I’m so pleased and proud. My little 99-word story, based on a prompt of ‘Watching Kettles’, has been featured on Patricia Osborne’s blog.
[ Click here ]
I love tiny stories. It’s not quite a Drabble (which needs to be exactly 100 words), but it’s close.
I hope you enjoy it.
If this is the sort of stuff you like, head on over to Amazon, where I have a collection of short and micro fiction for sale as an ebook for only 99p!
[ click here ]
Yes, three exclamation marks! August can only mean one thing – the summer writing school at [ Swanwick ]. Check out the details on their website.
It’s an amazing week. This will be my third year at Swanwick, and each year, I love it a little more!
Many superb courses and workshops, fascinating and entertaining after-dinner speakers, and loads and loads of fun!
We’ve got a new gig – at [ Wrabfest ], a one-day festival in a village near to us. It is a huge affair, offering foodstalls, a beer tent, and two stages with acoustic and electric bands throughout the afternoon and evening. There’s something for everyone!
Including, of course, The Big Write, where we work with children to help them create stories aided by Ten Tin Tales, Story Trays, Story Cards and other helpful exercises.
It’s one of those months. When I look through the calendar, I see almost nothing booked for me. For my partner, [ Anita Belli ], she’s incredibly busy working in primary schools in the local area, delivering a literacy project based on several topics in the curriculum.
I’m hopping from project to project, seemingly unable to stick at one thing. The summer is nearly here, the tomatoes we planted are beginning to fruit. So that’s good.
Whilst we’re quiet, I’ll remind you that the [ writer support ] website is live, with some information on the type of services we can offer. Website design, manuscript editing, formatting and publishing – they’re all there!
It’s called “Self Publishing Pure and Simple“, and is a companion piece to my “Scrivener – Pure & Simple” book which came out a couple of years ago.
Self Publishing is available on the Amazon UK store in ebook form [ HERE ] or in print form [ HERE ].
If you are in the US, it’s available in ebook form [ HERE ] or in print form [ HERE ].
Oh my! It’s that time of year again – the time when I and the members of my writing group cast aside the shackles of normal life with its responsibilities and tedium, and head off for our writing retreat.
We spend the best part of four days together, writing, chatting, talking about writing, planning our writing, and generally relaxing in the luxurious surroundings of our own (temporary) manor house in the country!
Following discussions with some of my fellow writing colleagues, I’ve decided to pick up a book I initially wrote during the 2015 NaNoWriMo challenge. The title keeps changing, and it’s been “Corruption“, “The Innocents“, and “Corruption of Innocents“. Titles are important to me!
After some back-and-forth, I decided to make this a companion piece to a book I wrote / rewrote for NaNoWriMo last year (2018), which is currently called “Deceit“. It’s been “Deception“, “Ripples” and “Ripples of Deception“. Titles are important to me.
Both novels feature an identical series character, a journalist called Jerry Sanders, although his name may change before these things see the light of day.
Anyway, it’s nice to be able to start pulling some of my thirty-odd Works In Progress together, ready for a scheduled launch in the future.
Further to my 2019 goals, I’ve been working on the novel “MELTDOWN”, during the 100kwords100days challenge.
It was going pretty well – it’s more of a rewrite than a first draft. The first draft was written way back in 2013, during NaNoWriMo. The story sort of held together, but there were several plot holes. And the usual mish-mash of character and plot problems. It needed a rewrite.
I was doing quite well, adding and changing words, then got sidetracked into the actual design of the story. Those who know me will understand, as I have a fascination for Story Design (I even wrote a book about it), and I realised with this rewrite that I really needed to go back to first principles, apply my ‘Snowflake‘ and ‘Save The Cat‘ procedures to really get a grip on the story and make it work like a thriller should.
In conclusion, I have 15,000 good words, all in the right places – from the original 47,000 words. And that’s where the story now is. There are more old words that can be imported into the new framework, but for the moment, the project is parked. There are more important, real-life issues to be sorted for now.
My partner, [ Anita Belli ] has been booked for several drop-in sessions with the [ Essex Book Festival ], working with children and adults to help them with their creativity.
In addition, Anita, myself and our colleague [ Ellie Holmes ] are present at the Essex Author Day. This is a chance for Essex people to meet authors in person, and chat to them about their writing and their books. We shall be taking this opportunity to launch [ TheNovelMakers ], our joint venture, with a one-hour presentation.
There’s a new project on the go! In conjunction with my colleagues and partners Anita Belli and Ellie Holmes, we have created a new venture.
The intention is to help novel writers and, as we say, turn a Writer into an Author – helping them from their manuscript to produce a publishable novel.
We will be offering mentoring and manuscript appraisal services in the short term. Eventually, we will be expanding on our business offer, to include online courses to help improve and polish a client’s writing.
For now, have a look at the website [ TheNovelMakers ] that we’ve been working on, and check out my colleagues’ websites: