The mushrooms that weren’t there

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Come with me on our walk to the park on a damp, grey morning with spitty brief showers. What do you mean, you don’t want to? The fresh aiir was lovelyand there were birds, including a kingfisher that flew too fast for me to get.a picture, but at least it was there…

We were walking down the ramp that led into the park when we saw these amazing, enormous deep brown glossy mushrooms nestled amongst the fallen leaves under the trees. It’s the right time of the year for mushrooms, but we’d never seen anything like them, so of course I asked the photographer what they were.

“Oh,” he said cheerfully. “They’re not real, but they make a great picture, don’t they?” I agreed with him because sometimes that’s the best thing to do and we went on our way, and sure enough when we came back they weren’t there.

I know we live in an AI world, but I still prefer the real one. There again, it did make me think about the possibilities for a fictional murder because who’d believe you when you said you found them in the park? In real life, it was just another strangeness about my beloved home town, and the kingfisher was awesome. I was just chatting to the gathering of birdwatchers about what they’d seen when it flew right past my nose, and it was that bright a blue, and so very beautiful that I felt privileged to see it in action. I’ll be back there, and someday I’ll get that picture and share it with you.

Till then, here are this week's special offers at 99p in the UK and 99c in the US

There are the last three books of my Christians Cross cosy paranormal mysteries series, which are The Sword and the Stone, Away with the Faeries and No Place Like Gnome. The best way I can describe them is hardboiled urban fantasy but cosy and rural, which is actually a pretty awful description now I come to think of it so why don’t you have a look and see if you can come up with a better one.


There are also all of the Esther and the Professor Cosy World War 2 mysteries, which are A Very Private War, A Very Personal Invasion, A Very Different Kind of War, and A Darker Kind of War. If you like these, you’ll find some short stories from their world in the Christmas Short Story Anthology which is called Home for the Holidays and will be out on the first Thursday in December.

Last but not least, there’s Vintage Girl Summer from my Windy Bay series, and the characters from there are in the Christmas anthology and in ‘The Christmas Escape’, which is out next month.

So see you on Sunday, and who knows what’ll have happened by then? I just hope we both have fun. Today’s picture is of some real mushrooms I saw down at Harbourside, because I like real best!