Read: 1 poem, 1 short story, 1 essay every week. Write: 1 short story every month. Blog about it. To find out more about the challenge and why I'm doing it, you can find the first post about it here: The Blackthorn Challenge - Week 1 | Shona Kinsella

I'm weighing in a little later than planned this week because I was at Bristolcon last weekend (which was excellent, as always) and it took me a few days to recover, not least from the two very long train journeys to get there and back. Let's get to this week's reading.

Poem: Sonnet 64 by William Shakespeare

I had originally planned to read something by Norman MacCaig this week, a Scottish poet whose work I really enjoy, but after hearing of the passing of Sir Patrick Stewart, I revisited his readings of Shakespeare's sonnets from during the Covid lockdowns and so I chose one of the sonnets in memory of him. Having picked a sonnet at random, I was moved to discover that it deals with themes of death and the passage of time. The sonnet tells us that all things pass sooner or later, even Shakespeare's beloved. It speaks of the foreboding we experience around the loss of loved ones, how that can steal some of our joy in life. 

Essay: The Curious Case of the Crow Hill Bones - Historic Environment Scotland Blog

It will come as no surprise to those of you who have read my books that I follow the Historic Environment Scotland blog, amongst many other sites looking at both Scotland's history and its landscape. This particular piece is about a collection of animal bones found after a fire on Crow Hill, close to Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh. The bones were altered - decorated and in some cases drilled - by a human hand, and were gathered from different places and times. The reason for this, and for the bones' eventual placement on Crow Hill remains a mystery - the kind of mystery that often plants the seed of a story, so don't be surprised if you see me coming back to this at some point. 

Short Story: The Salted Bones by Neil Williamson, included in Hand-Me-Downs

I read this collection at the start of the week, and it was a challenge to select just one story to write about here. It is excellent from start to finish. Williamson is the kind of short story writer I want to be when I grow up, every word doing multiple jobs. The Salted Bones is the story of twin girls with words written on their bones, and the radiographer who becomes fixated on them. It's also about the responsibilities we leave others to carry, the choices we don't make and the actions we don't take. It is a warning and a scream of frustration. It is an incredibly powerful piece to end the collection on. I highly recommend the entire book. 

As for the writing part of the challenge, I started a new short story today. It's tentatively titled Call of Death and is intended for an anthology I've been invited to write something for. I got about 800 words, which a slow day for me, but it was my first proper writng session since the start of September, so I'm pleased with any progress.