Category Archives: Writing

Writing

Busy with books!

What better place to launch my new book than the Van Institute, with friends and family, food and drink and a bit of a get-together with those whose stories inspired the book.

Here I am, covered in an old white shirt to keep me clean while we set up. Very suitable venue:

Publisher and books all present and correct:

Frances has given everyone a drink and now they are sitting comfortably — mainly because I am on mute, then it all becomes very interactional…

Can you hear me?

No!

Can you hear me now?

No!

I thought they were all having me on, Can you hear me now? Yes,you can.

No! We can’t.

Then a lady jumped onto the stage, grabbed the mike and un-muted me. After that it all went very smoothly.

As a warm-up, the previous week, I gave a talk at Hay Castle — splendid venue!

I performed in the new bit — the Tudor mansion, the part with the roof!.

It is a magnificent community arts centre, and they made me very welcome and laughed a lot at my extracts which was gratifying.

Meanwhile Bill was unsupervised in the several wonderful second hand book shops for which Hay-on-Wye is famous. We returned home with the boot full of books.

Nervous author prior to talk.

Don’t forget the books!

Available direct from the publishers www.logastonpress.co.uk or from your local bookshop.

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Writing

New Book now AVAILABLE!

direct from the publishers www.logastonpress.co.uk or from your local bookshop.

If ordering from outside the UK, I would recommend Blackwells for competitive international shipping. Hope you enjoy it!

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Humour, Wales, Writing

Brace Yourselves!

My new book is now in the publisher’s catalogue with a release date in December 2024!

My dog can’t read, but if I sent him a postcard, he’d sniff it and know I was fine and thinking of him. If I needed to tell him more, I suppose I’d send him one of my socks. 

In an insecure world, be cheered by the landscape and friendliness of this quiet, green valley, with its unexploded bombs, stampeding cattle and life-or-death decisions. Diana’s off-beat take on life, honed by her years as a family doctor, is one of the things that made her first book, Iolo’s Revenge: Sheep farming by Happy Accident in Mid Wales, so popular. People who read it ask what has happened since?

Quite a lot actually …

Pre-order at https://logastonpress.co.uk/product/my-dog-cant-read-more-tales-from-an-accidental-farmer/

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Books, Medical Education, Writing

Special Opportunity!


Clinical Press, the publishers of my book You don’t have to be a genius, have chosen a few of their favourite books (including mine!) for special promotion in the first week of May. The e-book will be available at a very reduced rate.

From May 1st, the following e-books from Clinical Press Ltd. will be available initially at just 99p (or 99cents in USA) by searching on the Amazon site:

You don’t have to be a genius by Diana Ashworth: Funny and moving and based on a true story. At the dawn of the permissive age Diana is a medical student in swinging London. A great read.

Splittage: brain hyping in the Dystopia; by M J Marazan. Dystopian science fiction in the style of the Golden Age of SF with hints of Asimov and Heinlein

The origin of the virus: Barnard, Quay and Dalgleish. The definitive account of how they produced a virus that killed millions  (Note: Amazon No. 1 Bestseller in Health Risk assessment)

The dog comes with the practice: Expanded 2nd Edition by Tom Baskett.  ‘This gentle volume reminds us that, at the core, medicine is about people.’  Medical autobiography…  ‘the medical equivalent of All creatures great and small.’ (Clinical Press book of the year 2023)

Losing Eldorado by Mark T Goddard: Two brothers searching for the soul of America (Note: Amazon No. 1 Hot new release in Music, No 1 Hot new release in US Travel)

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Writing

Kindle Promotion!

Clinical Press have asked me to tell all my friends that Kindle are promoting my book over the Christmas period so for 99p you can have an amusing distraction from the distension of your abdomen or the depressing nature of the news. Here is the link https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09TQ1WGLB

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Writing

Good News from Su and Richard Wheeler, at Logaston Press.

They are reprinting my first book, Iolo’s Revenge again (5th impression!) because, they say it just sells and sells! I’m sure this, in part, is due to their efforts and reputation as publishers, for which I am very grateful and also to Wendy Wigley for her delightful illustrations that lift it to another level!

 Iolo’s Revenge ISBN 978-1-910839-24-9 £10 Available from Fircone Books, The Holme, Church Rd, Eardisley,  HR3 6NJ, United Kingdom.   Tel:+44(0)1544 327182

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Writing

That’s Me — Before

The innocent girl on the cover, bewildered by the strangeness of post-war Britain.

And After

Read the events that changed the way I see the world. You don’t have to be a genius... published by Clinical Press, available on-line and as a Kindle book. Would make a good Christmas present!

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Writing

The trouble with being a superhero

The trouble with being a superhero

Click on link above to read my article published recently in pulse. It is a confessional piece

but is resonating with younger members of my erstwhile profession — seems nothing changes!

Motivated by a desire to promote my book —

but now maybe opening another door — brace yourselves for a few more lifestyle articles.

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Medical, Writing

New Book out next month!

I chose this cover picture which shows me in the raw — not at all the way I feel today — the book recounts the reasons why — all the bizarre experiences and formative encounters. The dodgy characters and extraordinary situations proffered by a medical education in the sixties. How the world has changed!

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Writing

How do you see yourself?

I have a new book coming out soon so have updated my author page on Amazon. Here is the picture I chose — an image by Spencer Means (CC BY-SA 2.0) which shows me, or someone very like me, in the 16th century.

It shows how I often feel much more accurately than would a 15 year old studio photo. Don’t be put off — whatever I write is tempered with good-humour, not jokes but amusement and affection.
As a worn out family doctor I retired with my late husband to another world and in new places one notices things — in Mid-Wales I started to write. My friends were painfully honest and sent me off to university to learn how to do it better. My first book, ‘Iolo’s Revenge’ was published in 2018 about our adventures.


My new book ‘You don’t have to be a genius…’ comes out soon and tells how an ordinary, dyslexic but buoyant girl navigates another new world, that of adolescence, adult life and medical education. In the 1950s and 60s she was hardly a trail blazer but certainly looked at things from a new angle.

One of my daughters commented, ‘You raise a lot of issues, Mum, which, surprisingly, are even more relevant today!

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