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About the author and blogger ...

Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction.
A prize-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.
Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.

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Playing hard to get? #amreading

31/5/2017

5 Comments

 
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I recently outed myself as a Philistine, by rating one of the 100 all-time best novels 2 out of 5 (“it was okay”) on Goodreads. First published in 1915, The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford had sat unloved on my bookshelf for several years when it was chosen for my book group. When the time came to read it, I realised why I’d given up on it the first time round. It’s the story of the relationship between two wealthy couples, and the sexual intrigues and emotional betrayals behind their respectable facades. The novel is considered a master class in the unreliable narrator that has inspired many distinguished 20th-century writers. So why didn’t it work for me?


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5 Comments

School of Velocity by Eric Beck Rubin

28/5/2017

6 Comments

 

It doesn’t seem such a promising start to a friendship when Dirk steals Jan’s girlfriend. But before too long, Jan de Vries feels more at home at Dirk’s house in the city of Den Bosch than at his own in a village a cycle ride away. For years they’re inseparable, the more reticent Jan emboldened by his friend’s daredevil charisma, until, the day after Dirk’s drunken high-school graduation party, they go off to separate universities, Dirk to drama school in America, Jan to study piano at the Conservatory in Maastricht.


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6 Comments

A huge thank you, as a second novel is born!

25/5/2017

14 Comments

 
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Happy publication day to me! I must admit it doesn’t feel the huge leap it did the first time round, but I’m still excited, albeit not breathlessly so. There’s a quieter satisfaction in having more than one of my own novels on the shelf, making the transition from writer to author to novelist. This post is to thank those who’ve helped me on my way. While writing is a solitary activity, no writer is an island. Our achievements arise through hard work, good luck and not a little help from our friends.


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14 Comments

Fictional affairs in Paris and Dublin

22/5/2017

20 Comments

 
If you’ve ever held back from having an affair for fear of the hurt it might cause other people, let me offer you a risk-free alternative. These two novels about women with roots in America who stray from marriages to European men can furnish the excitement and eroticism without the guilt or fear of discovery. If you like to read on-screen, no-one need even know you’re having a fictional affair.

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20 Comments

Crossing the line: The Teacher’s Secret #blogtour

19/5/2017

5 Comments

 
Terry is an experienced primary school teacher, popular with pupils, parents and the rest of the staff. But Laurie, the new acting principal, bristles at his intuitive laid-back style. As a much younger woman in a senior position, she’s conscious of the need to assert her authority right from the start; unfortunately, her approach rubs everyone up the wrong way. Alarm bells start to ring when she catches sight of Terry at a student’s house in the evening, contrary to child safeguarding policies.

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5 Comments

The Daughter of Lady Macbeth by Ajay Close

16/5/2017

4 Comments

 
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Friends since childhood, and married for almost a decade, Freya and Frankie have “been exploring the darker side of marital telepathy” (p 11).

Desperate for a baby, they have (p12):

reached that stage of material comfort where the only thing that mattered was the thing we could not have. And since we could not have it, we could not allude to it. And since we could not allude to it, it was all we talked about, but in ways we couldn’t anticipate until the words jumped out of our mouths.


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4 Comments

Nineveh: Trading in painless pest relocations

13/5/2017

6 Comments

 


It’s strange, what disgusts people. Who would scorn the friendship of a gecko, for example: golden-eyed, translucent-skinned, toes splayed on a farmhouse wall? Who could resent a long-legged spider, knitting its silver in the corner of the room? But they do: people will pay to have them killed, poisoned, destroyed.


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6 Comments

Ireland’s Subterfuge and Fury

10/5/2017

8 Comments

 
Allow me to introduce you to two novels looking back on Ireland’s recent history through the eyes of a man whose life has been limited by secrets, subterfuge and hypocrisy.

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8 Comments

The absurdities of cheese and cake

7/5/2017

16 Comments

 
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Frans Laarmans, a lowly clerk at an Antwerp shipyard in the 1930s is offered, by a wealthy friend of his brother’s, the opportunity to establish himself as a cheese merchant, dealing in full fat Edam from Amsterdam. Despite his distaste for even the word cheese, and his lack of business acumen, he jumps at the challenge. Immediately, the worthies at his patron’s weekly salon treat him more respectfully although his wife, to whom he is somewhat condescending, queries terms of the densely written contract. But soon Frans is busy choosing a name for his company, installing a telephone, buying headed stationery and sourcing a suitable desk – anything, it seems, to avoid getting to grips with the mechanics of selling cheese.


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16 Comments

Firefly writes from the darkness: The Accusation by Bandi

4/5/2017

6 Comments

 

Myeong-chol longed to let himself sob out loud, to stamp the ground or shake his fist at the sky. But, depending on circumstances, he knew that even crying could be construed as an act of rebellion, for which, in this country, there was only one outcome–a swift and ruthless death. And so it was the law of the land to smile even when you were racked with pain, to swallow down whatever burned your throat.


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6 Comments

Hitler’s Forgotten Children by Ingrid von Oelhafen & Tim Tate

2/5/2017

7 Comments

 
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We believe in the God of all things

And in the mission of our German blood

Which grows ever young from German soil.

We believe in the race, carrier of the blood,

And in the Führer, chosen for us by God.


The last time Annecdotal took a peek at the craziness of the Nazi project was with
a fictional account of Mengele’s perverted twin studies. Today we’re visiting related territory with a memoir and social history of the Lebensborn programme, both literally and metaphorically Himmler’s baby.

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    Free ebook: click the image to claim yours.
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    OUT NOW: The poignant prequel to Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home
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    Find a review
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    Fictional therapists
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    About Anne Goodwin
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    My published books
    entertaining fiction about identity, mental health and social justice
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    My latest novel, published May 2021
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    My debut novel shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize
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    My second novel published May 2017.
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    Short stories on the theme of identity published 2018
    Anne Goodwin's books on Goodreads
    Sugar and Snails Sugar and Snails
    reviews: 32
    ratings: 52 (avg rating 4.21)

    Underneath Underneath
    reviews: 24
    ratings: 60 (avg rating 3.17)

    Becoming Someone Becoming Someone
    reviews: 8
    ratings: 9 (avg rating 4.56)

    GUD: Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Issue 4 GUD: Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Issue 4
    reviews: 4
    ratings: 9 (avg rating 4.44)

    The Best of Fiction on the Web The Best of Fiction on the Web
    reviews: 3
    ratings: 3 (avg rating 4.67)

    2022 Reading Challenge

    2022 Reading Challenge
    Anne has read 2 books toward their goal of 100 books.
    hide
    2 of 100 (2%)
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    Annecdotal is where real life brushes up against the fictional.  
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    Annecdotist is the blogging persona of Anne Goodwin: 
    reader, writer,

    slug-slayer, tramper of moors, 
    recovering psychologist, 
    struggling soprano, 
    author of three fiction books.

    LATEST POSTS HERE
    I don't post to a schedule, but average  around ten reviews a month (see here for an alphabetical list), 
    some linked to a weekly flash fiction, plus posts on my WIPs and published books.  

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