thank you! 💛

Road House (1948)

Directed by #JeanNegulesco
Starring: #IdaLupino #CornelWilde #CelesteHolm #RichardWidmark

Cinematography by #JosephLaShelle
Music by #CyrilJMockridge

#RoadHouse #1940s #40smovies #40sfilms #1940s #FilmNoir #Classicfilm #Filmnoir

With huge thanks to @financialtimes.com for featuring our forthcoming book Woman Alive in their #htsi section - as introduced by Graham Norton and illustrated by the fabulous @tomgauld.bsky.social
This book will be published next weekend on #internationalwomensday

A muted greyscale banner for short story, The Mirror and the Wind by Andrew Senior published on crowcrosskeys.com, featuring an ornate mirror on a light coloured wall.

It has been uncharacteristically sunny around the tower today. We're certain that the weather is up to something. We're uncertain whether that something is nefarious. We'll distract ourselves with today's story:

"The Mirror and the Wind" by Andrew Senior

crowcrosskeys.com/2026/02/28/t...

Certificate from Historical Novel Society for A Murder of Crows being on the 2026 First Chapters competition 17th to 19th century shortlist

So thrilled to be shortlisted in the prestigious #hns2026 competition. I couldn't be happier to have A Murder of Crows recognised by the #historicalnovelsociety. Thank you @histnovsoc.bsky.social #historicalfiction💙📚 #booksky

Certificate showing Dido, Fugitive Queen by Marianne Holmes shortlisted for the Historical Novel Society 2026 First Chapters Competition in the Ancient to 10th Century Short List

So excited that my Dido story has been shortlisted in the Historical Novel Society's 2026 First Chapters Competition in the Ancient to 10th Century category.

Thank you @hns2026.bsky.social and congratulations to all listed authors.

#HistoricalFiction #BookSky #HNS2026 #HistoricalNovelSociety

Check out The Coffee Pot Book Club #BookOfThe Month:

💫The Du Lac Devil by Mary Anne Yarde💫

Discover an enthralling tale of political intrigues, ambitions, betrayal & love!

thecoffeepotbookclub.blogspot.com/2026/03/book...
#HistoricalFantasy #HistoricalFiction #BookSky
@maryanneyarde.bsky.social

Montgomery Clift and Frank Sinatra drinking beer at a bar in From Here to Eternity

#filmsky #moviesky

Time for a drink

This stunning purple and mauve Hyacinth appeared in the garden a beautifully fragrant sign of Spring 🪻🌼

@dailyphotothemes.bsky.social
#DailyPhotoThemes
March 1
Fav from February
This stunning purple & mauve Hyacinth appeared in the garden a beautifully fragrant sign of Spring 🪻🌸🌼

A Game of Wings and Marks by Rebecca Crunden kindle cover; image shows blue flowers and wings

🤍 romantic fantasy
🔥 forbidden love
❄️ winter time
🌃 urban fantasy
🃏 gentleman trickster
🔮 magic
🖋️ binding agreements
🐕 doggy sidekick

🔖 universal link: mybook.to/X7QtGZf
💌 itch.io link: rebecca-crunden.itch.io/a-game-of-wi...
📖 gr: www.goodreads.com/book/show/61...

[ #booksky ]

February books: Fanfare for Tin Trumpets by Margery Sharp Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh Birding by Rose Ruane Dancing with Death by Joan Coggin The Party by Tessa Hadley And so Did I by Malachi Whitaker The Flint Anchor by Sylvia Townsend Warner.

My February reading round-up. 7 books, one was a re-read (though I had remembered nothing). A really excellent mix of books, mainly fiction but each quite different. Full list in alt text. Hard to pick one favourite. So, I call that a good month. What good things did you read in February? 💙📚

“A city becomes a world
when one loves one of its inhabitants...”

Lawrence Durrell #botd
The Alexandria Quartet

Thanks so much to the judges who have selected my novel in progress for the Historical Adventure category in the #HNSFirstChaptersCompetition.

#Manumission is set in the years following the global pandemic that ancient historians call the Antonine pandemic.

#HNS2026 #AmWriting #HistoricalFiction

My story Un|Common Thread has been shortlisted in the Historical Novel Society (17th to 19th century category) First Pages Competition. I’m so thrilled that this story has reached the judge’s hearts

#hns2026 #historicalfiction #hnsfirstchapterscompetition #historicalnovelsociety

congratulations! 💛

These wonderful women have been so generous with their reaction to Paper Sisters. I can’t thank them enough.

Celebrating #botd for Director, Producer, and Screenwriter, Ben Hecht. His list of movies is long and notable, spanning many genres and including some classic #filmnoir.

Do you have a favorite?
📽️🎂

Thrilled my work-in-progress is shortlisted, in the 'Biographical Historical Fiction' category, for HNS's 2026 First Chapters Competition. Many thanks to the judges & organisers - and congratulations to everyone shortlisted!💫🎉 #hns2026 #historicalfiction #hnsfirstchapterscompetition

Where the Sea Calls Home: The Sea Child by Linda Wilgus - Historical Novel Society BY WILLIAMAYE JONES Along Cornwall’s coastline, reality and myth exist side by side, where hard, salt-weathered survival blurs with ancient seaborn stories. Set during the Napoleonic Wars, Linda…

Set during the Napoleonic Wars, Linda Wilgus’s debut novel unfolds against a Cornwall shaped by wartime scarcity, smuggling and folklore:

Back when you could go to a movie theatre like this to see Humoresque in 1946. A Romance/Noir starring Joan Crawford and John Garfield. Music composed by Franz Waxman. 🎶🎻🎬🍿🎟

NEW EVENT ADDED!

Oscar-nominated actress Rosie Perez joins Eddie Muller to introduce the film noir classic SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS ('57) at our TCMFF x 92NY pop-up festival on January 31st.

Get your tickets now: https://bit.ly/4sKZqI8

'Prepare to be surprised, unsettled, and thrilled. And don’t be surprised if you close this book having discovered a new favourite writer.' - @cmacwritescrime.bsky.social

Ft. Ben Connell, Greg D'Cruz, Peter Law, K.L. Johnson, Catherine Wimpeney & Tami Wylie ✍️

www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0GGHPVH6...

I couldn't be more thrilled with the cover art for my forthcoming book with @uncpress.bsky.social. Lindsay Starr and the rest of the art production team knocked it out of the park. Thank you to everyone involved.

It's starting to look like a book.

Another good read from my public library winter reading program. “The Tainted Cup” by Robert Jackson Bennett is a mystery that occurs in a fantasy empire. Published in 2024.

We're delighted to share this wonderful anthology of gothic fiction produced by the writers on our Gothic short story course, taught & edited by @bronteschiltz.bsky.social
📕🌹

Ft: Ninutsa Nadirashvili , Peter Beech, Adam Brown, Ewan Hannah @ewanmh.bsky.social, Margo Laurie & Christina Isibéal ✍️

🔗👇

Tom Grass Prize An international literary prize honouring writer and traveller Tom Grass. Open to emerging writers of fiction and non-fiction worldwide. Entries open 1 November 2025.

Open to emerging writers aged 25+, the Spirit of Adventure prize welcomes short pieces of stand-alone prose in either Fiction or Non-Fiction (1,500 - 3,000 words) Closes 31st March.

Details in link.

Please share :)

Why I can’t walk past a tiny second-hand bookshop: a romance The first one set the template for this romance.

Can’t write much about what I’m reading till we’re done on the judging of @womensprize.bsky.social for non fiction - but here’s something I wrote on Substack. The process helped me make sense of how much of my reading, and my life, has been shaped.

open.substack.com/pub/thangamd...

The Evenings is an interesting and most unusual novel. First published in Dutch in 1947, Reve’s book was given a deserved new lease of life by the excellent #PushkinPress with a new 2016.
It details the absurdities and quotidian boredom of a very modest household through young Fritz’s warped humour.

Happy 135th birthday to #StormJameson - the brilliant Northern writer whose classic work ‘The Moon is Making’ we will republish this summer. Storm was born and brought up in the Yorkshire fishing haven of #Whitby, where this novel is also set… move over Dracula, there’s a new book in town!

📽 Beautiful shot from The Breaking Point (1950)

#FilmNoir