I’m Queer 365 days a year.
June is Pride month - the month where LGBTQ+ people celebrate and commemorate the Stonewall riots, as well as our right to exist and be the people we are.
(Here in the UK June is the month, but due to scheduling quirks, events pretty much take place all summer.)
Tell Me Something Tuesday is a meme-thingy where people answer a different question each Tuesday
- it's currently run/hosted by Roberta @ Offbeat YA, Berls at Because Reading Is Better Than Real Life, Jen at That's What I'm Talking About, Karen at For What It's Worth, and Linda at Book Girl of Mur-y-Castell.
2nd June 2026 - What are your favourite beach reads?
Tell Me Something Tuesday is a meme-thingy where people answer a different question each Tuesday
- it's currently run/hosted by Roberta @ Offbeat YA, Berls at Because Reading Is Better Than Real Life, Jen at That's What I'm Talking About, Karen at For What It's Worth, and Linda at Book Girl of Mur-y-Castell.
19th May 2026 - What is your favourite flower?
I love gerberas.
I always call gerberas ‘happy flowers’ — they’re bright and beautiful and, so long as they’re not wired (bad florists *sprays with water bottle*) they freaking dance.
Warning: This post briefly discusses mental health issues (Bipolar disorder)
**This post contains Amazon.com affiliate links, which allow me to earn a small commission on qualifying purchases.**
**Please only use my affiliate links for .COM purchases, as I do NOT earn from other Amazon sites**
Since my To-Be-Read (TBR) list is continually growing, from time to time I like to throw together a list focussing on some of the (often diverse) titles on there.
Tell Me Something Tuesday is a meme-thingy where people answer a different question each Tuesday
- it's currently run/hosted by Roberta @ Offbeat YA, Berls at Because Reading Is Better Than Real Life, Jen at That's What I'm Talking About, Karen at For What It's Worth, and Linda at Book Girl of Mur-y-Castell.
5th May 2026 - What toppings are on your ideal pizza?
Ermahgad I love pizza!
Pizza is my favouritest food :)
My dearest nerdlets, there are some topics which appear in the bookish/writerly/bloggerly interwebs again and again — and one of the most common of these is writer’s block.
(Which, yes, I’ve talked about before too.)
Tell Me Something Tuesday is a meme-thingy where people answer a different question each Tuesday
- it's currently run/hosted by Roberta @ Offbeat YA, Berls at Because Reading Is Better Than Real Life, Jen at That's What I'm Talking About, Karen at For What It's Worth, and Linda at Book Girl of Mur-y-Castell.
I plan on dipping in-and-out of it if and when I feel like it - I figured it was a low-pressure way of posting a little more regularly here on Dora Reads (...and hopefully I'll be right about that!)
**This post contains Amazon.com affiliate links, which allow me to earn a small commission on qualifying purchases.**
**Please only use my affiliate links for .COM purchases, as I do NOT earn from other Amazon sites**
Don't deceive yourself...this is not a love story.
- Certain Dark Things, Silvia Moreno-Garcia
He jests at scars that never felt a wound
- Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare
Certain Dark Things is a vampire novel.
…It’s also entirely unique.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia, the author, describes the book as 'neon noir' - which is as good a label as any for this inventive, interesting, and compelling, mash-up of styles and genres.
**This post contains Amazon.com affiliate links, which allow me to earn a small commission on qualifying purchases.**
**Please only use my affiliate links for .COM purchases, as I do NOT earn from other Amazon sites**
Since my To-Be-Read (TBR) list is continually growing, from time to time I like to throw together a list focussing on some of the (often diverse) titles on there.
Warning: Brief refs to Depression and trauma
I've been going through a lot of my old blogposts lately.
It's both an attempt to defeat the forces of entropy...
...and to possibly get back onto Google Adsense (it's a whole thing, I talked about it a few months back, so check that post out here if you're interested.)
And... it's been interesting.
Like, genuinely interesting - way more than I thought it would be.
Basically, I was not aware of the sheer volume of stuff I have written over the course of the last 11 years - it's a lot. (Lol.)
And a lot of the things that I've written are a lot better than I remember.
(...which is probably once again proof that I'm my own worst critic 😅)
**This post contains Amazon.com affiliate links, which allow me to earn a small commission on qualifying purchases.**
**Please only use my affiliate links for .COM purchases, as I do NOT earn from other Amazon sites**
Warning: this post contains brief discussions of mental health issues, and brief references to murder
I can think of very few performances as utterly iconic as Andrew Scott's Jim Moriarty.
Long before he was Fleabag's Sexy Priest, Andrew Scott was BBC Sherlock's Sexy Criminal Genius.
(Sexy being his baseline - it must be a difficult burden to bear; imagine being sexy while you pay your electric bills, or putting the bins out sexily...)
It's not that easy, being a writer.
Sometimes, you just want to face-plant your goddamn laptop.
I've had a frustrating couple of weeks, writer-ness-wise.
**This post contains Amazon.com affiliate links, which allow me to earn a small commission on qualifying purchases.**
**Please only use my affiliate links for .COM purchases, as I do NOT earn from other Amazon sites**
Warning: this post discusses terminal illness and Ableism
I watched a normal-looking woman on The One Show sofa, sitting next to the actor Jason Isaacs, and talking about her memoir being turned into a movie (starring, oddly enough, Jason Isaacs.)
(The One Show - for those of you who aren't British - is a Big Deal™.)
Something about her - the woman, Raynor Winn - seemed... off.
But then, I try not to judge too much based on brief interviews - I don't know these people, y'know?
Sometimes people seem off - not least when they're not TV people, and suddenly find themselves talking to the nation in the prime-time flagship slot (Lord knows, that would def. make me seem off!)
**This post contains Amazon.com affiliate links, which allow me to earn a small commission on qualifying purchases.**
**Please only use my affiliate links for .COM purchases, as I do NOT earn from other Amazon sites**
Since my To-Be-Read (TBR) list is continually growing, from time to time I like to throw together a list focussing on some of the (often diverse) titles on there.
Warning: grief, death, serious illness, mental health issues, general trauma
I've always loved Christmas.
But Christmas? It hasn't treated me so well. Especially the whole lead-up-to part of Christmas.
In 2023, my father had brain surgery a few days before Christmas - that was stressful (he's OK now, mostly.)
My grandfather died not long before Christmas in 2018.
Eleven years ago, my other grandparents died at Christmas within four days of each other. We had a double funeral.
...That still wasn't the worst Christmas of my life.
This poem was originally published in the The Brain Is A Noodle publication on Medium, in response to the prompt 'coping by producing' from the lovely Lucy Dan
Today Hurts
‘Now don’t drown in your tears, babe
Push your head towards the air’
— The Editors, Push Your Head Towards The Air.
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| Image by Lucija Rasonja from Pixabay |
A writer is not replaceable — each voice is their own.
A writer is not tameable — each is wild, each answers the call the way that they must.
A writer is not something definable, not something that an algorithm can create, not someone who can be easily pushed aside, not a simple money-making cog, not someone who exists to generate a profit for Capitalism’s insatiable beast.
A writer is someone you pay — art is not a disposable item; writers need to eat.
Warning: brief references to grief/loss and mental health problems
Yes! Dora Reads is now eleven years old.
...Somehow I've made it this far!
This poem was first published in the publication The Brain Is A Noodle on Medium, in response to the prompt "It'll feel easier in the morning" from the lovely Lucy Dan 蛋小姐.
Dawning
‘Day’s dawning, skin’s crawling
Pure morning
Pure morning’
— Placebo, Pure Morning
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| Image by Sasin Tipchai from Pixabay |
