Mary's Garden opens for Marie Curie.

Even buttercups find a place
 in Mary's garden.

I had a great treat on Saturday afternoon organised by the Bishop Auckland Branch of the Marie Curie Organisation - part of their national series of Blooming Great Tea Parties 

 Mary Smith - an original  member of Wear Valley Writers - opened her exquisite garden to raise funds for this excellent charity.

 I went at the invitation if my Room To Write friend Gillian Wales who also has an exquisite garden which she will open for the National Gardens Scheme on July 6th.

Another treat in store...
 

The garden meanders down a slope
is structured around mature trees originally
 plated by Mary and her husband/

The hostess - a gifted gardener and a good writer 

The garden is planted to surprise you with
contrasting colours and textures  

Achemillla Mollis tumbling onto the path.,

Symbol of the Marie Curie Blooming Great Tea Party 
- made from a beach ball.

Tender contrasts

Home made cakes for the Blooming Big Tea Party.

This reminds me of a fairy dell.

A poppy leads the eye.

Dramatic perpendicular scene 

 The afternoon raised more than £350 for the Marie Curie Charity.

 Planting for colour, direction and contrast

Delicate mixture 

Pergola on a green pathway.

Pink flowers like stars.

Large pool, elegantly postioned,
perfectly planted.

Wild planting by the small pool.

Thank you Mary. It was a privilege to be there. Wendyxxx

Book Covers and Novels in the PInk.

At my Middlesbrough workshop last week (great venue; lovely  writers) the perceptive Lorraine said to me, 'All your books are different from each other aren't they, Wendy? They all look different.' She paused.'When I have enjoyed one novel I like to move onto something similar. I can't tell whether yours are similar or not.'

She has a pint. You can see that each novel looks different from the books illustrated here on the right hand sidebar.

I didn't have time to tell Lorraine that in one way - the style, the attitude, the sense of character, the sense of history - my novels must indeed be similar. I love my characters; they are all original and live for and with me. And - without  necessarily intending to - I demonstrate my preoccupation with  recurring issues of identity, justice and the impact of history on the individual. And  creative, deeply characterful women and men are often at the  centre of my stories.

Though each book appears to be different  I feel that, if a reader has enjoyed one of them, it is very likely that they will enjoy another. I am asking them to trust my name as a good storyteller.

But Lorraine certainly hit a chord. I find myself these days to be  on a one  woman campaign against the fashion in  pre-digested literature and the  commodification of writers and their novels.

Pre-digested? Commodification? In this today I find myself very much in tune a great article on the Guardian Book Page**

'...the market is increasingly being shaped by sales and marketing people, rather than editors and others who actually know what a good book is. So if a book does well, during the next two years you'll see many echoes of that book on the shelves. The once kaleidoscopic book world risks becoming 50 shades of safe. If you are writing a book that doesn't fit into the categories of mass-market thriller or book-club friendly WI-lit, then it is going to struggle to find a publisher. If it does so, then it will struggle to find a publisher that can justify spending the marketing money needed to make an impact...'

So I will continue to write novels that - although written my me in my idiosyncratic  literary style - are different to each other and not pre-digested  so that my readers don't think they know the story before they have read it. My great ambition is that  each novel is a fresh experience, fresh fun, fresh insightt for my readers as it is for me. 

That being said perhaps there might be  something in what the marketeers say about covers!

  I noticed that at this same workshop the novel of mine  most picked up and most bought was Journey To Moscow,  which has a distinctive pink cover -

This made me think that if I made all my covers pink then in that way they would look somewhat alike and would encourage readers like Lorraine to trust me and read another novel of mine.

So here is an experiment. I've had mocked up a pink version of my novel Gabriel Marchant, originally in grey.  Here they are., Does the pink version make it seem more fun (it is fun)) and/or more accessible?

Are you attracted to this?

Or this?

Or does the colour of the cover make no difference at all? Let me know. I would value your opinion WX

* Guardian Bookblog Link.Here

T

The Writer and the Heroic Character.

 In these days of ambiguous main characters in novels it is interesting to note that the universal notion of heroes and heroines still survives in successful (ie good selling) fiction. 

The great challenge or the serious writer is to characterise proper heroes and heroines without resorting to stereotype. Characters in the Cinderella/Portia/ Becky Sharp/Elizabeth Bennett & Bridget Jones tradition can easily sink into stereotype: (We may look to Molly Bloom for more complexity). 

 Equally for heroes we have fore-runners such as Henry V/ Achilles/ Tom Jones/ Mr Darcy/ Geronimo & Blade to fall back on. (We look to John Rebus for more complexity)

All writers - so called 'literary' or so-called 'other' – make use of such forerunners.

One might argue that we all make use of them, whether we know it or not, because such characterisation is built into our collective subconscious One might also argue that the most popular novels find favour with the general public for that reason, as they share this collective subconscious. 

This is why good popular fiction crosses national and international boundaries with ease. It accounts for universality of appeal from Pat Parker to Catherine Cookson.

In the rigorous editing of two of my own recent novels I have become more aware of the way my own subconscious interprets these heroic traditions.

For instance in my historic novel Lines of Desire  I note (to my surprise)  that  sometimes I show heroism in action:

“…Kynan drove his horse forward in pursuit, followed in a second by Magnus. The boar lumbered into a narrow clearing and hesitated, swishing backwards and forwards between the trees. That was when, spear in hand, Kynan let go of his reins and stood up in his saddle, manoeuvring his horse with his calves. Closer to the boar he balanced his spear and launched it hard, so it embedded itself, quivering, in the creature’s neck, making it lurch to one side, squealing. In a second Kynan drew his second spear and aimed that very close to the other one.  Blood spurted upwards in a scarlet fountain that reached the branches of the nearest tree and started to drip down, back onto the squirming beast, which now whimpered and gurgled.  But still it twitched with desperate life.

Kynan leapt lightly rom his horse and stood before his prey. He looked up at Magnus. ‘Your honour?’

Magnus shook his head. ‘Finish your task, Master Kynan. The kill is yours.’…”

Here, Kynan, brother of my heroine Elen is shown in violent action following the traditonal the role of action hero.  But in the last line Magnus – Macsen Wledig – the true hero of the novel – shows heroism in his mannerly and politically acute restraint.

In writing for a wide public I have found that I seem to have realised that the modern reader needs to see their heroes and heroines. (Once one has seen the film of Pride and Prejudice it is impossible to  read about him in the book without the image of Mr Darcy emerging from the water, his shirt clinging like a second skin. (So far, so not Jane Austen…)

And we see Macsen first through the eyes of Helen, the central character of the novel. (This piece of prose works in two ways: we see Macsen; we also hear Elen’s voice):

…Now the man comes into the light. My honeycomb head notices everything about him in a

Elen is a Pathfinder 

second. But of course he’ll never realise this. Not now and not later.

I focus on a clean-shaven, wind-bronzed face under thick black hair threaded through with silver. He’s quite old, perhaps as much as thirty-five years. Even more. He’s as tall as Kynan but more thickset. He wears his hair forward in that foreign way, held in place by the thinnest of golden bands. His thick black brows almost meet over a thin, finely arched nose. Beneath them his eyes, bright and blue as cornflowers, examine me.

I put my hand on Snow’s neck to quiet him but I too smell danger. Rape and violent attack is always a risk in this situation - not just with Caesar’s men but with our own men too. A lone woman is easy game for hunters. My cloak of invisibility can’t be relied on in situations like this…’

And we first see Elen herself through the eyes of Macsen’s best friend Quintanius, not Macsen himself:

“…There at the edge of the clearing I blinked very hard. This girl was as beautiful as the morning and fashioned from light and air; her face was white as ivory, her gleaming fox-coloured hair was caught in a long loose plait. I know now that she was seventeen years old, but that morning, as we looked at her, she could have been just thirteen or fourteen, so young and fair was she.

My own heart lurched, but I know now that Magnus too was touched by the sight of her. His face – normally so sharp and alert – softened. A smile played around his tight lips. We pulled up our horses behind the broad trunk of an oak tree and he jumped down, landing lightly, without a sound. He looked up at me, winked, and handed me the reins.

Of course that was before we saw her walk on fire and before she gathered her hosts to take on Rome. We will get to all that but first here is Elen to tell you her own story of how she came to be there on that day, fateful for Rome and for Britain too...”

 

Get the novel

NEXT - Heroes and Heroines in 

Gabriel Marchant: How I Became a Painter.

Fact and Fiction. Gabriel Marchant:How I became a Painter

I’ve spent more than a month now putting the final touches to the revising, writing and re-editing of my very long novel Gabriel Marchant: How I Became a Painter. This painstaking process has been necessary because I feel this must be my best novel. Room to Write has published it, using the invaluable Createspace process, where much of the responsibility for the quality of the end product lies with the author. In the past this seemed much more straightforward as I worked for a long time with a big publisher where whole departments attended to the details which I have now attended to myself in collaboration with the Room To Write team

People always say, about a new novel, what is it about? This is always a difficult question to answer in one sentence.

 ‘There is no doubt that fiction
makes a better job of truth.’
Doris Lessing

Here is what it says on my cover:

'It is 1963, the day after the assassination of President Kennedy, the eminent painter Gabriel Marchant pays public tribute to his late mentor Archie Todhunter. He reflects on his early days when, as an out of work miner in 1936, he met Archie, the charismatic warden of The Settlement, an arts centre in his home town.

           At that time, unemployed and feeling very low, Gabriel is rescued by the encouragement he finds at The Settlement, where people out of work are inspired by Archie Todhunter and the enigmatic German Rosel Vonn, a sculptor and artist who teaches there. Travelling with Gabriel on his journey are his best friend Tegger, who will become a writer, and the clever, witty schoolgirl Greta who will change lives in her own way.

           Later, both haunted and inspired  by images of life and work underground, Gabriel’s paintings finds first local,  then national fame and his life is changed forever.

          As he tells the whole tale of how he became a painter Gabriel Marchant celebrates the liberating nature of art in hard-pressed lives and the role of people like Archie Todhunter, those magical change-makers in lives like his own....'

Gabriel’s own story is fiction but it  springs out of my personal experience of a particular place at a particular time and my research into the true experience of people whose lives were changed in such a way.

In my dedication I say: This novel is dedicated to all those whose lives impelled them to dig in the darkness, who still found the grace there to create beauty. In particular I honour the inspiration of the art of Tom McGuinness, Ted Holloway and Norman Cornish, in addition to the literary inspiration of the writer Sid Chaplin. All of them, in their unique fashion, flourished as young people through the magic of the Spennymoor Settlement.

I have published this book to coincide with the magnificent Shafts of Life Exhibition - masterminded by Gillian Wales and Robert McManners – currently on at the Bowes Museum in County Durham. 

In my own mind I was writing a story which came to  me and which I felt compelled to write. Committed to Gabriel. Tegger, Greta, Archie, Cora, and Dev, I wrote their story from the heart.

But during this long revision and rewrite I have discovered that, threaded through my story, are my own sense of history as an element of place and my own fundamental ideas about inequality, social justice and the triumphs of personality over circumstance.

And, most importantly, my story is about the liberating outcomes of practising one’s art, whether it is expressed through paint on canvas or in words and stories on the page. In their creative processes both painters and writers are, I feel,  driven to arrive at a greater truth.

The vivid paintings in the Shafts of Life exhibition are an enduring proof of this. I hope that this also applies to this novel, as it may apply to many of my other novels. As Khaled Hosseini says of writing, ‘Writing Fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth.’  

The exhibition shows the great art and the greater truth of individual miners’ perceptions of their work and their environments.  I hope my novel about Gabriel Marchant  shows the greater truth about the interior and exterior lives such artists lived.

Doris Lessing has said ‘There is no doubt that fiction makes a better job of truth.’ In the same way the paintings in this exhibition make a better truth of the miner’s experience than any so-called factual documentary film.

Perhaps going to see Shafts of Light and also reading  Gabriel Marchant: How I became a Painter would allow people to access a more complex truth. I hope so.

, ‘Writing Fiction is the act of weaving 
a series of lies  to arrive at 
a greater truth.’ Khaled Hosseini 

Links

Gabriel Marchant: How I Became a Painter

Room to Write  

Gillian Wales: A Garden for Pablo  

Shafts of Light Exhibition at The Bowes Museum  

I wish I could recognise the songs of birds.

At 4am from my bathroom window I can hear the dawn chorus streaming from the trees around the house. One bird in particular sings a long sweet song which seems to have no end. In my imagination this is the nightingale from the fairy story. But not that even I imagine I am an Emperor.

 

The Black Writing Table 

And the birds begin again in the afternoon, calling from the trees and sometimes fluttering to the bird table, then veering off at the last moment like a World War 2 bomber.They must be put off by me, sitting writing at my black writing table.

A woman with short hair passes the gate and catches sight of me. She doesn't swerve away like the birds. She catches my eye.  'It's quite a haven here, with all these trees in the middle of the town.' she says.

I nod. ‘Quite a haven!’ 

I show her the wash of bluebells, a little blowsy now, past their best, at the bottom of the garden. ‘It’s because this is all ancient woodland’ I explain.

Jasmin's Archie Among My Bluebells 

‘The bluebells and the yellow aconites come and come, again. They spread and spread. Even if you leave a patch in the cultivated garden the bluebells sprout where they haven’t come for twenty years.'

The woman nods, sharing my sense of surviving magic for a split second. Then she tells me she’s looking at a house further along the little road. ‘This is really quite a haven,' she says again.

She seems like a nice woman. Sounds Antipodean. She strolls off and I return to my black table and my pen and book. And I still listen to the birdsong, more subdued now as the day moves on to a close.

The Re-emergence of the Lilac

The lilac has re-emerged.When we first came to this house thirty years ago there was a great hedge of Victorian lilac before the front door shielding the house from long side view of the garden. with its tall trees underpinned by bluebells and the long, somewhat unkempt, bank cluttered in summer with yellow aconites, forget-me-nots. and  buttercups raising their heads above the wild grass.

Eager beavers, we took down the hedge and opened the view and planted a perennial border. I did feel pangs of regret when eventually we lost all sight of the lilac.

The Lilac in Blowsy Effusion 

But now after thirty years I see the lilac has re-emerged, sprouting blossom in all directions with blowsy effusion . At the front door now I am invaded by a deep smoky scent reminiscent of antimacassars and old wax polish.

The lilac must have been playing doggo underground for a generation and has now re-emerged, treating me to a bright splash of lilac in the slanting afternoon sunshine.

I have been thinking now that the lilac will continue to re-emerge long after I am gone, just as it sprouted long before I came here to this house.

Not that I regret the long border...

Ghosts in my Back Yard

I often feel ghosts around me.  As I lounge

Perfect Design 

 on the couch reading a book I sense people coming through the door with the edge if my eye. I feel the ghosts inside me as I go about my daily life mimicking repeated gestures and actions from a thousand years of imprinting.

I planted new plants in my high walled my back, now a sheltered space for drinks around the table and modest barbecues. Not wanting my plants to dry out I unwind the hose and water my plants. Then I use the hose to swill the old blue cobblestones, laid there when the house was built in 1870. A perfect example of functional Victorian design, these bricks are in varying shades of blue and grey. They are laid in a brick pattern towards a central line which is laid the other way, making a perfect channel for dirty water to swill down the drain.

In no time the yard is shining clean, clear of all the compost and the detritus of weeding. My plants are looking perky. 

Herb Corner 

As I wield the hose and the yard brush I am  filled with the ghost of another woman with brawny arms: the queen of the back regions of the house, who has her own back staircase which she climbs at night. up two flights  to the attics where she lives in her designated space.

Looking perky 

Work In Progress: Older Women in a Public Garden Café

 

This is the lair of intelligent women
Older, greying, so well seasoned
Their talk will be intelligent - 
Books, films. exhibitions
The scandal of the stolen girls
The regretted reversal of liberation
The universal objectification of woman
The looming presence of  our politics in the world
Always vindicated by the very best of good intentions
They sympathise with oppressed populations
But still they are loyal, mourning our boys -
Unemployed, enlisted, sacrificed

Writer Interviews: Kitty Fitzgerald - Wonder Woman of Writing

Kitty Fitzgerald seems to be the the Wonder Woman of  modern fiction - multi-skilled and always open to experience.

 She has written four well-received novels and has been published in 20 countries. The most famous is Pigtopia (Faber) which made her a finalist in the fiction section of the Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers’ Awards. Tt was also a stunning radio play. Her latest novel is Identity (Room To Write)  a complete revision of her first novel Marje  first published to great feminist acclaim. Kitty calls it a psychic thriller and is pleased that it was the first feminist thriller to give a first person voice to an incest survivor.

She has also written four radio plays for BBC Radio 4; eight theatre plays, and one screenplay – and has had several writing awards.Kitty was also centrally involved, with Peter Mortimer in his 2013 highly successful award-winning  Iron Age Arts Festival. I also know Kitty to be committed to social and political issues

As I said A Wonder Woman of Writing.

Wendy: 

So, Kitty, What is the primary joy of writing in your life?

Kitty: 

When I first started writing - in my early thirties - it was like coming home and I knew then that this was what I had to do. After many jobs and later a good degree as a mature student, I thought I was going to be an artist. I enjoyed painting and making collages but when I began writing it was a different experience; instead of feeling relaxed, as I did as an artist, I was focused, feverish and often euphoric. It was as if I’d tapped into a different part of my consciousness.

I do indulge in distraction activities, like many other writers I know, but I think it’s now all part of my process and when I am ‘ready’ to write I get on with it on a daily basis for as long as it takes. I find first drafts painful, a bit like extracting teeth, but I love the editing process and have to be careful not to overdo it.

Completing a long piece of work gives great satisfaction. Holding a new book of mine in my hand is wonderful and it reminds me there’s nothing else I’d rather do

W. When did you first know you were ‘a writer’?

K. I had some fantasies about it while I was at school but I was told I was aiming above my station. Later, when I did my degree in my late twenties, it was my English tutors who encouraged me to write. I entered a short story competition and was one of the winners. The writer-in-residence who judged it, also looked at other work from the winners. I had started a novel and had about 5000 words to show him. He told me he thought I was a novelist and encouraged me to finish the novel I’d started.

I took a job as Head of an Art dept and saved up for a year before leaving the job. I got an evening shelf-filling job, which allowed me to write during the day and be when my daughter and partner came home. He subsidized me for that year and the result was the first draft of my first published novel, Marge (1984 Sheba Feminist Publishers). At the end of that year, I knew I was a writer and I would do it for the rest of my life.

That was thirty years ago.

W. You write novels, short stories and plays of radio and stage.  How do you approach these different forms of writing. Do you look for different outcomes?

K. They are all quite different and require me to put on different heads. The structures are different; the amounts that have to be carried in your head are different and the subject matter is usually different.

I know before I begin that there will be different outcomes; that is, I know from the start whether I’m writing a story, a play or a novel and proceed accordingly.

However, once in a while an idea goes through several manifestations. Pigtopia is a perfect

example: it began as a short story, turned into a radio play and became a novel…because I hadn’t finished with it, there were other avenues and angles to be explored.

The story was third person; in the radio play, I couldn’t find the main character’s internal voice, so I could only create the words that he actually said and in the novel the main character was first person. So you see you can create many structures and working practices but every so often a character comes along that frustrates all these plans.

W. What would you say characterises the themes in your novels?

Probably the notion of outsiders, of people living on the edge. One PhD student who studied my work suggested I was haunted by the notion of a Trinity. And in much of my writing I can see what he meant but it’s a subconscious pull and I’m often surprised when I’ve finished a first draft to see that it’s trickled back in again.

K. Well…I was born in rural Ireland and surrounded by an extended family for which attendance at Mass was second nature and I went to Catholic schools when we migrated to England – when Churchill was looking for a labour force to help re-build Britain.

When I was four we lived ‘in digs’ with a landlady who had been forced by the coal board to use her spare rooms for lodgers.

We were an Irish family but the others were all single men: Bozo was from Yugoslavia, Tonio from Italy, Franky from Poland and Scotty from Glasgow. We had one small downstairs room with a double bed for mum and dad and a horsehair sofa for me, the others shared two small rooms upstairs.

We were all outsiders and ignorant of how the system worked. The landlady took all our ration books and fed us slops; she also stole our money but nobody was interested in helping us. Digs were hard to come by: it was the time of no blacks, no Irish no children. But a fellow miner at the pit told dad about elderly neighbours of his who might take us in.

And they did. Mr and Mrs Higgs were as wonderful as our previous landlady, Violet Bunce had been terrible. But I knew at five years old what it was to be an outsider.

W. Do you have a writing routine?

K. Yes, I usually start writing around 11am and with breaks can work up to 9pm. I read and edit what I wrote the day before and then continue. I aim to get around 2000 words under my belt by teatime and then revise up to 9pm. Sometimes particular pieces of music are important to the process but not always. I can’t start a piece of work – no matter how long I’ve been researching or carrying it around in my head – until I hear the voice of my main character inside my head. Then I decide on First/Third person, Tense and so on.

W. What role does editing play in your writing process?

K. It’s a huge part of the process and for me, crucial. The good thing is that I love doing it. I do lots of drafts working between the computer and writing by hand. As an editor, it’s the most common problem I encounter: not enough editing. I’m guilty of lapses, just like everyone else but I’m better than I was.

What is the best advice that you have received about your writing and who advised you?

I was told that when I finish a good first draft of a piece of writing, I should put it in a drawer and not look at it for a couple of weeks. That way I’ve got more chance of coming at it as a reader, rather than the writer and will edit more objectively. I can’t remember who gave me the advice.

W.What advice would you give to writers in the first stage of writing their novels?

K. Another piece of advice I came across: write with passion, edit with reason.

How long does it normally take you to write a novel? Has this changed?

If I can engage with the writing full time – e.g. I’m not having to go out to work to earn a living – I can get a good draft done in a year. Pigtopia was the exception to this: that took five years because of the experiment with language and making sure it was consistent. Jack’s inner voice was hard to find.

I used to take longer because I was tentative when I first started.

W. Do you think the short story has a real place in the life of a career writer?

K. As a novel writer, I enjoy working on a short story while my latest draft is in the drawer and I

may go back to stories many times before achieving a good full draft. But it’s a break from having to carry a whole novel around in my head.

W. What are you working on now?

K. I’ve just finished a new thriller, which is with my agent, so I won’t say much about that but I’m also working on a Young Adult novel set in the future, which has a lot to do with dogs!

W. Tell us about your latest published novel.

K. Identity has just been published by Room to Write. It is a revised edition of my first novel, Marge, which was published by Sheba Feminist Publishers in 1984. It’s a psychic thriller and was the first feminist thriller to give a first person voice to an incest survivor.

W. What, for you are the best characteristics of a good editor?

K. The intention to make the work they are editing the best it can be, rather than trying to turn it into something else.

W. Do you think it’s possible to edit oneself to good effect?

K. I prefer to have someone I trust to be honest to read the first and some later drafts. As with proofreading, it’s easy to miss things when you are familiar with the work.

I still see myself as a bit of an outsider but I’m also a dreamer and basically an optimist, even though I can sometimes get depressed at the state of the world. I identify myself as a writer and feel very lucky to have discovered that aspect of my character. I always try to do too much, too many things, but regular yoga, walking and cycling, helps both my body and mind to relax. I love my family and my close friends. I am both a good collaborator and sometime who likes to spend a lot of time alone. There is no such thing as retirement for a writer and I hope I pass away with a pen in my hand.

LINKS 

Kitty Herself 

Pigtopia 

Identity

 Iron  Press Festival

Room To Write Publishing 

Short Story Competitions: Fixated on Anecdote

 At a recent workshop a writer told me that she’d had a story rejected with the comment that it was merely an anecdote. In our recent podcasted discussion (see below) Avril Joy said to me that one problem was that some writers were fixated on anecdote.

This made me think. I suppose it all depends on what we mean by ‘story’.

We all live inside a web of stories. We learn our family histories going back more  than two generations through the stories that come down to us. This will weave its way into our fiction whether we do it consciously or not. I discovered this when I sat down to write my memoir The Romancer and discovered in retrospect that I could trace many of the themes and  much of the texture of  my novels in story- or anecdote -driven  elements of my own life.

Such stories from life might well be labelled anecdote. I call these fireside stories and would link them with fairy stories and spoken sagas coming down through history.  I feel it is natural that writers, when they begin and cast around for a ‘story’, will make use of such anecdotes – and quite right too.

However when we are writing a story that will stand alone as true fiction, the familiar anecdote can only stand as one element, as one strand of certainty which might give the fiction authenticity.

Our story becomes literature, it becomes fiction, when we take liberties with it, when we play about with the probabilities, when we invest it with imaginative insight and set our fantasies flying.

It becomes fiction when we strive to meet the challenge of finding the precise, right words to express the action, the setting and the atmosphere of this new story which will take wings and make for the writer and the reader a new literary reality.

It becomes fiction when we shape it with elegance, when the story arc is taut and true. Interestingly enough part of that truth can be the anecdote - the fireside story - that first inspired the writer to take the leap into fiction.

Having just launched our Room To Write Short Story Competition we are hoping the some of the entries will be taut and true and the same time great fiction.

Links for You...

To listen the Avril and me discussing to and fro on these points and many others click  my Soundcloud link 

Click here to see The Room to Write Short Story Competition  

Read Avril Joy on  ‘StartingSmall - Short Story Competitions': 

Read me on 'Setting About High Quality Editing for Short Story Competitions'  

Read me on: 'What is your Short Story About?' 

Click for 'The Romancer' here    

Click for Forms of Flight: 27 Short Stories here