Tag: Royal Mile

Madeira Mondays: A Visit to Greyfriars graveyard in Edinburgh

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Some of you may recall the walk that I took with Alan, my friend and fellow Georgian House volunteer, back in December. He very generously led me on a walk through The Royal Mile – the famous street that cuts through the city of Edinburgh – from the Castle down to Holyrood palace. During our walk, he shared with me tales of forgotten Edinburgh residents, catastrophic fires and years upon years of fascinating history.

A couple of weeks ago, my partner and I joined Alan for another walk, this time around Grassmarket which, locals will know, is a lively area of the city’s ‘old town’ that is full of pubs and cafes. We saw a lot on our walk, but instead of trying to cram everything into one post, I thought I’d focus instead on one of my favorite elements of the walk: our exploration of Greyfriars Kirkyard! (A ‘kirk’ is a Scottish word for church, by the way!)

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Friday Finds: My three favorite novellas

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‘One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug.’

– The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka

I wrote a ‘Writing Reflections’ post recently about why my recently-published book, All the Orphans in the Galaxy, was a novella and not a novel. There’s a lot more in that post about what exactly a novella is (essentially, longer than a short story, shorter than a novel!) and why I think it’s such a good form for experimentation. You don’t have to ‘commit’ to one thing for too long and you can really focus and zoom in on just a couple of characters (or a really unique premise!).

In that post, I also mentioned that lots of my favorite books are actually novellas. I thought I’d recommend a few of them here!

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