Thursday Doors – Look Closer

This, one could say, is a fairly ordinary door. It’s old, certainly, the stone building it belongs to probably built a hundred years ago or more. Other than that, it’s fairly standard, with its carved panels and battered black painted finish. A door like many others around the world.

But look a little closer, and you’ll see what it was that drew my attention…

The handle is straight from a dark fairy tale, a woman’s hand holding an apple. Is it the wicked queen, tempting unwary visitors to their fate, or Snow White herself, frozen by cold poison for eternity, her glass casket replaced by wood and stone, waiting for her prince to open the door?

Or, is it just a really neat door handle?

This is my entry to this week’s Thursday Doors Challenge, courtesy of Norm 2.0. For more doors, or to add one of your own, visit Norm’s site and click the link.


If you enjoyed this post and would like to read more, you can find me on Twitter @AuthorHelenJFacebook, Instagram and Pinterest. Plus my latest book release, A Thousand Rooms, is now available on Amazon. Visit my Amazon Author Page to see more.

#writephoto – To The Seven

Another lovely #writephoto prompt from Sue Vincent. If you’d like to participate, you have until Wednesday next week to respond to the prompt. Here is my response:

They say I had a glass casket. That I was surrounded by flowers, a wonder of the woods.

But the truth is far simpler than that.

After all, they were woodsmen, miners, the seven who cared for me. Men short in stature and in funds. Where would they have found the glass to make it, the gold to bind me?

Instead they made me a bed from what they knew. Timber, gift from the forest that sheltered us, carved with their axes, shaped with love. And they laid me there, sheltered by branches, leaves my coverlet, flowers my crown.

I was a princess. My rescuer, a prince. But I’d been saved long before he came along, with his lips red as the apple that had laid me low.

And so my bed of wood remains, a memorial to love and friendship.

To the seven.


You can find me on Twitter @AuthorHelenJFacebook, Instagram and Pinterest. Plus my latest book release, A Thousand Rooms, is now available on Amazon. Visit my Amazon Author Page to see more.

A Sad Break-Up…

How is everyone this Monday?

We’ve just had a lovely warm weekend here in the UK, a real taste of summer (or perhaps all the summer we are going to get, according to some!). I’ve been out and about quite a bit lately, visiting some wonderful places, but have one small problem. My iPhone has decided, for some reason, to stop talking to my iMac (or maybe it’s the other way around). There’s no apparent reason for the break up – they were getting along just fine until one day, they weren’t. Now it’s all ‘Do you trust this computer?’ and ‘Enter your passcode’ requests, as though they’ve never met before, and I’m not sure how to bring them back together again.

It’s a bit annoying, as you can imagine. Not change-my-life annoying, but certainly frustrating. I use a lot of photography on my blog, and I take those photos on my phone. So the fact that these two erstwhile good friends are now on the outs puts me in a tricky position. I have to email and post and try to slide my images in through some sort of electronic back door, and frankly, I don’t want to do it anymore. I had a chat with a young man at the Apple Store, who felt it might be something to do with two-step authentication, but I’ve turned all that off and it has made no difference.

Whatever has happened between these two is serious indeed, so I’ll be spending some time over the coming days trying to make peace. If anyone else has ever had this problem, and knows any sort of negotiating tactics that might work, please let me know. I’d love to get them back talking again.

Oh, and I’ve just sent the manuscript for Under Stone, Ambeth Book Four, to my lovely editor, Esther! Huge sigh of relief…


If you enjoyed this post and want to read more, you can find me on Twitter @AuthorHelenJFacebook, Instagram and Pinterest. Plus my latest book release, A Thousand Rooms, is now available on Amazon. Visit my Amazon Author Page to see more.