3,2,1… LAUNCH!

Mission Control we have launch sequence in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…

What you’re looking at is the cover of my just released short story collection.

And yep, it has got a deliberately long title.

Am I excited? Am I pumped? Am I in writing heaven? Yes, yes, yes! And let me add – you don’t know how much!

The day my author’s copy from the publisher arrived in the mail was a day to behold – literally!

With no one looking, I spent what no doubt amounted to a quite shameful length of time caressing the smooth-as-wax cover (over and over), smelling it’s pages with every nostril muscle I could command and staring long-fully, lovingly and smoochfully into ‘it’s’ dreamy, hardcover eyes.

No denying this was a forbidden, unholy love that, in a previous time, dare not have spoken it’s name. Would it be too unhinged of me to admit I slept with ‘it’ that first night under my pillow?

I’d been hit hard with first-time author’s lovey-dove goo-goo eyes for my new book and I was determined to make the honeymoon last as long as possible.

Now that that magical time is a week past, I can say I don’t think I’ll ever forget that first, memorable night alone. Just the two of us... beautiful new book and I.

Before the story continues, would you like a taste? Maybe a little rude of me not to have offered before now? Ok then. Don’t waist it – taste it – HERE.

Anyways, with the infatuation-phase drawing to a close, it was time to get down to business. The promotion business, that is. I’d organised a 10 000 flyer letterbox drop of my local neighbourhood. Time to get that underway.

The thought did occur to me how much easier and quicker it might be to just hire a helicopter and drop the whole damn heaving paper mass of promotional codswallop in one go on the unsuspecting folk in my local surrounding suburbs.

Apart from the expense of that I also figured I might cop a littering fine from council, so thought the better of it.

Promotion-wise, I also managed to reign in a couple of favours from ‘celeb’ mates of mine I’ve rubbed shoulders with – Walter-Mitty style – along the way of my ‘authors journey’, as they say.

Jack Black’s reaction to the book, for example, was impressive to say the least –

This book features 87 (’cause 87 is one helluva magic number – just ask any cricketer!) completely whacked-out short stories written by me. They range in length from 30-second to ten-minute reads.

You can buy it or browse it –

HERE

HERE

HERE

Thanks for attending my book launch. I do hope you enjoyed the complementary glass of champagne on the way in (apologies if we’d run out by the time you arrived).

To celebrate the sheer austerity, sophistication and class – the ‘front-of-the-plane’ kind – of this occasion and leave you in no doubt as to the fully-fledged highbrow-ness of the company you’ve been in while here, I leave you with this –

Just for laughs of the ironic kind, here’s a flashback to 2021 when I penned a genuine hand-on-my-heart blog post entitled REASONS WHY I’LL NEVER – AND I MEAN NEVER – WRITE A NOVEL. Well, I did say novel.

So what’s next on the SWS drawing writing board? Would it surprise anyone to know that SHACK is currently hard at work on a script for the live, one-man-show version of THE HIGH-FIVEABLE, FIRE-GOD BRILLIANT, CLEVER-IN-SPADES AND UTTERLY RIPSNITIOUS SHORT STORY COLLECTION? You heard it here first.

What’s happier than a writer with a new book? Try full-on HAPPY DAYS HERE

Book Launch

Next week, things get proper huge. Proper huge for around these parts, anyway.

SCENIC WRITER SHACK’S worst kept secret of 2024 can now be finally revealed.

It’s book launch time, baby!

In T-minus seven days and counting the champagne corks will pop, the streamers will fly and the sonic boom at lift-off will be felt every bit as much as it’ll be heard.

SCENIC WRITER’S SHACK will don it’s finest Perspex safety glasses as it launches it’s published short story collection – fully ten years in the making – with all the fanfare it can muster.

You won’t want to miss it! Until then, here’s a first-time cover reveal…

This week, SCENIC WRITER’S SHACK travelled more than 2000 kilometers to take in the sights of South Australia.

While in Adelaide, spotted in a ‘not-so-ordinary’ ordinary suburban houses’ front yard was this rampantly cuckoo and rare-as-a-blessing-of-unicorns statue I’ve dubbed UPSIDE-DOWN READER.

“Upside down, boy you turn me. Inside out and round and round”

When you take the SCENIC route, you never know what you might see.

And is it just me or does UPSIDE DOWN READER bear at least a passing resemblance to a literary, silvery version of the long-limbed golden dude from the 1966 episode of LOST IN SPACE titled THE DREAM MONSTER?

Okay, it’s just me.

Construction workers have been cool since as far back as THE VILLAGE PEOPLE. Maybe even before (tee hee!).

Pitched firmly at the Tik Tok generation, this South Australian tv ad currently doing the rounds does precisely what it sets out to do – make being a tradie look like a cool career choice for school leavers.

I so love this ad. Hard hats off to you, city of Ad-elaide!

To get your weekly HAPPY DAYS hit, click HERE

Balancing Act

Today we get to ogle – (yes, ogle!) – another winning tale from the SCENIC WRITER’S SHACK 2024 Short Story Competition. Enjoy this one from third-place getter, UK writer Sue Barnard –

Dylan’s face had turned a pale shade of old sock. It was faded, threadbare and discolored by years on end of being laundered to within an inch of its life. He stared at the card in his hand as he wandered through to the kitchen, where his wife was making coffee.

“What do you make of this?” Sarah peered at the invitation and her jaw dropped.  “What?  Who in their right mind invites a vicar to a Clown Workshop?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” Sarah shook her head as she handed him a steaming mug, then her face creased into a smile.  “But why not give it a go?”

“What?  You must be joking!” “No more than whoever it was who sent you that invitation.  Maybe someone thinks you need a bit of fun in your life. Who knows – you might even enjoy it!”

“But—” “No buts!” She squeezed his hand.  “Just go for it, darling.  It’s only for one day.  And you’re only middle-aged once!”

Dylan felt decidedly middle-aged when he arrived at the workshop.  To his horror, most of the other clowns appeared to be far more skilled than he could ever hope to be.  

With hindsight, he realized it would have been more sensible to try his hand at preliminary juggling in the garden rather than the lounge.  He made a mental note to buy a replacement for Sarah’s favourite vase.

He peered around the room.  What on earth, he wondered, can I ever hope to learn from this?  He was on the point of turning round and heading for the exit, then he thought of Sarah’s words.  Yes, she was right – perhaps he did need a bit of fun in his life.  

A young man smiled at him as he took a cautious step forward.  “First time?”  Dylan nodded.  “To be honest I haven’t a clue what I’m supposed to be doing.” “Don’t worry.  We all have to start somewhere.  You should have seen me on my first day.  But you’ll be amazed what you can do by the end…”  

The following Sunday, Dylan paused at the foot of the pulpit steps and turned to face the congregation. “Sometimes,” he began, in a serious voice, “life sends you an unexpected challenge.” Instead of climbing into the pulpit, he reached behind it and pulled out a unicycle.

“One thing I learned during the course of this challenge is the need to have a sense of humour.  A sense of humour is a sense of balance.  So, let’s see if I have a sense of balance and you have a sense of humour.”  He grinned, mounted the unicycle with the ease of a seasoned performer, and rode backwards and forwards along the aisle.  

The congregation roared with laughter.  As Sarah watched from her customary seat in the front pew, it suddenly dawned on her that Dylan might one day figure out exactly who had organised that invitation.  

Her face turned a pale shade of old sock… 

Before we depart the question of balance altogether, there’s this…

My brief – what you might term ‘short stretch’ (sorry!) – and ungainly foray into the alternate universe that is yoga classes looked for much of the time not dissimilar to this – only I’m pretty sure I would have been wearing a t-shirt and the person to my immediate left would usually not have been stripped down to their underwear.

Ready for your HAPPY DAYS hit? Then you’d better go ahead and click HERE.

BACK FOR SECONDS

Last week super-chameleon man-hero Dylan underwent the surgeon’s knife and came out all… Rusty.

This week, in equal second-place getter’s Tycho Dwelis’s bullet-riddled saloon saga, Dylan trespasses onto a scene visited by none-other than the Angel of Death himself. He’ll forever wish he hadn’t.

Enjoy Steady yourself for…

Dylan’s face had turned a pale shade of old sock. His hand lingered on the saloon door and the whole building creaked as he stared into what he had hoped to be abandoned space. A dry wind was blowing dust down the road and past his feet. Shelter was shelter, but what his eyes beheld had turned his stomach to rot. All color drained from his face as he realized why the place had been deserted. 

A man, who some time ago, had been shot straight through the forehead, slumped over the counter, whisky bottle still in hand. But he wasn’t the only one. The saloon, from the door to the stairs, from wall to wall, may as well have been a sea of corpses. Bodies piled together in such a dense mound that Dylan couldn’t even see the floor. 

“I reckon I should’ve camped by the creek,” he muttered to himself. No job in Corpus Christi, no matter how good, was worth this. 

Dust-covered planks creaked beneath his boots as he crept into the saloon, tiptoeing between bodies to get to the bar. A worm of thought wriggled into his head. He couldn’t get rid of it. He needed to know what had happened before settling down in an unfamiliar place. For a brief moment, he imagined what it must have been like when the town pulsed with life.

Now, it stood as a sepulcher for memories etched into its wooden bones and blood that had long since soaked into the floor. Some of the dead had fallen in this room, gunshot wounds in their chests, but others had been dragged from elsewhere for some unholy reason. 

The door swung open on its own and banged against the wall. Dylan’s hand instinctively twitched for his six-shooter but froze as he found himself alone. The smell of decay choked up his throat. Despite his unease, he approached the poker table anyway.

The players had stopped mid-game, the cards in their rotting hands a snapshot of the moment when death had claimed them. One hand was a royal flush. Dylan’s fingertips hesitated over a stack of chips. It was then that he spotted a dusty gold bar under the table. 

He suddenly understood. Weeks ago, a poker game had begun. A high roller entered the saloon and waged a bar of gold that now lay unclaimed. The tension escalated, palpable and electric, and then… the stakes were higher than any amount of gold. Someone snapped. A stolen glance. The flicker of a hidden ace. 

A massacre.  

Dylan’s eyes scanned the saloon. The bullet-riddled walls spoke volumes about the sheer number of shots that had been fired, each hole telling the story of a life cut short. And still… his eyes fell onto the gold bar on the floor. The thing that had caused so much death had been left behind. 

Dylan turned to leave, spurs clinking. Some things were better left with the dead.

Next week, it’s wobbly unicycles all ’round as we discover the charm and effervescence of 3rd-place getter Sue Barnard’s –

Click HERE for your HAPPY DAYS hit.

Anyone for Seconds?

U.S author Dianna Webb penned an edgy hot-ticket of a story – complete with a side-order of Hollywood glam – to take out equal second place in SCENIC WRITER’S SHACK’S short story competition.  

Here’s her story…

Dylan’s face had turned a pale shade of old sock. Packed in the very ice in which he died, he lay beneath my scalpel on the edge of nothingness…or perhaps eternity.

I watched my surgical team blowtorch the solid frost and cut away layers of shredded Moncler ski gear. Audible gasps orbited the operating room as the horrifying wreckage of his famously perfect body was revealed.

Dylan’s reckless stunt jump down a mountain at 60 m.p.h. ended in a canyon, his torso impaled upon a jagged stone with one saving grace – the custom-designed helmet kept his glorious visage eerily intact. His pacific blue eyes stared back at us as we gawked in awe.

He was the gold standard, sporting a heroic jaw and a tousled gilded lock over his mischievous brow. His sensual mouth proved just full enough to play the lover, the Greek God, the endearing outlaw.

**Note** Keanu Reeves is standing in for Dylan in this clip.

Dylan’s iconic cockiness and tragic self-depreciation enthralled millions of fans over three decades. He had dodged bullets, survived shipwrecks, nuked Nazis, rallied an asylum, and aged backwards! 

Denied the luxury of onscreen death in 100 movies, The Studio weighed the risks. Unfortunately, Dylan’s contract forbade use of AI. His departure left five massive films in varying stages of production with millions on the line. His career had to continue.

Rusty Reid, Dylan’s longtime body double, had no clue he would now be playing his hero for the rest of his life. My scalpel balked at this daunting task. Why had I agreed to such an extremely risky procedure? Money. This endeavor would net a private island level payday, life-altering compensation no honest surgeon could accrue in a lifetime.

I’d subtly tucked Dylan’s fabulous face for over a decade. The Studio loved my work and today they definitely wanted me to get to it. A rap on glass from the observation balcony of the operating theater broke my guilty trance. I glanced up at the sinister ‘fixers’ hovering over their iPhones. I felt a distinctly threatening chill. 

I gave the nod.

Poor Rusty made his drugged entrance on a table pushed parallel to Dylan’s. Like sous-chefs, a second surgical team replicated my incisions of Dylan with precision on Rusty, gently detaching his face, delicately laying it on a sterile plate.

Nicholas Cage and John Travolta doing their best Dylan and Rusty impersonation.

I lifted Dylan’s face from its corners. As if a rubber mask, I securely fit it on Rusty. After patting it down, I secured veins and nerves with wisps of a high-tech laser. The other general surgeons positioned the perimeter and ears. An ocular surgeon stepped in to finish the job. Lastly, ice packs were applied.

Under Rusty’s face, Dylan’s luminous pacific blue peepers, angelic and seductive, were forever lost. Dylan was now in the netherworld, void of his glorious past as a beautiful swaggering young actor of effortless charm, inexplicable luck, outsized worship, and dumbfounding wealth.

The God complex is a curse with room for only one Supreme Being. Imposters pay the ultimate price.

Next week…the bodies start stacking up higher than a New England leaf pile in equal-second place getter Tycho Dwelis’s tow-cable taut Western thriller –

If it’s HAPPY DAYS you’re wanting, then go click HERE

Drumroll, please!

Ha-ha-ahem. Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages…

It is my proudest, most triumphant and blissful pleasure to deliver to you today the names of the winners of the 2024 SCENIC WRITER’S SHACK Short Story Competition. Can I please get a whoo-hoo!

Thank you to everyone who entered. You waggish word-warriors channeled your sentence sparkle and tier-one adjectives in unique and highly entertaining ways. Storytelling sugar-highs were aplenty.

But there can be only one… er, make that… three, winners. Please join me now in welcoming them to the stage –

And why exactly are those by-now crispy rock dinosaurs KISS introducing Anne Wilkin’s winning short story?

When you lose yourself in this simply-told and simply brilliant 500-worder, you will, I promise, understand why.

Enjoy the charm. Enjoy the quirk. Enjoy the ‘limited edition’ ending. Enjoy –

Dylan’s face had turned a pale shade of old sock. He’d expected maybe acne wash, undies, or aftershave. But what he got was Maree 5.0. 

“Happy birthday pet! She cost a bit, but I thought you could do with some help,” said his Mum. “With what?”  “You know, the kissing.”

His brother and father contorted themselves laughing.  “Come on, we’ve all seen you practising in the crook of your elbow, with an apple, in the mirror, on–” “I wasn’t!”  “Whatever. The point is, Maree can help. She’ll teach you, give you confidence, improve your game.” “MUM!” 

Dylan stormed off to his room, with the head of Maree under his arm. He was not and never would be using Maree 5.0. Two hours later (just because he was bored) he had programmed Maree to speak English with a French accent, plumped up her lips to mega volume, turned them a lovely shade of pink, and made her eyes blue. 

“Vould you like to kiss me, monsieur?” she asked. “I vould like to kiss you, vewee much.”  Oh, what the Hell, Dylan thought. He leaned in and gave her a peck. Surprisingly, her lips felt very soft, but perhaps a little too big. He’d adjust that later.  

“Oh, nice monsieur. But can I suggest you brush your teeth, and we try again. My mouth sensors detect a halitosis rating of 5.0.” Christ, thought Dylan. Is my breath really that bad? After a thorough tooth brushing he tried again, but Maree advised him his lips were too dry. He tried again with ChapStick. Maree told him he was too quick. He took his time and went in for a longer smooch. 

“Nice work, monsieur. That kiss has a rating of 2.0. To improve your rating I suggest…”  Maree rattled off several helpful tips. And he tried again, and again, and again. After an hour, his kiss rating had risen to 5.0, but Maree told him there was still plenty of room for improvement. 

 “Having fun, sweetheart?” called out his Mum from behind the door. “No!” he yelled. Although, he kinda was.   After one week, Dylan had learned to kiss like a pro. He could kiss romantically with Maree’s face cupped in his hands. He could kiss passionately, with his lips travelling to the nape of her neck, and he could French kiss, his tongue an urgent probe of desire. After a particularly intoxicating kissing session in the afternoon, Dylan earned his first 9.0.

“I think… I love you,” he whispered into Maree’s ear. And then she died. “Maree!” He turned her on and off again, but there was no flicker of life. He scoured the instruction manual but found nothing. There was one last thing.

One last kiss to give – mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. He tilted her head back, pinched her nostrils and exhaled. The kiss of life. Maree’s blue eyes flashed instantly.  “10.0,” she said, as her systems rebooted.

Next week, our equal second-place getter Diana Webb hits us right between the eyes with a gulp-worthy story a ‘cut-above-the-rest’.

Like LESSONS IN LOVE 1.0, by pure coincidence, this piece of story-telling brilliance happens also to feature a pair of pacific-blue eyes. You won’t want to miss –

Before we leave the land of robot love and automated kisses altogether, for the theater-buffs amongst us (SCENIC WRITER’S SHACK took in a performance of GASLIGHT last week that went off royally… not to mention creepily!) there’s this…

If you’re looking for your HAPPY DAYS hit, it’s right HERE

The Big Announcement!

The winners of the SCENIC WRITER’S SHACK Short Story Competition will be announced soon.

That’s soon as in VERY soon.

Time IS Running Out!

Fame and fortune await the winner of the 2024 SCENIC WRITER’S SHACK Short Story Writing Competition.

But as sure as cats have fleas, time is running out.

February 28 is your LAST CHANCE to dispatch your 500 word bejeweled monument to literary genius.

For the details you need to enter, click HERE

NOW is absolutely the time to dust off your best china and serve up a piping-hot, super-delish storytelling morsel.

GO FER IT!

Four minutes too long? Fifteen seconds anywhere along in this clip is all you need to get a super-charged adrenaline vibe hit.

What’s that? You want more? More motivation to step into the SCENIC WRITER’S SHACK writing ring? And enter this comp?

Dedicated to writers of all abilities everywhere, who are fighting the good fight and looking for inspiration: try the soul-kindling three minutes inserted below.

And the biggest mistake you could make? The biggest mistake you could make is getting fooled into thinking this clip is about boxing.

Or even sports in general.

Harnessing a rousing life-force (stop me if this is getting too…er… ‘thinky’) to do or make a start on whatever it is you want to make a start on – writing or other-wise – is what this six star video mash-up work-of-art is all about.

And honestly – motivation-wise – it doesn’t get much better or pitch-perfect than this…

YELLOWFACE

I don’t read finish a lot of novels.

And to be clear I’m talking about READING them, not WRITING them (tee hee).

Starts? Well, there you have a quite different ‘story’.

I’ve made plenty of starts on reading novels over the years. Like, PLENTY. But unless the yarning winds fill my sails pretty early on – let’s say within the first 50 pages – I’ll more often times than not abandon ship and scuttle the slow-moving, leaking hulk then and there at sea.

YELLOWFACE was different.

It blew non-stop tornado-strength storytelling wind gusts from the get-go.

It transported me all the way out to deep blue ocean territory -where the beauty lies – and kept me entertained along the way with hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of magical little narrative umbrella drinks. For the ENTIRE time I was aboard.

It was such a good read I never wanted to return to shore. Why the nautical homology? And what exactly is a homology? Not entirely sure myself but I did enjoy reading this novel.

Actually, enjoyment is too light a word. I LOVED reading this novel.

YELLOWFACE is set within the glitzy literary world of book publishing, million dollar advances and top-of-the-pile bestselling authors. The central character is mildly successful writer June Hayward who is friends with mega-star fiction goddess Athena Liu.

YELLOWFACE is part ghost story and part edge-of-your-seat literary thriller. For it’s biggest part though it’s a gloriously five-star-funny satire on the writing life.

It’s all here: cover reveals – starred reviews on Goodreads – writer’s block – SUBSTACK (if you don’t know go HERE) – author book signings – royalty payments – nutty editors – the pressures of publishing – ‘sensitivity readers’ (yep, they’re a thing) – and a hundred other elements of the world of writing and books up for chin-drippingly funny parody.

Am I gushing? Unashamedly! It’s not every day – every year – or even every decade – something this good comes along. And when it does, well… it’s time to celebrate. It’s time to swoon and gush**(and feel good about doing it!)

The story’s ‘voice’ (or in plain language – ‘the author’s writing style’) is so mind-freakingly entertaining I’m tempted to believe all these glittering words weren’t written but rather somehow channeled from a higher literary plain. And by ‘higher literary plain’ I don’t mean a thesaurus!

The 27-year-old author Rebecca Kuang is currently in the midst of writing her sixth novel. It’s about two PhD students who travel to Hell to rescue the souls of their University supervisors so that they can write their own job recommendation letters. Kuang has called the novel an example of “nonsense literature”.

That type of nonsense I reckon could be my type of nonsense! When that one hits the shelves sometime in 2025 you can bet I’ll be one of the first to go get it.

Oh, and did I mention last year Rebecca Kuang made TIME MAGAZINE’S 100 NEXT list – an annual catalog of 100 ‘rising stars’ and up-and-comers to look out for from all fields of human endeavor. So yeah, kind of a big deal.

I originally borrowed this book from my local library. A hundred pages in, I realized I wanted to go to town on it with my yellow highlighter – to mark the funny lines and ingeniously-worded observations that competed for space on EVERY SINGLE PAGE – so had better go out and buy my own copy. And that’s what I did.

But enough of the swoon. Would you like to judge for yourself. Would you like a taste?

This passage lays out author envy on, well… what you’d have to call a grand scale –

I stare at Athena’s brown eyes, framed by those ridiculously large lashes that make her resemble a Disney forest animal, and I wonder – ‘What is it like to be you?’ What is it to be so impossibly perfect, to have every good thing in the world?

And maybe it’s the cocktails, or my overactive writer’s imagination, but I feel this hot coiling in my stomach, a bizarre urge to stick my fingers in her berry-red painted mouth and rip her face apart, to neatly peel her skin off her body like an orange and zip it over myself.

“And it’s like, she just GETS me, like she’s having sex with my words. Like, mind sex.” Athena giggles, then scrunches her nose up adorably. I suppress the impulse to poke it. “You ever think of the revision process as like, having sex with your editor? Like you’re having a great big literary baby?“

She’s drunk, I realize. Two and a half drinks in, and she’s smashed; she’s already forgotten once again that I, in fact, hate my editor.

There’s more…

If you can somehow manage to get past the unfortunate bored hipster tone of the narrator, this five-minute audio sample will give you the right literary vibe as well…

I have no shame whatsoever (ok, maybe a little shame!) in declaring if I could write even a fraction as well as Rebecca Kuang, I’d be… I’d be… well, let’s face it – I wouldn’t be me! And I’d never want to stop doing that, would I?

And you wanna know the other unlovely truth? If most PROFESSIONAL AUTHORS could write half as well as she does then I’d be reading more novels!

On a scale of one to ten, I’d rate the first hundred pages of YELLOWFACE a ‘near beyond humanly possible’ 15. I’d rate the second hundred pages of YELLOWFACE a seven out of 10. And I’d score the final third of the book another ‘near beyond humanly possible’ 15.

In other words, even a masterwork of this rarest of rare caliber suffered from the ubiquitous SAGGING MIDDLE SYNDROME that afflicts every novel I’ve ever read or tried to read.

Contrast the infinite joy-giving qualities of a literary triumph like YELLOWFACE to the, well… less than joy-giving qualities of another recently published novel featuring writers as the central characters EVERYONE ON THIS TRAIN IS A SUSPECT (2023) and you have a difference as vast as night and day.

EVERYONE ON THIS TRAIN IS A SUSPECT is a fiction story about six authors who are among passengers on a long-distance train journey during which a murder takes place. Sounds interesting, huh? That’s what I thought until I tried actually reading it.

I just could not connect with the story or ‘voice’ of the author. And more than 20 characters in a novel? That’s about 15 too many for my liking.

To be fair, this novel has got nearly 1800 five-star ratings on GOODREADS (HERE) It’s also got close to 200 one and two- star ratings (HERE) as well.

To get your fortnightly hit of HAPPY DAYS go HERE

Favorite Films of the 2010’s

When the swarm of literally tens of thousands of films nesting inside a dedicated movie buff’s head reaches critical mass and the buzz becomes too busy to ignore, there’s but one thing to do – compile a top 100 list.

This ‘hive’ has been organized according to time period – nominating ten loved films from each of the decades from the 1940’s through to the 2010’s. That will total eighty films. Twenty selections have been included each for the 1970’s and 80’s – ‘my‘ decades – rounding out the list to 100 titles.

The 2010’s was the decade that saw the smartphone become widespread. It also gave rise to the ME TOO movement.

Digital music sales topped CD sales for the time ever in 2012. The best-selling book of this decade was FIFETY SHADES OF GREY.  DRAKE was named the top music artist of the decade in the US by Billboard.

MUAMMAR GADDAFI leader of Libya, was shot to death in 2011. In 2013, KIM JONG-NAM, eldest son of the late KIM JONG-ILwas assassinated by two women in Malayasia with a VX nerve agent.

2019 saw the release of the very first black hole image. In the world of film, 2019’s JOKER became the first R rated movie to gross over $1 billion.

BEST PICTURE winners for the decade were –

And so to my pick of TEN FAVOURITE MOVIES from the 2010’s…

I can’t tell you how much I’m enjoying reading YELLOWFACE, published last year. Actually I CAN tell how much I’m enjoying it and I’m GOING to tell you how much I’m enjoying it, very soon. In detail.

Click HERE to get your HAPPY DAYS hit.

Don’t you even think about forgetting about (do ya like that?) the SCENIC WRITER’S SHACK short story competition. For details go HERE