. A life of willing service. (The novel has echoes of his ‘Never Let Me Go’.) To be discarded when her job is done. As one character says to ‘her’: ‘’Do I say ‘hello’ or are you a vacuum cleaner?’
I guess from time to time, we all feel that way. But Klara, built in fabric, does ‘feel’ and Ishiguro, amongst may other things, explores what it is to be human.
So how does this relate to my many trips around the sun and my recent Big Birthday? I’m not sure; as I write on, I may find out …
Well, maybe when my daughter Miss Trial said to my friends and family on that big birthday celebration that: ‘Mum always has a project on the go’, I realise, at present I don’t. That’s probably because I’ve just finished three Amazon Audio projects of my own books, and we need, if not parched fields but fallow ones from time to time. As Ishiguro himself says, ‘Projects find you’. He is a writer who examines the life goals of all his narrators: some worthy – like Klara – some not: like his misguided butler Stevens in ‘Remains of the Day’.
Big birthdays invite that kind of examination.
So do dying blogs. I’m looking into Substack so I can continue. I need a Klara.

Links to my two novels and poetry collection on Amazon Audible and narrated by me:

Blackberry Promises

Shakespeare’s Clock

Red Lipstick and Revelations 

Saturday 12th October at Highcrest – ‘Humour – Writing Which Raises a Smile’.

Saturday 9th November at Beaconsfield – ‘Writing for Children’.

2025

Saturday 29th March at Highcrest – ‘Poetry with a Pen and a Passsion’.

Saturday 26th April at Gerrards Cross – ‘Get That Book Out of You’.

Monday 2nd June at Beaconsfield – ‘Life Writing – a Memoir for Your Grandchild, Posterity or Publication’.

Contact studentenquiries@buckinghamshire.gov.uk

If you are booking, please contact Jan and let her know.

‘The Hills of California by Jez Butterworth …’
at the Harold Pinter Theatre was just brilliant. I did have to buy a copy of the play to read as some of the performance was inaudible and unseeable due to high-piled hairstyles. Set in both the fifties and the seventies, it focuses on four sisters who discuss their dysfunctional upbringing as their misguided but well-meaning mother is dying in one of the rooms above. We swivel back to the fifties when their childhood selves, moulded by their mother on the Andrews’ sisters, sing away distress. I came away challenging Tolstoy’s ‘unhappy families are unhappy in their own way’ as families tend to run on similar track lines. It’s why Butterworth’s play resonates with the herd.
I’m running the ‘Get That Book Out of You’ workshop at mine this Saturday from 10.00 am until 3.30pm and have spaces. £53.90 to include lunch. Contact me if you get this and are interested.
Here are the links to my novels and audios on Amazon – narrated by myself.
Blackberry Promises – set in the fifties, a back street stabbing changes the lives of five young people forever.
Shakespeare’s Clock – a school bully re-enters in mid-life. The abuse of power.
Red Lipstick and Revelations – a poetry collection – Amazon number one in Loss and Grief poetry and Love Poetry for three hours, one September day in 2023.

‘Getting to Grips with the Novel – or a Book of any Kind: Short Stories, Poetry Collection or Memoir and I’m on the Radio’
I’m going to be teaching this in one day: at Gerrards Cross for the Buckinghamshire Adult Learning on Saturday 6th July. Contact studentenquiries@buckinghamshire.gov.uk A tall order, I know but I do my best.
Loved the Poetry and Life Writing workshops we’ve shared in the last month.
I’m on BBC Four Counties again – thanks to Leo Ulph. I’m reading from the newly re-published novel Blackberry Promises tonight, Thursday 13th June. Here’s the info’ …
The show is BBC Radio Berkshire (And also across Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Oxford and Solent) – Upload at 6-8pm on 95.4 FM, 104.1 FM, on Digital, BBC Sounds and here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0805r6w

It will also be repeated from 6pm on Saturday.

Here are the links to my novels and audios on Amazon – narrated by myself.
Blackberry Promises – set in the fifties, a back street stabbing changes the lives of five young people forever.
Shakespeare’s Clock – a school bully re-enters in mid-life. The abuse of power.
Red Lipstick and Revelations – a poetry collection – Amazon number one in Loss and Grief poetry and Love Poetry for three hours, one September day in 2023.

‘D-Day’ by Ms Paige Turner
I am two blogs behind because:
1. I’ve been busy finishing my eighteen-month project narrating and uploading my two novels and poetry to Amazon Audible. The novel ‘Blackberry Promises’ has been re-published by Creative Ink Publishing.

Blackberry Promises – a back street stabbing changes the lives for five young people in the fifites and promises prove difficult to keep.

Shakespeare’s Clock – A school bully re-enters in mid-life. A story of the abuse of power.

Red Lipstick and Revelations Amazon Number One in Loss and Grief Poetry and Love Poetry – September 2023.

2. The subscriber button on my blog is, apparently not working. This means that unless you come into my blog parlour, you won’t receive my blog missive. We are working on it.
I will try to make this up in the coming weeks.
Having done a Poetry workshop (how lovely it is to spend a day with poets and musing) I’m now gearing myself for ‘Life Writing’ this Saturday. I love hearing about people’s lives and in particular, where and whom they come from. On that note the BBC promised me last week that they would broadcast my parents’ photos as they were RAF wireless operators during WW2 and were responsible for guiding planes in and out on June 6th , 1944. My mother told me the story of how she was also responsible for clearing out the locker of a young, fated pilot on his 21st birthday. She found unopened cards, presents and a cake. One of the saddest stories I have heard. That’s life, I guess …
The BBC did not broadcast their photos or stories. That’s show business, I guess …

‘Voyager 2 and Jan’s Epic Voyage …’ by Ms Paige Turner
Voyager 2 left the Earth over forty-six years ago, in 1977, to travel to our distant ice planets 12.7 billion miles from Earth and collect scientific data. Just recently it has been sending back gobbledygook: maybe it had been knocking back some fine red. Amazingly, it took twenty-two hours for engineers to issue a series of commands rectifying the issue so that the scan platform can resume its function.
I have been recently tempted to knock back any kind of red. For some unbeknown reason Gmail (and subsequently I learn Hotmail is part of this group) have decided to throw all Tiscali emails into Spam. As previously stated, I have never phished for an email in my Internet career: all email addresses from writers have been willingly given to me. What a cauchemar it has been to send all, individually (running to hundreds) of my Gmail recipients an email from my rarely used Gmail account to ask them to find me in Spam, unspam my Tiscali email and add me to their safe senders’ list. Many Gmail recipients do not know where the Spam is, and if located, how to unspam me. I spent one-and-a-half hours on the landline (yes, we still have one) to TalkTalk whom we pay for all our Internet connections including the landline I was on. Every three minutes, someone would come back with, ‘Please hold for three to five minutes.’ The upshot being that my Tiscali line works fine (I knew that as Mr Justin Case gets my emails) and to phone Gmail on this given number: 866 246 6453. It’s an answerphone and no one gets back to you. It appears impossible for either TalkTalk or Gmail to ‘resume my normal function’.
I will say more. This week Mr Justin Case made the decision to keep his keys in the front door lock overnight as an extra precaution against a spate of recent neighbourhood burglaries. We were set for the gym and sitting in the car, he realized that he had left his door keys on the inside lock. I had my keys. They could not turn the front door lock. I had no back door key. We called the first locksmith that we googled: www.locksmiths-ltd.co.uk who sent a locksmith (subsequently we discovered from Wimbledon) to change the patio door lock so that we could gain entry. I was not present on payment as I had pressing matters (like getting to a loo) and my husband was on his own faced with a man with a mighty drill, who charged him £1122 for a thirty-minute job. Unsurprisingly, some several emails to the company DIYBEST ltd, several phone calls to the call centre and locksmith – whom I was told was forbidden to give the director Lukas Sumkas’s telephone number – there has been no response. We have contacted the police, the Trading Standards and the Master Locksmith Association to report this scam. Added to this, we have paid for the patio lock to be changed again at a reasonable rate for obvious reasons, having the leisure to choose our local locksmith with care and without panic.
Do I need to get to the point? Engineers can fix a problem 12.7 billion miles away but local issues seem impossible to solve. To finish this bi-monthly blog, Mr Justin Case wishes Lucas Sumkas and his locksmith could be sent to Voyager 2 …
Luckily, I have a brilliant sound engineer/editor who has finished work on my audio ‘Blackberry Promises’ which will soon go live. (There was a slight issue when uploading but he fixed it within minutes.)
These two books are available on audio and narrated by me.

Red Lipstick and Revelations

Shakespeare’s Clock

studentenquiries@buckinghamshire.gov.uk

Poetry with a Pen and a Passion – Saturday 25th May, Highcrest https://bit.ly/3SGpcvZ
Writing your Memoir/Life Writing – Saturday 8th June, Beaconsfield.
Getting to Grips with the Novel – Saturday 6th July at Gerrards Cross.
Writing for Children – Saturday 9th November. Beaconsfield.

‘Undelivered Mail …’ by Ms Paige Turner
To my horror, I have just discovered that my emails are going into most people’s Junk Mail. This is easily remedied if one has a small mailing list but I have 700 writers on mine: 700 people who have physically (how else could they do this?) given me their email address for an occasional mail shot to highlight mine and other writers’ wares. I have never phished an email in my long years of laptop industry. Alas, my private email list has also been targeted by computer company algorithms. I did find it rather odd that no one had replied to my private or work emails but when my son-in-law was not receiving any emails concerning my grandchildren, I became aware of this, well … horror.
I am now discovering companies like Mailchimp. There seems to be a whole host of these writing tools which are making Word and regular emails obsolete. How does one keep up with it all? Having spent the last year narrating my poetry collection: ‘Red Lipstick & Revelations’ – available here on Amazon Audible  Red Lipstick and Revelations  and my novel ‘Shakespeare’s Clock’ available here: Shakespeare’s Clock – I discover AI is now moving in on that territory. And all my mail shots giving the info’ on my audios have obviously fallen on fallow ground.
And as if the universe is speaking to me, when clearing out my many papers, I recently discovered an air mail letter, written some forty-seven years ago and in Russian, which had somehow found its way into my suitcase when I left my job in Montreal in 1977. I plan to post this undelivered mail and will keep you posted about that.
I also plan to investigate Mailchimp. If I don’t, like my blogs I will be speaking to outer space. If you are reading this, please let me know if you received my March mail shot and …please check your Junk Mail!

studentenquiries@buckinghamshire.gov.uk
‘Poetry with a Pen and a Passion’ – Saturday 25th May, Highcrest https://bit.ly/3SGpcvZ

Writing your Memoir/Life Writing – Saturday 8th June, Beaconsfield.
Writing for Children – Saturday 9th November. Beaconsfield.

My Amazon Audible excerpt of my recorded novel ‘Shakespeare’s Clock’ was featured on BBC Radio on Thursday 14th March. (Sorry about the delay but I have been busy recording the next novel ‘Blackberry Promises’ for Amazon Audible.)
The show is BBC Radio Berkshire (And it’s across quite a few counties) – Upload at 6-8pm on 95.4 FM, 104.1 FM, on Digital, BBC Sounds and here you can now listen on catch up:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0805r6w

I’m an hour into the programme. Leo Ulph says he ‘really, really likes this’ and promises to have me back.

Here is the link to my Amazon Audible of the novel and you can listen to a sample before deciding to purchase.

Shakespeare’s Clock

And here’s the link to the Amazon Audible of my poetry collection:

Red Lipstick and Revelations

Having written and recorded my poetry collection ‘Red Lipstick & Revelations’ published by Indigo Dreams and recorded the Audio to Amazon, I embarked upon recording my novel Shakespeare’s Clock published by Cranthorpe Millner and have now uploaded this to Amazon Audio.
This is the link. Shakespeare’s Clock
You can sample a free taster just by the cover before deciding to buy.
If you are in the business of ‘pencils and what not’ you will know how many hours it takes to write and in my recent case, record one’s words. And then of course, you hope someone will read them and so you set upon the marketing path and further hope that the sales take place: in a place crowded with books begging to be bought. If you’ve been on this journey, you will know the joy, when someone emails and says, ‘I bought it’ or ‘I downloaded your audio to my phone’. These words are to be cherished and I could kiss these people. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
These days, we are inundated with information and links, so, I will simply place a number of links before you and the chances are, if you know one of these writers or you see something that takes your fancy, you might just buy their book or download the audio. Let them know. And of course, if you can, leave a positive comment on Amazon or wherever the books live.

Here is the handy link to our When This Is All Over pandemic anthology. Let’s keep raising money for the Rennie Grove Hospice please. https://amzn.to/3xi8iay

Jan’s poetry collection on Amazon Audio for £5.59.

Red Lipstick and Revelations  (Free codes available in exchange for a review!)

Jan’s poetry collection book – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Red-Lipstick-Revelations-Moran-Neil/dp/B0CLC4XMCV/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1708102673&sr=8-1

www.janmoranneil.co.uk and www.janmoranneil.co.uk/blog

In order of submission:

Virginia Betts’ two poetry collections – Tourist to the Sun and The Camera Obscure https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=virginia+betts&crid=3U7BNARYEV4PA&sprefix=virginia+betts%2Caps%2C124&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-doa-p_1_14

Jenny Hammerton Murder, She Cooked

Cooking With Columbo

Supper with the Stars

Cooking With Joan Crawford

Pat Abercromby – Song of Love. Book launch Beaconsfield Library – Tuesday 19th March at 2.00pm.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Song-Love-Pat-Abercromby/dp/1035836505/ref=sr_1_1?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.ecjr-xjQFsgAbul4bPRGrA.6lgFBq9jC1f4fQXIullD4nih2x1T_ZOy6tPxTBsM_LU&dib_tag=se&keywords=pat+abercromby+song+of+love&qid=1708105364&sr=8-1

Jane Edmonds has had poems published here: poetrykit.org.
Jane Mackinnon was commended in the King Lear contest for her poem ‘Unforgettable’
Let me know if you have any publishing news.

studentenquiries@buckinghamshire.gov.uk

‘Poetry with a Pen and a Passion’ – Saturday 25th May, Highcrest https:

https://bit.ly/3SGpcvZ

Writing your Memoir/Life Writing – Saturday 8th June, Beaconsfield.
Writing for Children – Saturday 9th November. Beaconsfield.