Alison May aka Amelia Berry & Ally Sinclair

Am wondering where I pitch to write Tess Daly's novel next year. I mean we know it's coming right?

The average age for starting periods in the UK is 12, but can be as young as 8. But a BBC article about period products is 'adult content'. Mmmm 'kay.

Period Choices: Pads, menstrual cups, pants and tampons - what's best for me? Here is a guide to how each product works and the pros and cons to help you decide what might suit you.

This is such a useful summary www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... BUT why do these lists so often miss menstrual discs? Cup did not work for me - found the disc so much easier. Same basic idea - reusable, rinse it out, sterilise between periods - but different fit & shape. Def suits some bodies better

The things you just can’t say You hear the phrase ‘you just can’t say anything any more’ a lot. Most often in comments from people parodying the kind of people they imagine say ‘you just can’t say …

I did a blog. It's about tax policy so you already know it's going to be lots of fun alison-may.co.uk/2025/09/22/t...

Cooking Up a Christmas Storm by Amelia Berry | Hera Ebook and Paperback

It's publication day. If you wouldn't mind awfully buying my book that would be splendid. (I am not naturally built for self promotion. It is quite good though so you probably should) www.herabooks.com/books/cookin...

Flags. Yeah. Flags. If you spend any time at all on the interweb, and clearly you do because you’re here now, you’re probably already sick of people’s hot takes on the flying of England flags. So sor…

First week back to blogging and I'm talking about flags. Tl:dr racism is bad and national pride is a bit weird alison-may.co.uk/2025/09/08/f...

Am open cardboard box full of books. The books are copies of Cooking Up A Christmas Storm by Amelia Berry. The cover is blue with an image of a festive market and a man and woman walking together with their back to the viewer. The title is in large red text.

Author copies of Coming Up A Christmas Storm - my brand new Highland Cookery School romcom (writing as Amelia Berry) - arrived today. Yay

You know what, fair play to Scooby Doo villains. They walk into a room dressed as a ghost, see a talking dog on its hind legs making the world’s biggest sandwich and somehow manage to stay in character.

(Re)starting a blog in 2025… Back through the mists of time this website was basically just a blog where I pontificated about whatever random stuff had wandered across my consciousness. Blogging was very much The Modern Thing …

I restarted my blog - like it's 2011 or something. Not 100% clear why but I think I wanted a better space to, you know, talk about everything *waves hands at the general bin fire of the world* than social media sometimes provides. I may or may not stick with it. alison-may.co.uk/2025/09/01/r...

How lovely to receive a surprise copy of @alallyalison.bsky.social Cooking Up A Christmas Storm coming from @herabooks.bsky.social @canelobooks.bsky.social on 18th September.
Thank you very much Kate!

www.canelo.co/books/cookin...

Very exciting. Congratulations 🎊

Late selection of pics from the weekend - Meetcute festival and interviewing Jo Thomas at Evesham Festival of Words

For me line 1 is either perfect and never changes or there's hours of staring at screen unable to start and then I write some dross that I'm still trying to rewrite at the proofread stage. This one seems destined to be in the second category

'Unsustainable status quo': AI companies and publishers respond to Govt copyright consultation The NMA, NUJ and BBC are among organisations to have so far published some form of response to a Government consultation on AI and copyright.

A UK Government proposal to let AI companies train their models on online content unless the rightsholder opts out has been described as “unworkable”.

A range of responses to the Govt consultation on the proposed change have been published, with many slamming the potential effects:

Starting a new first draft is The Worst. Possibly divisive writing opinion for the day right there.

#WritingCommunity

‘Meta has stolen books’: authors to protest in London against AI trained using ‘shadow library’ Writers will gather at the Facebook owner’s King’s Cross office in opposition to its use of the LibGen database to train its AI models Authors and other publishing industry professionals will stage a demonstration outside Meta’s London office today in protest of the organisation’s use of copyrighted books to train artificial intelligence. Novelists Kate Mosse and Tracy Chevalier as well as poet and former Royal Society of Literature chair Daljit Nagra will be among those in attendance outside the company’s King’s Cross office. Continue reading...

‘Meta has stolen books’: authors to protest in London against AI trained using ‘shadow library’

Why I – and other bestselling authors – are protesting outside Meta today Authors earn an average of only £7,000 a year – yet Meta, one of the world’s richest companies, has taken millions of books to train its AI without paying. This cannot stand, writes author Abie Longst...

👇
www.independent.co.uk/voices/autho...

A sign that says "want my books? PAY ME. The End."

A sign that days "I'd write a better sign but you'd just steal it"

A sign that says "Get the Zuck off our books"

A sign that says "Meta book thieves"

Been down at Meta's UK HQ to join a protest by @societyofauthors.bsky.social about the theft of books for the purposes of AI. A multi-billion dollar company using books then not paying for them stinks & is in no-one's interests.
#DoTheWriteThing #MakeItFair #MetaBookThieves

I’ve been told off for saying gen Ai is bad for creatives & the environment. THIS is one of the reasons why. Big tech is stealing our work to make huge profits. If you love books, if you want to support authors, please consider sharing this & other authors’ posts asking Meta to #DoTheWriteThing

Author @ajwestauthor.bsky.social at the Meta protest 🔥

💪 #DoTheWriteThing #MetaThieves

In surely unrelated news, the Tony Blair Institute was given $200m by the owner of Oracle, a major AI player.

The full report by the Tony Blair Institute is out, in which they detail how copyright should be "rebooted" in the AI age. It reads like a big tech lobbying document. I hope they will be asked serious questions at its launch in London today.

Some very brief highlights:

🧵 1/8

Two women sitting at a kitchen table look out of a window while a pheasant looks in

Early morning visitor at the last day of the Naughty Kitchen writing retreat @alallyalison.bsky.social @jeevanicharika.bsky.social

Editing is your power, you are God in this little universe! Writer and editor Alison May (@alallyalison.bsky.social) shares her biggest tip regarding editing. What do you think? What is your process for editing as a form of empowerment?

#Writers #Editing

I get a lot less interaction here at the moment, but I haven't been using it as consistently. And yeah - a lot of people just aren't here.

A Recipe for Love on display in @waterstones Braehead and Argyll Street

I'm in a similar boat. Would kind of like to bin off everything Meta but so many of my communication channels - with friends, family, publishing people, and readers - are facebook, insta and whatsapp dependent. Hate that I'm effectively supporting their business though.

We are disappointed but not surprised that Meta has used millions of pirated books to develop its AI systems.

As a matter of urgency, Meta needs to compensate the rightsholders of all the works it has been exploiting.

But what can authors do? Read here:
societyofauthors.org/2025/03/21/t...

A Recipe for Love is on the shelves in @waterstones.bsky.social in Scotland. Would love to see your shelfies if you spot it out in the wild