Complementing my daily blog interviews, today’s Author Spotlight, the one hundred and eighty-third, is of novelist, non-fiction author, Flash Fiction Friday contributor and interviewee Joy V Smith.
Joy V. Smith has enjoyed reading (starting with her parents’ books and then discovering the library) and writing (making her own little books) since she was a kid. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh with a BA in English and now lives in Florida (not retired).
And now from the author herself:
I write fiction and non-fiction, including interviews. Now and then I discover an author, artist, or editor that I find especially interesting. I’ve interviewed Michael Conrad and J. P. Targete (artists) and Vincent Miskell, G. Miki Hayden, Janet Fox, Lyn McConchie, Hal Colebatch, and Matthew Joseph Harrington (authors and editors), among others. (I discovered Hal Colebatch’s and Matthew Harrington’s stories in the Man-Kzin Wars anthology series created by Larry Niven, and I tracked them down to interview them. They’re great writers–see my Man-Kzin Wars reviews–and great guys.)
My non-fiction also includes the book I wrote after building my first house: Building a Cool House for Hot Times without Scorching the Pocketbook. (I lived on site with Xena, my Boxer cross, and kept a diary since I had the time, and I took the opportunity to learn lots of interesting stuff from the contractors.)
My fiction includes children’s stories and romance, but my favorite genre is science fiction, which has been published in magazines, anthologies, and two audiobooks, including Sugar Time (available from Hadrosaur Productions). The anthogies include Magistria: The Realm of the Sorcerer, The Ghost in the Gazebo, and WomanScapes.
Then I discovered ebooks, and I could find new homes for some of my old stories, and I wrote a book about the house we remodeled: Remodeling: Buying and Updating a Foreclosure. My science fiction ebooks are: Hidebound, Pretty Pink Planet, and Hot Yellow Planet (the sequel to Pretty Pink Planet). I also collected earlier stories (reprints mostly) in The Doorway and Other Stories. Plus some of my stories are collected in Aliens, Animals, and Adventure, which is available in print from Anthology Builder. I was grateful for the opportunity to get stories and their sequels together in both collections.
And then I discovered NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing month). Though I’d written a couple novellas, I had never ventured into novel territory. EEK! They’re too long!! (Which explains all the sequels I wrote.) But NaNoWriMo gave me the incentive to tackle the long stories percolating in my mind, and now I’m up to four! Detour Trail was my third novel, though it’s the first one to be published. Two (science fiction) are waiting patiently on editors’ desks, and one (science fiction) is waiting impatiently for me to start the rewrite.
You can find more about Joy and her writing via…
Joy’s ebooks:
***
If you would like to take part in an author spotlight, take a look at http://morgenbailey.wordpress.com/submission-information/opportunities-on-this-blog or email me for details.
** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!
See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0
or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **
You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel, which is being serialised on Novel Nights In!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.
For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.
As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do. I welcome items for critique for the online writing groups listed below:
Morgen’s Online Non-Fiction Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Novel Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Poetry Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Script Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Short Story Writing Group
We look forward to reading your comments.
Tags: agent, Amazon, author, author interview, author spotlight, Barnes & Noble, Barnes and Noble, biographers, biography, blogger, blogging, books, characters, children’s, copyediting, copyeditor, copywriter, copywriting, cozy mysteries, creative writing, crime, crime series, crime thriller, crime thrillers, critique, critique groups, debut novel, editing, editor, erotic romance, erotica, Facebook, fantasy, fantasy horror, fantasy writer, feedback, fellow authors, fiction, fiction author, five senses, flash fiction, Goodreads, grammar skills, guest blog, guest blog post, guest post, historical, historical author, historical writer, horror novel, indie, interview, interview with writer, interviewees, Joy Smith, Joy V Smith, Kobo, LinkedIn, literature, memoirist, Morgan Bailey, morgen bailey, Morgen with an e, multi-genre, murder mysteries, murder mystery, mystery author, mystery series, mystery suspense, non-fiction, Northampton, novelist, novelists, novels, open mic nights, paranormal, paranormal romance, paranormal romances, pinterest, poetry, poetry collections, poetry slams, pseudonyms, publisher, publishing, query letters, reading books, red pen, rejection letter, rejection letters, rejections, rhyming poetry, romance, romance fantasy, romance writer, science fiction, scriptwriters, second person viewpoint, self-publishing, short stories, short story group, Smashwords, story a day, Story A Day May, story author, story authors, story collections, story writer, submissions, suspense novelist, travel memoir, travel writer, Twitter, vampire, Waterstones, western, western author, Wordpress, writer, writer interview, writing, writing competitions, writing events, writing fiction, writing group, writing magazines, writing novels, writing poetry, YA, young adult novels, youtube
Most of the posts on this blog are guest-related but this is my little corner where I say what I’ve been up to and this week I’ve had a very busy few days, and have a few coming up…
Courses
- Lodger no.1 (Evie) and I spent a long weekend in Scotland at crime novelist and short story author and interviewee Graham Smith’s wonderful crime-writing weekend. Having written four novels of various genres (a lad lit, a mystery, a chick lit, another lad lit) I then wrote two crime novels so am settling into this genre, spurred on by agent Judith Murdoch looking me square in the face (when I was pitching my chick lit at the 2011 Winchester Writer’s Conference) and saying, “You’re a crime writer, you need to write crime.” It turns out I do.
Interviews
Speaking
Another course
Award-winning feature film writer-producer Brendan Foley and Hollywood writer-performer Shelly Goldstein are running three courses in London this week (see http://www.filmfoley.com/?page_id=461):
- Write A Script That Sells
(Monday 18 March, 9.45am to 5.00pm) – only a few places left
- Features Journalism (
Wednesday 20 March, 9.45am to 5.00pm) – I’m going to this one!
- Comedy Screenwriting
(Thursday 21 March, 9.45am to 5.00pm) – only a few places left
Coming up
- I was due to go and see Kate Atkinson (who anyone who’s read any of the interviews of me will know she’s my favourite living author) near Oxford on Monday but I checked too late for tickets and it was sold out. Needless to say, I’m gutted. She’s then dotted all around the country so I’ll have another look at maybe have a day or two away.
- I have an interview for a creative writing teaching job on the 25th! Some would be nervous but I can’t wait. I sent an example 10-week lesson plan with my completed application form, and my interview letter says I’ll be doing a 10-minute lesson during my interview so I’m already planning it and having great fun.
- And I’m doing Camp NaNoWriMo for the first time in April.
Free publicity
- From next weekend I’m upping the author spotlights from three evenings a week to every weekday so if you have a book (or two – it’s more about you than your books) you’d like to promote, for free, then do email me (morgen@morgenbailey.com).
Submissions
There are other options (see http://morgenbailey.wordpress.com/submission-information/opportunities-on-this-blog) but those are the two I’m actively looking for content for.
***
** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!
See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0
or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **
You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel, which is being serialised on Novel Nights In!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.
For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.
As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do. If there’s anything you’d like to take part in, take a look at Opportunities on this blog.
I welcome items for critique for the online writing groups listed below:
Morgen’s Online Non-Fiction Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Novel Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Poetry Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Script Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Short Story Writing Group
We look forward to reading your comments.
Tags: 5pm fiction, agent, Amazon, author, author interview, author spotlight, Barnes & Noble, Barnes and Noble, biographers, biography, blogger, blogging, books, characters, children’s, copyediting, copyeditor, copywriter, copywriting, cozy mysteries, creative writing, crime, crime series, crime thriller, crime thrillers, critique, critique groups, debut novel, editing, editor, erotic romance, erotica, Facebook, fantasy, fantasy horror, fantasy writer, feedback, fellow authors, fiction, fiction author, five senses, flash fiction, Goodreads, grammar skills, guest blog, guest blog post, guest post, haiku poem, historical, historical author, historical writer, horror novel, indie, interview, interview with writer, interviewees, Kobo, LinkedIn, literature, memoirist, Morgan Bailey, morgen bailey, Morgen with an e, multi-genre, murder mysteries, murder mystery, mystery author, mystery series, mystery suspense, non-fiction, Northampton, novelist, novelists, novels, open mic nights, paranormal, paranormal romance, paranormal romances, pinterest, poetry, poetry collections, poetry exercises, poetry slams, pseudonyms, publisher, publishing, query letters, reading books, red pen, rejection letter, rejection letters, rejections, rhyming poetry, romance, romance fantasy, romance writer, science fiction, scriptwriters, second person viewpoint, self-publishing, shelly goldstein, short stories, short story group, Smashwords, story a day, Story A Day May, story author, story authors, story collections, story writer, submissions, suspense novelist, suspense thriller, travel memoir, travel writer, Twitter, vampire, Waterstones, western, western author, Wordpress, writer, writer interview, writing, writing competitions, writing events, writing exercises, writing fiction, writing group, writing magazines, writing novels, writing poetry, writing prompts, YA, young adult novels, youtube
Complementing the full interviews on this blog, which will be dropping to weekend mornings from mid-March, another new interview on my interview-only blog has been posted! The (640+) interviews from this blog are there already so there’s plenty to read.
The latest interview on the new blog is with non-fiction author Kerry Dwyer and can be read in full at http://morgensauthorinterviews.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/author-interview-with-non-fiction-writer-kerry-dwyer.
***
If you are reading this and you write, in whatever genre, and are thinking “ooh, I’d like to do this” then you can… just email me and I’ll send you the information. They do now (January 2013) carry a fee (£10 / €12.50 / $15) for the new interviews on this blog but everything else (see Opportunities on this blog) is free.
Alternatively, if you’d like a free Q&A-only interview, I now have http://morgensauthorinterviews.wordpress.com on which I’ve rerun the original interviews posted here then posted new interviews which I then reblog here. These interviews are Q&A only, so I don’t add in my comments but they do get exposure on both sites.
If you go for the interview, it’s very simple; I send you a questionnaire (I have them for novelists, short story authors, children’s authors, non-fiction authors, and poets). You complete the questions, and I let you know when it’s going to go live. Before it does so, I add in comments as if we’re chatting, and then they get posted. When that’s done, I email you with the link so you can share it with your corner of the literary world. And if you have a writing-related blog / podcast and would like to interview me… let me know.
** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!
See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0
or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **
You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel, which is being serialised on Novel Nights In!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.
For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.
As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do. I welcome items for critique for the online writing groups listed below:
Morgen’s Online Non-Fiction Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Novel Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Poetry Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Script Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Short Story Writing Group
We look forward to reading your comments.
Tags: 5pm fiction, agent, Amazon, author, author interview, author spotlight, Barnes & Noble, Barnes and Noble, biographers, biography, blogger, blogging, books, characters, children’s, copyediting, copyeditor, copywriter, copywriting, cozy mysteries, creative writing, crime, crime series, crime thriller, crime thrillers, critique, critique groups, debut novel, editing, editor, erotic romance, erotica, Facebook, fantasy, fantasy horror, fantasy writer, feedback, fellow authors, fiction, fiction author, five senses, flash fiction, Goodreads, grammar skills, guest blog, guest blog post, guest post, historical, historical author, historical writer, horror novel, indie, interview, interview with writer, interviewees, Kerry Dwyer, Kobo, LinkedIn, literature, memoirist, Morgan Bailey, morgen bailey, Morgen with an e, multi-genre, murder mysteries, murder mystery, mystery author, mystery series, mystery suspense, non-fiction, Northampton, novelist, novelists, novels, open mic nights, paranormal, paranormal romance, paranormal romances, pinterest, poetry, poetry collections, poetry slams, pseudonyms, publisher, publishing, query letters, reading books, red pen, rejection letter, rejection letters, rejections, rhyming poetry, romance, romance fantasy, romance writer, science fiction, scriptwriters, second person viewpoint, self-publishing, short stories, short story group, Smashwords, story a day, Story A Day May, story author, story authors, story collections, story writer, submissions, suspense novelist, travel memoir, travel writer, Twitter, vampire, Waterstones, western, western author, Wordpress, writer, writer interview, writing, writing competitions, writing events, writing fiction, writing group, writing magazines, writing novels, writing poetry, writing prompts, YA, young adult novels, youtube
Tonight’s blog post, on the topic of blogging is brought to you by me.
To blog or not to blog, and how to do it
By the time you read this, I’ll be on my way to (or possibly at, I like to be early) The Poetry Cafe, Covent Garden (London) to do a talk about blogging for the lovely Agnes Meadows and Loose Muse. Seeing as many of you live outside the UK, or do live here but won’t be there, I thought I’d share my notes with you. I hope they’re useful / interesting. Because I mostly use WordPress I’ll be primarily referring to that ‘platform’…
A Blog: Why start one?
- You write and want to tell people that you exist;
- Writing blogs are usually read by other writers and readers and it provides you with a community;
- You’d like to invite other writers to take part in your site;
- You want to provide useful information to others;
- You want to sell your writing and you know you need an outlet.
What do you have to say?
- You want to share your writing – put up poems, short stories, novel extracts, non-fiction pieces;
- You’re writing your first novel and want to let others know how you’re doing;
- You surf the net and find articles of interest want to share the links;
- You want to learn about writing so you have guests discussing various topics.
Specific or general?
- Should you make it general (you as a writer plus your other hobbies etc.), one topic e.g. you as a writer, or even more specific and be just about your book.
- It depends.
- If you’re a writer and, say, a painter then you capture two audiences.
- I’m consumed by fiction so I made my first blog (http://morgenbailey.wordpress.com) writing-related and some visitors already find it overwhelming without adding anything else.
- I have five writing group blogs where I post four 15-minute writing exercises (poetry and story prompts) every weekday and guest content (for feedback) when I receive it at the weekends.
- I also have a blog where I post a short story a day.
- Two sites (one WordPress and one Blogspot) just carries the interviews I’ve been doing and they post at 6am and 6pm each day, the WordPress current and Blogspot c. a month behind.
- I have also just started a blog which is just about me and my writing because although I am active on the other blogs, the emphasis is about my guests not me, although it’s certainly done no harm in getting my name out there – hence me being at The Poetry Café (thank you, Agnes!).
Why I started one
- I’m infamous for ‘cutting a short story long’ (although most of my short stories actually end up as flash fictions!) so I won’t go into detail but basically, I had a website (http://morgenbailey.com) that wasn’t doing much (it still isn’t actually as it just points to the blog). I’d heard blogging was a good idea and then I was volunteering at Oundle Literature Festival mid-March 2011 and one of the speakers (philosopher Nigel Warburton) said he had 1,000 hits to his blog a day. I thought, “I want some of that” (or something to that effect) so my blog was born two weeks later. My best day, by the way, was last Thursday (7th March) with 551 hits so I’m half-way. And how did I get 551 hits (when it’s normally 200+)? I don’t have a clue. 242 of those were within an hour (9am-10am UK time) and I didn’t do anything special. That day’s interview had gone up at 7am, an American author who was still asleep, so he wasn’t touting it so I’ll never know, but with over 2,000 posts of varying topics on the blog there’s plenty for people to choose from.
- So, to the content, I started a bit of everything (mentioned above); writing-related things that interested me and a bit about my writing. I’ve been writing since being hooked at a college evening course in 2005. When I started the blog I was already interviewing other authors on my podcast but they’d take up a day to record, edit and upload so I did one or two a month. Then in June 2011 when I was invited to do a text interview, via email… light bulb moment. I could do as many as I liked. So I didn’t take on any more for the podcast but devised a questionnaire and put shout-outs online for authors. And they came flooding in. Late last year I had a nine-month backlog, which (at one interview a day) was crazy, so I created an interview-only blog, posted three a day and am now up-to-date.
- Once I started posting the interviews, other items developed; author spotlights, guest blogs, guest flash fiction / poetry / novels in instalments, competition / submission / event information. You name it, it’s on there (if it’s not, let me know!).
How often should you post something?
- At least once a week. You don’t have to do what I do and post 3-4 times a day because you’d have no life and really, would you have enough to say? I don’t – I get everyone else to do it for me.
- The advantage of having so many guests involved is that they give me the content and they are always so appreciative of having a platform to share the news about their latest book.
When should you post something?
- Probably without exception, most of your traffic will come from the United States so you’d want to post your items at a time that will catch most viewers. I post interviews at 7am so it catches late night US traffic and pre-work UK traffic then another post (or two) in the evening to catch the US lunch-timers and UK evening traffic. It also means that most posts are at the top of the home page for 12 hours meaning everyone gets a chance to see it. I have menus at the top of the blog so the links to everything I post is accessible. This helps visitors, guests and I get to keep a track of who’s doing what when. It also fits in with my ‘working day’, although it’s easy to post items in advance.
Which platform (host) do you choose?
- I have nine WordPress blogs, one Blogspot (Blogger), and a Weebly site. I also build (and maintain) blogs for other writers, so you can guess which one I recommend.
The advantages of WordPress include:
- automatic posting to social networks (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Yahoo Groups and Tumblr). It’s worth joining all those just to have your posts mentioned there;
- you can have as many ‘tag’ keywords as you wish whereas Blogspot limit to 200 characters, which is about 30 words. Keywords are very important because it’s how Google searches pick up on your posts. And use keywords that people are likely to search by.
- Some people find Blogspot and Weebly easier to use (Weebly is probably the simplest because it’s quite limited – you don’t even get a search box on the free version) but like anything it just takes practice.
This takes me neatly on to my next point…
How much does it cost?
- It can cost nothing. To-date I’ve posted over 2,000 items on the mixed blog and 700 interviews on the interview blog and various on other blogs and it’s not cost me a penny. All the WordPress blogs have ‘WordPress’ domain names e.g. http://morgenbailey.wordpress.com, which some authors wouldn’t want. For around $20 a year you can choose your own domain name. I didn’t because by keeping http://morgenbailey.com I have two sites for internet users to find me. I may change this as you can’t put any advertising on the free versions, or you can let WordPress put advertising but it would be their choice. They can (and technically do) that already but I’ve only ever spotted one item on a random (old) post and I can’t even remember what it was for.
So, how do you compile your blog?
- There are two ways of creating your blog; (1) you could have a static front ‘home’ page, like a website, and moving blog page or (2) a rolling home page and static other pages. I favour the latter because at least half of my visitors go to the home page so readers want new content, and most of my posts are guest related so they want to see their pieces proudly displayed.
- I won’t go into how you actually compile a post because that’s a topic for another talk but it’s basically; text, pictures, and links on the main input area, tick-box categories (for example, short stories, novels, poetry, eBooks so visitors can select posts just for those topics if they wish) and the ‘tag’ keywords I mentioned earlier. Then when it’s ready you can post it there and then or schedule it for a later time / date.
Pros and Cons
- PROS: I’ve already mentioned a blog as giving an outlet to not only yourself but to other writers and out of the 760+ authors I’ve interviewed, I’d say 95% of them give ‘marketing’ as their answer to ‘What’s your least favourite aspect of your writing life?’ (their ‘favourite’ is usually the same as mine; the creating process; we are writers after all). Marketing is seen as a necessary evil with self-published authors knowing that they have to do all the work and traditionally published author still have to do the majority because their publishers don’t have the budget to invest. I’ve only had two authors say their publisher does all their marketing but those authors are still active online (Twitter, Facebook etc). It’s part of the ‘job’.
- CONS: Is there a downside to blogging? Not really. If like me, it takes over your life, then that could be seen as a downside time-wise, and it has affected my writing, or lack of it, but it’s been a wonderful experience and I’ve ‘met’ SO many people (authors, editors, agents, publishers, readers) because of it and other than a better balance of blog-time and writing-time, I wouldn’t change a thing.
***
If you would like to write a writing-related guest post for my blog then feel free to email me with an outline of what you would like to write about. There are other options listed here.
** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!
See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0
or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **
You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel, which is being serialised on Novel Nights In!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.
For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.
As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do. If there’s anything you’d like to take part in, take a look at Opportunities on this blog.
I welcome items for critique for the online writing groups listed below:
Morgen’s Online Non-Fiction Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Novel Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Poetry Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Script Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Short Story Writing Group
We look forward to reading your comments.
Tags: 5pm fiction, agent, Amazon, author, author interview, author spotlight, Barnes & Noble, Barnes and Noble, biographers, biography, blog, blogger, blogging, books, characters, children’s, copyediting, copyeditor, copywriter, copywriting, cozy mysteries, creative writing, crime, crime series, crime thriller, crime thrillers, critique, critique groups, debut novel, editing, editor, erotic romance, erotica, Facebook, fantasy, fantasy horror, fantasy writer, feedback, fellow authors, fiction, fiction author, five senses, flash fiction, Goodreads, grammar skills, guest blog, guest blog post, guest post, haiku poem, historical, historical author, historical writer, horror novel, indie, interview, interview with writer, interviewees, Kobo, LinkedIn, literature, memoirist, Morgan Bailey, morgen bailey, Morgen with an e, multi-genre, murder mysteries, murder mystery, mystery author, mystery series, mystery suspense, non-fiction, Northampton, novelist, novelists, novels, open mic nights, paranormal, paranormal romance, paranormal romances, pinterest, poetry, poetry collections, poetry exercises, poetry slams, pseudonyms, publisher, publishing, query letters, reading books, red pen, rejection letter, rejection letters, rejections, rhyming poetry, romance, romance fantasy, romance writer, science fiction, scriptwriters, second person viewpoint, self-publishing, short stories, short story group, Smashwords, story a day, Story A Day May, story author, story authors, story collections, story writer, submissions, suspense novelist, travel memoir, travel writer, Twitter, vampire, Waterstones, western, western author, Wordpress, writer, writer interview, writing, writing competitions, writing events, writing exercises, writing fiction, writing group, writing magazines, writing novels, writing poetry, writing prompts, YA, young adult novels, youtube
Welcome to the newest slot on my blog, the Sunday night Novel Nights In where I bring you guests’ novels in their entirety over a maximum of ten weeks. Tonight’s is the ninth, and final, instalment of the first novel in this series and features the conclusion of a novel by literary author, poet and interviewee Rose Mary Boehm.
For shorter pieces I would run the story then talk more about it afterwards but because this is a longer post (8,630 words), here is an introduction to Rose then the seventh part of her novel…
A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm now lives and works in Lima, Peru. Two novels (‘Coming Up For Air’ and the follow-up ‘The Telling’) have been published in the UK, as well as a poetry collection (‘Tangents’). Her latest poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in US poetry reviews. Among others: Toe Good Poetry, Poetry Breakfast, Burning Word, Muddy River Review, Pale Horse Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Other Rooms, Requiem Magazine, Full of Crow, Poetry Quarterly, Punchnel’s, Verse Wisconsin, Naugatuck Poetry Review (contest semi-finalist), Avatar…
Her poem ‘Miss Worthington’ won third price in the coveted Margaret Reid Poetry Contest: http://winningwriters.com/contests/margaret/2009/ma09_epaminondas.php
You can find out more about Rose and her writing at her blog: http://houseboathouse.blogspot.com, and you can also read one of Rose’s short stories on http://shortstorywritinggroup.wordpress.com/2013/01/12/short-story-for-critique-003-mrs-boffa-by-rose-mary-boehm.
Coming Up For Air
A young girl’s struggle to take control of her life – click to read Book I: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. Book 2: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. Book 3: Part 1 and Part 2. If you don’t want to wait the 10 weeks for the whole story, you can purchase Coming Up for Air at Amazon.com (just $2.95) Amazon.co.uk (only £1.87). The rest of the ‘adventures of Annie’ can be read in THE TELLING.
***
Book III: Spitting against the Wind (conclusion)
50
June was gently warm and mostly sunny. Auntie Eeva took me on that promised trip. I was enchanted by everything I saw and, for the first time in my life, stayed in hotels and felt suitably grand. The hotel in Tampere gave onto the main street. After having returned to our room, tired from sightseeing and feeding hundreds of little red squirrels in Tampere park, we noticed a commotion in the street. People – not many – were beginning to converge on the pavements just below our window, most with little red flags in their hands, moving them from time to time without much enthusiasm. I had of course no idea what this was about, and Auntie Eeva hadn’t read the papers either since we left Helsinki. We opened the window to see better, when the voices became more excited, the flags a little more animated, faces turned all in one direction and the first black limousine came slowly into view. Low and behold, there were Bulganin and Khrushchev together with an extensive protective entourage in their huge, black limos during one leg of their much announced visit to Finland. “Pathetic”, mumbled Auntie Eeva. I looked at her hoping for an explanation which promptly came: “Pathetic. Did you see the ‘masses of workers’ receiving them? As I told you, there is no love lost between the Russians and the Finns. Some tired red flags in the fists of some workers they probably paid to be here this afternoon, by tomorrow, cleverly photographed, will make the few seem many, grace the front pages of the international press, telling us that the visit has been a total success and that the ‘Finnish workers received the guests from Russia with great affection’. Pathetic!”
*
Before we leave to spend the summer on my cousin’s island, it’s Sibelius Week in Helsinki (a yearly event) and Cousin Magnus indeed asks me to join him and his family at Helsinki’s Messhallen to enjoy one of the concerts. The programme Magnus gives me is in Swedish, but it’s easy to understand that the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra from Amsterdam under Edward van Beinum will be playing Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s fourth, Claude Debussy’s ‘La Mer’ and Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony. Just before the concert is to start, an older, tall, distinguished man with glasses takes his seat not far from where we sit, and Magnus whispers with some awe, “Kekkonen, our president.” As a hush falls over the audience, the first bars from Mendelssohn’s ‘Italian’ symphony fill the hall. At the end of the concert the audience gives Edward van Beinum a standing ovation who, after a decent interval of seeming hesitation, indicates that they’ll ‘give in’. We all sit down again expectantly. The encore is Sibelius’ tone poem ‘Finlandia’. Never before has it moved me so much, and I look around discreetly to see tears not only in Magnus’ eyes. Next to me sits an elderly American tourist who, having slept throughout the concert, is trying to figure out what’s going on.
We finally get ready to leave during the last week of June. Father had told me about his stay on the island and how he had enjoyed the summer with his cousins (my uncles) and their friends, when my cousin Helvi was just a little girl. Auntie Eeva and I pack (“don’t forget to take some warm clothes and a cardigan for the evenings…”) for a couple of months of summer. On the bus to Tammissaari, where Helvi will pick us up, Auntie Eeva tells me about her Tammissaari island summer house. They built it just for ‘Mummy’, and every year she spends around three months with Helvi, Helvi’s husband and the grandchildren, being fussed over and having absolutely nothing to do but walk, sit on her terrace and read, go to the sauna. “Oh,” she shuts her eyes, “this bus takes forever. I can’t wait!”
She tells me that I’ll be staying in the ‘sauna flat’ and that the boathouse is always reserved for an old friend of the family, Armas Vuoristo, who joins them every year for at least one month if not two – July and / or August. “You’ll like him. He’s quite a character.”
*
Helvi was a tall woman with short curly hair, still brown but greying everywhere, clearly not cut to be fashionable but to be efficient and no bother. Her kind brown eyes were big and round and easily took on an astonished expression as though constantly surprised by what she saw and heard around her. She had a full mouth that was quick to smile. Her strong hands were those of a woman who uses them to make, to do. She wore mostly dresses, the simple, no-fuss kind, and sometimes, when we were working in the fields or making hey, old baggy trousers, held up by braces, into which she carelessly stuffed one of Seppo’s shirts.
I soon became (and delightedly so) part of that especially gorgeous summer’s island life. What once had been a ‘gentleman’s farm’ had been transformed into a working farm by Helvi’s husband Seppo, who was somewhat shorter than Helvi, balding and grey, always in overalls and walking with a pronounced limp which didn’t seem to bother him much. I was fascinated by two rather big tufts of grey hair growing from his nostrils and the fact that he’d only shave on Saturdays.
The big farmhouse, the typical Finnish dark red offset with white, was the place where everyone tended to congregate for breakfast. Lunch and supper were simple affairs for most of us, but Helvi would take special care of Auntie Eeva and often send one of her boys with a tray to ‘Mummy’s little house’. Well, ‘little’ was not exactly a word I’d have used for a beautiful wooden house of perhaps 100 square metres, a good-size terrace and an old-fashioned flower garden, surrounded by a mix of pine trees and birches where I would often eat with her to keep her company.
The first time Auntie Eeva and I had lunch together on the island, she grinned and poked me with her elbow: “A long way from two useless women who can’t cook…”
Very soon after my arrival in Helsinki I had admitted to my aunt that I couldn’t cook either, and we had decided to learn together, reading cookery books and trying out recipes. We had encountered some problems when we’d tried to clean a chicken and quarter it with the help of a pair of rose clippers; on another occasion we wondered how best to prepare small herrings I had bought from one of the little boats anchored in the market place (take out the innards, get rid of the scales, yuk!); and once we tried to bake a cake – another dismal failure. But both of us got slowly better at it as the weeks passed, and we’d had a lot of fun. In the kitchen we cemented our unlikely friendship. Auntie Eeva was always ready to laugh at herself and generally see the funny side of things, and I found that in me the ‘laughter strings’ resonated and my natural silly sense of humour, up to now a bit starved, was allowed to blossom.
It was as though I was growing ‘into myself’, as if, up to now, I had not known how to match myself to myself. And deep, deep inside I timidly began to believe that perhaps I could be attractive and loveable.
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Welcome to the newest slot on my blog, the Sunday night Novel Nights In where I bring you guests’ novels in their entirety over a maximum of ten weeks. Tonight’s is the eighth, and penultimate, instalment of the first novel in this series and features the second section of Book 3 (of three) of a novel by literary author, poet and interviewee Rose Mary Boehm.
For shorter pieces I would run the story then talk more about it afterwards but because this is a longer post (10,276 words), here is an introduction to Rose then the seventh part of her novel…
A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm now lives and works in Lima, Peru. Two novels (‘Coming Up For Air’ and the follow-up ‘The Telling’) have been published in the UK, as well as a poetry collection (‘Tangents’). Her latest poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in US poetry reviews. Among others: Toe Good Poetry, Poetry Breakfast, Burning Word, Muddy River Review, Pale Horse Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Other Rooms, Requiem Magazine, Full of Crow, Poetry Quarterly, Punchnel’s, Verse Wisconsin, Naugatuck Poetry Review (contest semi-finalist), Avatar…
Her poem ‘Miss Worthington’ won third price in the coveted Margaret Reid Poetry Contest: http://winningwriters.com/contests/margaret/2009/ma09_epaminondas.php
You can find out more about Rose and her writing at her blog: http://houseboathouse.blogspot.com, and you can also read one of Rose’s short stories on http://shortstorywritinggroup.wordpress.com/2013/01/12/short-story-for-critique-003-mrs-boffa-by-rose-mary-boehm.
Coming Up For Air
A young girl’s struggle to take control of her life – click to read Book I: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. Book 2: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. Book 3: Part 1. If you don’t want to wait the 10 weeks for the whole story, you can purchase Coming Up for Air at Amazon.com (just $2.95) Amazon.co.uk (only £1.87). The rest of the ‘adventures of Annie’ can be read in THE TELLING.
***
Book III: Spitting against the Wind (part 2)
47
“You slut!” my mother spits from where she stands, under the lamppost right by the front door of Udo’s building. My heart misses a beat, my stomach tightens into the familiar knot, and my first thought is ‘Thank God that Udo didn’t come down with me’.
Her face is drawn, angry, almost defeated. “You slut!” she repeats when she pulls me by my arm and then pushes me in the direction of the tram stop. “What did he pay you? That dirty old fornicator. Did you know he’s married? He has a reputation in town. Go on, walk!” She suddenly lets go of me and almost runs ahead, not even turning back. I follow her. What else can I do? Right now I feel neither very joyous, clever nor particularly grown up or even surprised. In my letter to Ruth I had seen it coming, hadn’t I? Mother’s rigid back speaks of fury, bitterness, hurt, and something I dare not recognise so that I won’t give in to loving her: sadness and vulnerability.
*
I deliberately remember all those times Mother has killed my happiness, cut my wings, sat in the kitchen waiting, bitter, resentful, putting down my friends, insinuating that I was guilty of the most terrible crimes, calling me names, physically pulling me out of harmless parties, sniffing me to detect what … cigarettes, alcohol and perhaps sex, too. No, I am not going to love her, especially after what she did today.
When we get home, Father is waiting in his study. Before joining him I go to my room, leave my coat and bag on a chair, then I walk into the study and sit down. Strange that now I don’t feel angry or even afraid but rather a little sad and forlorn. It’s no longer the same as it would have been only yesterday. Today I am no longer his little girl, today I am a confident young women and beginning to suspect who I may be one day.
Mother stands in the doorway, having put on her suffering face. “She’s all yours, Father. I picked her up from a man’s apartment. I don’t know what to do any longer. Your daughter is a slut.”
Father looks at his wife, then at me, then into a space only he can see. I take the initiative: “Father, we can’t go on like this. I am on my way to being 19 years old. Well, whatever. I am a woman, no longer your little girl. I love you, but you have had your lives. I have to grow into mine. I really don’t know how you two have managed, neither do I want to know. But tell your wife to stay out of my hair from now on. Just because I have to live at home doesn’t give her – or you – the right to treat me like a five-year old. Perhaps you mean well, but you’re screwing up. What I do may not be what you would do, but you aren’t me.
“Father, the best thing for everyone is that I move out and on. That I get as far away as possible from both of you. That will give you peace and allows me a breathing space. I need your permission, I know that legally I am not yet ‘grown up’. But you can see that that’s the best solution, can’t you?” I run out of breath and all of a sudden feel empty.
I can’t read my father’s expression. Could he be holding back tears? Mother has come into the study and is sitting on the sofa, her elbows on the table, face in her hands. My father clears his throat and says with an effort: “Perhaps this would be the best solution. Your mother has suffered enough. I’ll think about it.” I feel dismissed and go to my room, closing the door behind me. My legs won’t quite carry me. I kick of my new shoes and sit down. Will they let me go? And if they do, what will I do?
*
Udo and I no longer saw each other. We had some clandestine meetings, mostly in restaurants, bars or coffee shops, which left us feeling miserable and frustrated. I had made a discovery and wanted to repeat the experience. Still, very soon, to my surprise, I began to enjoy the fact that our relationship no longer included much time spent together (even Udo understood that he couldn’t go back to besieging me at the Austerlitz studios) and we both knew that surreptitious, hush-hush lovemaking was an impossibility. His attentions, though, now intense and full of unspoken need, were exactly what made my heart beat faster. To be wanted, longed for, without having to give, seemed enough right now and, cowardly, I used Mother as the perfect excuse.
Ruthie, my dearest friend, you haven’t written. Whine, whine. I suppose you, too, are busy investigating life. In your last letter you said you didn’t want to write too explicitly because you thought my mother would read your letters as she always read everything else, even my diary… don’t worry. She doesn’t open letters any more before she gives them to me. We had a big row about that! And when I’ve read your letters I burn them on the terrace. Once – with her sense of smell she should have been born a Doberman Pincher – she must have detected an atom of smoke, opened the kitchen window, leaned out and called over to me where I was doing my ‘Ruthie-ritual’ on the veranda and wanted to know what I was up to. So I told her I was burning my love letters on a regular basis. She was not amused.
Strangest thing happened: I had an orgasm the other day. Don’t laugh. I’ve never known what it would be like. You know perfectly well that sex for me was just a little boring and I didn’t know why. Sometimes it was quite enjoyable, but never quite, you know… When you said how your Rolf was making you feel, I was envious. For me it was the only way to getting hugged and cuddled, just the price I had to pay. I suppose it was about getting tenderness, touching, and feeling good about myself. But the other day, with Udo out of all people, I suddenly understood the world. Well, what makes people want to make love. I can now imagine that it can get sort of addictive, can’t it? The weird thing is that it only happened when he couldn’t be ‘good Udo’ any longer, but became passionate, intense, ‘can’t wait bad Udo’. Do you think that my Wolf experience has made me into a pervert?
But that’s just part of the story. My old spoilsport mother had followed us and waited for me when I came down from his flat. She called him names, called me ‘a slut’, and when we got home there was Father, all quiet and upset. She handed me over, indirectly accusing him that ‘his slutty daughter’ was all his fault and he’d better deal with the situation. You know my father, he doesn’t deal with anything, really (well, he ‘dealt’ with Führing that day, but that’s the only time I have seen him in action). The situation at home is becoming unbearable. Christ, why aren’t I 21 yet? Then I can do what I want anyway, but I can’t wait any longer. I want out now. I told them both that I think it’s time I left. Better for them – they don’t have to get so upset about their misfit daughter any more – and better for me because I can start to find out who I really am when I don’t have to be so revolting (ha!).
I’ll be keeping you abreast (one for me, and one for you – please smile) of the situation. Write! Your orgasmic friend, Anne.
*
The situation at home had already deteriorated before I joined the paper. As the result of the last exhibition with the local artist group, the town had offered me a scholarship to attend the renowned school for graphic design in a neighbouring city. When it had dawned on me that they would only pay for tuition, books and materials, I had refused the grant knowing that I would be in Mother’s clutches for the years of study. Every time I’d asked her for money, she had given it to me with conditions. And every time I felt I’d sold my soul. Mother never understood my refusal and I never explained. But she never quite forgave me for ‘throwing my future onto the dung heap’. So I didn’t hold out much hope for a solution to something that seemed to be only my problem.
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Not a lot to report for this week. I’ve been tied up with blogging and emails (nothing unusual there).
The Online Writing Groups are ticking over although I could do with more submissions! Ditto for Flash Fiction Fridays.
The main news is that I have today created a new blog, which unlike all my others, is all about me!
During 2013 (and beyond) I shall be concentrating on my writing (not difficult as I’ve hardly done anything but blogging / emailing since I quit my job March 2012).
There’s not a lot to see yet but do take a look at…
http://morgenbaileywriter.wordpress.com
I will be adding more content to it, no guest items (sorry but there are plenty of opportunities on this blog), but more about what I’m up to and most importantly, what I’m writing!
I look forward to seeing you there.
Tags: agent, Amazon, author, author interview, author spotlight, Barnes & Noble, Barnes and Noble, biographers, biography, blogger, blogging, books, characters, children’s, copyediting, copyeditor, copywriter, copywriting, cozy mysteries, creative writing, crime, crime series, crime thriller, crime thrillers, critique, critique groups, debut novel, editing, editor, erotic romance, erotica, Facebook, fantasy, fantasy horror, fantasy writer, feedback, fellow authors, fiction, fiction author, flash fiction, Goodreads, grammar skills, guest blog, guest blog post, guest post, historical, historical author, historical writer, horror novel, indie, interview, interview with writer, interviewees, Kobo, LinkedIn, literature, Morgan Bailey, morgen bailey, Morgen with an e, multi-genre, murder mysteries, murder mystery, mystery author, mystery series, mystery suspense, non-fiction, Northampton, novelist, novelists, novels, open mic nights, paranormal, paranormal romance, paranormal romances, pinterest, poetry, poetry collections, poetry slams, pseudonyms, publisher, publishing, query letters, reading books, red pen, rejection letter, rejection letters, rejections, rhyming poetry, romance, romance fantasy, romance writer, science fiction, scriptwriters, second person viewpoint, self-publishing, short stories, short story group, Smashwords, story a day, Story A Day May, story author, story authors, story collections, story writer, submissions, suspense novelist, Twitter, vampire, Waterstones, western, western author, Wordpress, writer, writer interview, writing, writing competitions, writing events, writing fiction, writing group, writing magazines, writing novels, writing poetry, YA, young adult novels, youtube
Tonight’s guest blog post is brought to you by online writer Allison Finney.
On Guest Blogging
It’s rewarding to share your knowledge in a forum that deviates from your customary catalogue. Speaking as a writer within the energy industry, but I’ve always considered it an eye-and-ear-opening experience to hop into a discourse that loosely relates, but ultimately concatenates with a new audience. As a blogger, the best way to broaden yourself in such a way is via guest post.
Guest posting, however, is a delicate art. There’s a certain tact and comportment you need to show around the blogosphere if you’re expecting to swap blog posts, or better yet, strike up a real relationship with some other online writers. Here are five tips to keep in mind while you’re reaching out to other bloggers about a guest post:
- Be human. Generally, people enjoy correspondence with other friendly people. People don’t enjoy correspondence with spambots – no matter how friendly. Forget about sending a stock note to hundreds of bloggers that fall on the outskirts of your realm of expertise. Instead, think about some areas where you can really add value. Reach out in smaller numbers, and do it with a more personalized approach. Take time to read a few of their posts and cater to their preferences.
- Be humble. Not everyone is interested in what you have to say; that’s the reality of our ever-expanding web space. If someone doesn’t get back to you, or isn’t interested in an article you propose, don’t keep harping on it. Sometimes, it just wasn’t meant to be. Don’t sully your reputation by being argumentative or bothersome. Move on and find someone that is interested in working with you.
- Be interesting. Good, solid guest posts are marked by the page views and shares they inevitably create. If you contribute a thought-provoking piece, you’re sure to get more out of the process than you would by throwing together some claptrap and few fancy stock photos. Bloggers know a good piece when they see one, and they’ll pass it along if it’s worthwhile. Not surprisingly, you’re much more likely to generate some clout if you’re putting out a high quality product.
- Be prompt. Unlike the socialite’s world, lateness isn’t fashionable around the blogosphere. When you commit to writing a post by a certain date, write that post by that certain date. High traffic blog owners can be very busy people, and it’s unfair to stick them with month-old material when they’ve been kind enough to accept your prospective piece within a shorter time frame. It’s only polite to be punctual.
- Be appreciative. Once it’s all said and done, say your thank yous. Make sure you leave a door open for any future opportunities and don’t hesitate to give a follow or a like through your social media outlets. These are the online tastemakers, after all – you want them on your team.
Got all that? It’s not groundbreaking stuff, but it’s worth considering before you get in contact with a fellow blogger. Simply put, if you give a little respect, you’ll get a little back. Now get out there and get guest blogging!
Having guests on this blog makes it what it is and I’m grateful to every single one of you. Thank you, Allison.
Allison is a blogger at CommerceEnergyDeals.com.
***
If you would like to write a writing-related guest post for my blog then feel free to email me with an outline of what you would like to write about. If it’s writing-related then it’s highly likely I’d email back and say “yes please”.
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You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel, which is being serialised on Novel Nights In!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.
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As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do. I welcome items for critique for the online writing groups listed below:
Morgen’s Online Non-Fiction Writing Group
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Morgen’s Online Poetry Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Script Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Short Story Writing Group
We look forward to reading your comments.
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Tonight’s guest blog post, on the topic of procrastination, is brought to you by speculative fiction author, poet and script writer Danika Dinsmore.
Wading into the Flow [Getting to the Page]
I was recently watching an interview with Lou Reed on Spectacle – the Elvis Costello show (a brilliant tv show, btw, if you’ve never seen it).
Lou Reed told Elvis that he’s not a prolific writer. That he doesn’t have a novel in him. That he writes when he’s in the grip of “it” but that it comes and goes. He has had long periods of not writing. Lou Reed.
When asked if during those dry times he ever thought he’d never get “it” back, he said as he’s gotten older, he’s learned that it always eventually comes back. So he doesn’t torture himself about it. Although, he said, he used to ask the universe (my interpretation, he looked up at “the above” when he said this), “So, is that it?”
I don’t get writer’s block, but I do get writer’s procrastination. It has nothing to do with a lapse in ideas and everything to do with a lapse in confidence. But, like Lou Reed, I know that with time and focus I will get back into the flow again. Mostly because not-writing becomes more painful than getting to the writing. And when I start writing, I remember that I can do this.
What I’ve learned for myself, when I’ve left the flow for an extended period of time, is that I’ve just got to ride the “non-flow” for a little while. It’s like watching a stream go by with precious treasures floating in it and being OKAY that the treasures are floating by. Being OKAY with just sitting, because the treasure stream is always there. It truly is.
At some point in a day where I feel slightly more capable, I reach out after “it.” Even if it’s a weak grasping after, it’s a trigger, and sometimes it’s all the trigger I need.
One little trick I recommend is to do something creative that is out of your current element. Perhaps something you’ve always wanted to try, or something you used to do fondly. I find I have less attachment to these things. There is less pressure around them.
Sometimes I’ll turn away from a novel I’m working on and write in another form for a while. A creative essay, poem, song, short story. Write for the sheer joy and pleasure of writing, with no strings attached, which is where we want to be anyway, right?
I call these my “secret” projects. Projects that no one knows I’m working on but me. They remind me I’m still creative and that I did not forget how to write overnight.
Another trick I use is to set my fabulous Pillsbury Doughboy timer. (Any timer will do, really, I’ve just had this little guy for 20 years.) I say something like, “I’m going to be on the page writing in 5 minutes,” and then… “I’m going to write for 30 minutes and take a break.” Oftentimes, the timer goes off and I’m already in the flow, so I keep going.
I might start off my writing day with a 10 minute spontaneous write, or see how many first lines as I can come up with in 15 minutes. Sometimes when I’m stuck I just pull out my notebook, set my timer, and write spontaneously by hand, no editing, no crossing out. Eventually, I step back into the flow.
Writing Groups – There are plenty of writing critique groups where the members submit pages, read each other’s work, critique, etc. But there are fewer writing groups where you actually get together and write. I belong to one and it’s fantastic. We get together once per week, write for 20 minutes, share, write for another 20 minutes more, share, and then socialize if time. The point is to get to the page, start writing, and don’t stop until the timer goes off. You can simply start with the line, “Today I am writing about…”
And when we share, we just read. No preambles, no apologies, no explanations (unless some context or clarity is absolutely necessary, but we resist this temptation). There is no critique. Commentary is welcome if something moves one of us. The point it simply to write and sometimes doing so together helps us get to the page. There are times when members of the group aren’t writing at any other time except those 40 minutes, so it keeps them connected.
One thing I’ve learned is not to beat myself up, because that just adds salt to the wounds. I’m already not writing, so why would I want to make myself feel bad on top of that? Now I’m unproductive AND depressed!
The longer you do this, the more you will discover your own personal creative rhythms. No writer that I know of is continuously enthusiastic, inspired, and productive. Human stuff gets in the way. Notice and learn and adopt some simple tools that you can turn to again and again.
*
That was great. Thank you, Danika. I have five writing groups and run 15-minute writing exercises every weekday on four of them. Having any kind of deadline does focus the mind.
Danika Dinsmore “plerks” in speculative fiction with an emphasis on juvenile and young adult literature.
With a background in performing arts and education, she often takes her show on the road, entertaining children at school assemblies and teaching world building to both kids and adults.
She is author of children’s fantasy novels Brigitta of the White Forest, The Ruins of Noe, and Ondelle of Grioth (forthcoming Nov 2013).
Her short story “String Theory” will appear in Futuredaze: an anthology of YA literature (Underwords, 2013) and her essay “Put it in Space” will be included in the Now Write! speculative fiction edition (Tarcher/Penguin, 2013).
She lives in Vancouver, BC with her husband and big-boned feline Freddy.
You can find her at www.danikadinsmore.com.
***
If you would like to write a writing-related guest post for my blog then feel free to email me with an outline of what you would like to write about. If it’s writing-related then it’s highly likely I’d email back and say “yes please”.
** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!
See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0
or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **
You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel, which is being serialised on Novel Nights In!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.
For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.
As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do. I welcome items for critique for the online writing groups listed below:
Morgen’s Online Non-Fiction Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Novel Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Poetry Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Script Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Short Story Writing Group
We look forward to reading your comments.
Tags: agent, Amazon, author, author spotlight, Barnes & Noble, Barnes and Noble, biographers, biography, books, characters, children’s, copyediting, copyeditor, copywriter, copywriting, cozy mysteries, creative writing, crime, crime series, crime thriller, crime thrillers, critique, Danika Dinsmore, editing, editor, erotic romance, erotica, Facebook, fantasy, feedback, fiction, fiction author, flash fiction, Goodreads, guest blog, guest blog post, guest post, historical, horror novel, interview, interviewees, Kobo, LinkedIn, literature, Morgan Bailey, morgen bailey, Morgen with an e, multi-genre, murder mysteries, murder mystery, mystery author, mystery series, non-fiction, Northampton, novelist, novelists, novels, paranormal, paranormal romance, paranormal romances, pinterest, poetry, poetry collections, pseudonyms, publisher, rejection letter, rejection letters, rejections, romance, science fiction, scriptwriters, second person viewpoint, self-publishing, short stories, short story group, Smashwords, story a day, Story A Day May, story author, story authors, story collections, story writer, submissions, Twitter, vampire, Waterstones, western, western author, Wordpress, writer, writing, writing competitions, writing events, writing group, writing magazines, writing novels, YA, young adult novels, youtube
Welcome to the newest slot on my blog, the Sunday night Novel Nights In where I bring you guests’ novels in their entirety over a maximum of ten weeks. Tonight’s is the seventh instalment of the first novel in this series and features the first section of Book 3 (of three) of a novel by literary author, poet and interviewee Rose Mary Boehm.
For shorter pieces I would run the story then talk more about it afterwards but because this is a longer post (12,016 words), here is an introduction to Rose then the seventh part of her novel…
A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm now lives and works in Lima, Peru. Two novels (‘Coming Up For Air’ and the follow-up ‘The Telling’) have been published in the UK, as well as a poetry collection (‘Tangents’). Her latest poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in US poetry reviews. Among others: Toe Good Poetry, Poetry Breakfast, Burning Word, Muddy River Review, Pale Horse Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Other Rooms, Requiem Magazine, Full of Crow, Poetry Quarterly, Punchnel’s, Verse Wisconsin, Naugatuck Poetry Review (contest semi-finalist), Avatar…
Her poem ‘Miss Worthington’ won third price in the coveted Margaret Reid Poetry Contest: http://winningwriters.com/contests/margaret/2009/ma09_epaminondas.php
You can find out more about Rose and her writing at her blog: http://houseboathouse.blogspot.com, and you can also read one of Rose’s short stories on http://shortstorywritinggroup.wordpress.com/2013/01/12/short-story-for-critique-003-mrs-boffa-by-rose-mary-boehm.
Coming Up For Air
A young girl’s struggle to take control of her life – click to read Book I: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. Book 2: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. If you don’t want to wait the 10 weeks for the whole story, you can purchase Coming Up for Air at Amazon.com (just $2.95) Amazon.co.uk (only £1.87). The rest of the ‘adventures of Annie’ can be read in THE TELLING.
***
Book III: Spitting against the Wind (part 1)
42
I am slowly walking back towards the large room where so many people are typing, shouting into telephones and at each other, where machines clang and clatter, and where I have a small desk and a typewriter. I am still not quite sure what they expect of me and who exactly my boss is. Up to now they are all using me to run errands, make coffee or to tease me mercilessly. Between copy boy and cub reporter … but I’ll show them. Just because I am the first girl they have ever had in here, that doesn’t mean they can ignore that I have a brain! I’ll show them. But I need a break to show what I can do. There must be something I can do. It won’t happen until I make it happen…
The moment I open the door they all look up from whatever they are doing and stare at me. Then they hoot with laughter, and some slap their thighs. Yes, alright, I suppose I deserve this one. But I feel deeply embarrassed and stupid. How could I possible fall for this?
*
One of the reporters had sent me down to the typesetters to bring him back a Rasterpunkt – a matrix dot – one of the dots that make up a newsprint black and white half-tone picture, the same dots that are now counted to indicate resolution, as in, for example 300 dpi. This was one of the oldest jokes regularly inflicted on the latest recruits to the press room, and I dutifully walked all the way downstairs to the typesetters and asked for one. They had been warned by the jokers upstairs and had been ready for me. One of them made quite a performance out of putting something very small I couldn’t see (he used tweezers) into a relatively big box and handed it to me saying that I must handle it with great care. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. That at least was the moment when I should have tweaked. But no. I was too eager to please, too determined to make this work. I had promised myself that I’d run every errand, make every coffee, take any shit with a smile to make them like me and give me that chance I so craved.
Especially the editor-in-chief was intimidating. His office was halfway up the stairs. From there he could more or less control the editing room. He kept his door open and there was no passing his floor without being seen by ‘the führer’. Ernst Führing seemed old to me then, but he must have been a young man of around 36, built like an American football player. Weary brown eyes looked out from a frame of thick, rather feminine eyelashes, he had a large, handsome face, and his dark curly hair gave him a slightly dishevelled appearance. He only ever wore white shirts, open at the neck, his tie knot pulled down, the sleeves rolled up until his elbows. I usually saw him sitting behind his huge desk, either speaking like machine-gun fire into the black telephone, or ‘parking’ it between chin and pulled up shoulder when he was looking for some papers. When I brought him material to sign off he would normally ask me to wait and then he’d dump even more papers and photos into my arms with delivery instructions. Standing he must have been around 1.80 m but one saw the beginnings of a belly, and since his trousers where usually just belted below that slight protuberance, they took on a life of their own, cascading down to his highly polished shoes, the turn-ups at the back of the trouser legs disappearing beneath them.
He often stopped me when I was on my way up to the art department or asked in the press room for me to run an errand. Every time I was near him he’d make some comment, some sexual insinuation, some joke I didn’t get, or indicate that I should be doing something different, something that women do. I began to dread my contacts with ‘the führer’, even though he never made a pass, for which I was grateful.
The in-house photo reporter, Wald Radetzki, had quite some reputation. And I was fascinated by his urbanity. It wasn’t just that his name turned up on most news pages of the paper, he also photographed local society and was more than once the object of other photographers when he accompanied some of the famous (and the infamous) women to various events.
To everyone here he was just Radetzki, and when I first met him on the stairs, I felt considerable awe and worried immediately that I may have a shiny nose. The Radetzki I knew from photographs was far less impressive than the real thing. Blinded by my admiration for his local notoriety, I didn’t see a man of already middle years, with a lived-in, somewhat sloppily designed and cruel face, a man who desperately wanted to stay young by donning ‘beatnik uniform’: black tight trousers, black roll-neck sweater, black leather jacket and black leather cap, his cameras slung carelessly over his shoulder; I only saw what I wanted to see: an admittedly older but sexy male, tall, slim, and handsome.
I was on one of my never-ending errands from the pressroom down to the printers, just passing the dark room which I’d never seen open, when Radetzki came up the stairs, taking two steps at the time. He looked up.
“Hey, gorgeous, and where did they hide you? What, are you on your way to me? Lovely surprise.”
*
I stand still, desperately wanting to be the most attractive woman on earth, thinking Rita Hayworth, definitely not Doris Day. But all I can come out with is, “Oh, hi, I am the new trainee.”
“Well, well, well … turn around, would you? Let me check you out!”
I know I blush and I am angry with myself. I also hate the fact that I have absolutely nothing witty to say to this apparition. While he scares me a bit, he is also incredibly attractive in a forbidden sort of way. I know immediately that Mother wouldn’t approve of me being even near this man. That alone makes him irresistible. Not knowing what to do, I smile what I hope is a seductive smile and do a very fast turn on one foot, losing my balance just a little on the small step. Radetzki immediately reaches up and puts two strong hands on my hips: “Wow, little treasure, easy… mind you, you’re welcome to fall!” and he lets go.
“We’ll be seeing a lot more of each other. By the way, what’s your name? … Annemarie? That’s Anne for short, surely … Must dash, have just come from an assignment and they’ll want the photos like yesterday … until soon. I’ll make sure of it.”
He takes out some keys, opens the darkroom and disappears into it. Shuts the door behind himself. My legs are like jelly. I can barely continue my descent down to the basement. I feel his hands on my hips and I feel my insides knotting up.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: agent, Amazon, author, author spotlight, Barnes & Noble, Barnes and Noble, biographers, biography, books, characters, children’s, copyediting, copyeditor, copywriter, copywriting, cozy mysteries, creative writing, crime, crime series, crime thriller, crime thrillers, critique, editing, editor, erotic romance, erotica, Facebook, fantasy, feedback, fiction, fiction author, flash fiction, Goodreads, guest blog, guest blog post, guest post, historical, horror novel, interview, interviewees, Kobo, LinkedIn, literature, Morgan Bailey, morgen bailey, Morgen with an e, multi-genre, murder mysteries, murder mystery, mystery author, mystery series, non-fiction, Northampton, novelist, novelists, novels, paranormal, paranormal romance, paranormal romances, pinterest, poetry, poetry collections, pseudonyms, publisher, rejection letter, rejection letters, rejections, romance, Rose Marie Boehm, Rosmarie Epaminondas-Boehm, science fiction, scriptwriters, second person viewpoint, self-publishing, short stories, short story group, Smashwords, story a day, Story A Day May, story author, story authors, story collections, story writer, submissions, Twitter, vampire, Waterstones, western, western author, Wordpress, writer, writing, writing competitions, writing events, writing group, writing magazines, writing novels, YA, young adult novels, youtube
Tonight’s guest blog post, on the topic of romance (of course, it’s Valentine’s Day!), is brought to you by novelist, speaker, journalist, tutor, presenter and writing guru http://Jane Wenham-Jones.
Valentine’s Day
You might think that someone who has spent a great deal of her writerly life dealing in romance, would embrace the celebration of St Valentine with open arms. You may, indeed, imagine your average author of romantic fiction as a hearts and flowers sort of woman. Floating about in pink chiffon, exchanging Snugglebum messages with Coochie-face, preparing heart-shaped salmon delights and chocolate-coated strawberries in champagne, while the deliveryman arrives bent beneath a weight of ribbon and orchids. Not in this house. My theory is that we scribes make up romance for the same reason as so many millions read it. It’s in jolly short supply in real life. It would be fair to say that in the last two decades I have generally received a card on Valentine’s Day and more often than not, some roses to boot. This is largely by dint of leaving instructions in bold felt tip in my husband’s diary mid-January and by teaching my son, as soon as he could speak, to repeat “Buy Mummy Flowers” whenever I gave him a Pavlovian shove through the door of his father’s study. We have been married too long to dine out on February 14th – all those other couples slobbering over each other is enough to put anyone off their Nipples-of-Venus-to-share – and a general air of relief descends when the day’s over and we can go back to shouting as usual.
A quick straw poll among my friends suggests we are not unique. In novels, men may be tall, dark, handsome and capable of producing tickets for a romantic jaunt to Paris without being asked but in reality, in my experience, they are more likely to shriek “How much?” and remind you that there’s an important league match that weekend and the only thing they’ll be holding close is the remote control. The myth continues because, even if we find the whole “Bunnykins” thing pretty cringey ourselves, we live in hope that our fictional heroes who have the florist on speed-dial and understand about candlelight and Belgian chocolate and the element of surprise are out there somewhere. Even if the evidence to the contrary – “they double the price on Valentines Day / I can’t see what I’m eating / Won’t that make you fat? / You get it and put it on my credit card” – is overwhelming. And that, dear reader, concludes my entire fount of knowledge on things romantic. I only wish someone would believe me. But no, it is assumed if I write romantic comedy I must be something of an authority on the matter.
Over the years a variety of magazine editors, radio producers and fellow hacks doing the Ten Top Tips trick when there’s nothing else to say, have called upon me to dispense wisdom on everything from handling a first date to spicing up one’s marriage to how to cope when he lives a continent away. (Sounds ideal to me). I once choked on air having just heard myself introduced by one regional radio station (clearly desperate to fill five minutes before the travel news) as a “relationships expert” and finding I was being called upon to offer advice to Helen who felt Kevin no longer loved her, when I’d thought I was just there to plug a novel. “A special night out,” I suggested vaguely, trawling my memory for every cliché from every agony aunt I’d ever read. “A quiet night in when you can really talk… Communication is so important,” I simpered, getting into my stride, even though I knew that Kevin, as previously discussed, would rather watch the boxing and will be aghast when Helen serves up chicken a la mode in the dark instead.
But there are worse things to be asked to do and it’s just happened again. Another call from the well-meaning wanting me to give a workshop. “We’ve got someone to do Crime,” she says brightly, “and a very nice gentlemen in charge of Sci Fi. Perhaps you can give us a few words on Romance and Erotica.” I most certainly can’t. The only time I ever attempted to write something erotic, the magazine in question gave up on my descriptions of passion and wrote the end in themselves. I can’t do body parts, I can’t do moaning and writhing, I feel saying silly saying “nipple” (yes I know I said it earlier but that was a pudding) and even in my raunchiest novel where every single character is at it in some form or other, I still flinch from the squelchy bits. I tried to make this sound erudite. “I tend to believe less is more,” I offered. “The brain is the most potent of the sexual organs and arousal is often mental not physical. I see nothing wrong in closing the bedroom door and leaving much to the imagination.”
“Perhaps just the romance then…” she said.
I am planning my opening address: An appealing hero should be tall and good-looking, kind and sensitive, given to unexpected gestures in the city-break and floral departments. Even if he’s a traditional man, and you have to write it down for him first…
***
I loved it. Thank you, Jane! I wonder who the crime writer is…
Jane is the author of four novels and two writing ‘how to’ books – ‘Wannabe a Writer?’ a humorous look at becoming a scribe, and ‘Wannabe a Writer We’ve Heard Of?’ a guide to the art of book and self-promotion.
Her latest book is ‘100 Ways to Fight the Flab’, for those of us with a writer’s bottom! You can win a great week-long writer’s course, at Chez Castillon, a beautiful southern France (Dordogne) location, with Jane as your tutor (April 2013).
Just click here for the details and rules.
As a freelance journalist she has appeared in a wide range of women’s magazines and national newspapers and writes regular columns for Woman’s Weekly and Writing Magazine, where she is the agony aunt. Jane is an experienced tutor who is regularly booked by writing conferences and literary festivals to run workshops and give talks on all aspects of the writing process.
She is also a member of Equity, has presented for the BBC on both TV and radio and has done her fair share of daytime TV, particularly when promoting her controversial second novel Perfect Alibis (subtitled How to have an affair and get away with it…). It was those – sometimes hair-raising – TV experiences that inspired Prime Time, her latest novel. For more information see http://www.janewenham-jones.com and http://janewenhamjones.wordpress.com.
Prime Time is available as a paperback and eBook, and has just been shortlisted for the Romantic Comedy category of the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s RoNas.
***
If you would like to write a writing-related guest post for my blog then feel free to email me with an outline of what you would like to write about. If it’s writing-related then it’s highly likely I’d email back and say “yes please”.
The blog interviews return as normal tomorrow morning with cozy mystery and paranormal / historical Helen Osterman – the six hundred and forty-fourth of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, bloggers, autobiographers and more. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further. And I enjoy hearing from readers of my blog; do either leave a comment on the relevant interview (the interviewees love to hear from you too!) and / or email me.
** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!
See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0
or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **
You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel, which is being serialised on Novel Nights In!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.
For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.
As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do. I welcome items for critique for the online writing groups listed below:
Morgen’s Online Non-Fiction Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Novel Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Poetry Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Script Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Short Story Writing Group
We look forward to reading your comments.
Tags: agent, Amazon, author, author spotlight, Barnes & Noble, Barnes and Noble, biographers, biography, books, characters, children’s, cozy mysteries, creative writing, crime, crime series, critique, erotic romance, erotica, Facebook, fantasy, feedback, fiction, fiction author, flash fiction, Goodreads, guest blog, guest blog post, guest post, historical, horror novel, interview, interviewees, Jane Wenham Jones, Kobo, LinkedIn, literature, Morgan Bailey, morgen bailey, Morgen with an e, multi-genre, murder mysteries, murder mystery, mystery author, mystery series, non-fiction, Northampton, novelist, novelists, novels, paranormal, paranormal romance, paranormal romances, pinterest, poetry, poetry collections, pseudonyms, publisher, rejection letter, rejection letters, rejections, romance, science fiction, scriptwriters, second person viewpoint, self-publishing, short stories, short story group, Smashwords, story author, story authors, story collections, story writer, submissions, Twitter, Valentine's Day, vampire, Waterstones, western, western author, Wordpress, writer, writing, writing competitions, writing events, writing group, writing magazines, writing novels, YA, young adult novels, youtube
Complementing my daily blog interviews, today’s Author Spotlight, the one hundred and sixty-eighth, is of non-fiction author Kerry Dwyer.
Kerry Dwyer was born in the North of England and educated in the South. She worked in finance for more than two decades in the UK, USA and various countries in mainland Europe.
She now lives with her husband and daughter in the South West of France. Following the birth of her daughter she gave up finance and retrained as an English teacher (TEFL).
She currently teaches English as a foreign language to adults by telephone and internet. Ramblings in Ireland is her first book.
And now from the author herself:
The journey in the book is only half the story of the journey of the book but I will start with that. As we were walking and talking the germ of an idea formed that I should write all this down at some time. Each day we went on a new journey together. In French the word journée means day or daytime that was very relevant to us as we journeyed not only through Ireland but through each others lives. Each day we found out a little more about each other. Although we have been together for years we had never spent quite so much time together alone and with nothing more to do than walk and talk.
When we came home to France I wanted to write the diary of the significant of this holiday. I started writing about the walks and the conversations and as my mind wandered off at tangents I started to write those down as well. When we had been in Ireland a lot of ideas had already started to formulate so the book almost wrote itself. It was a great pouring out of some things that I hadn’t thought about for years and some things that were very recent. They were all somehow linked together in that one week in that one idea. The story grew and changed and became the book. It was as I was writing the book that I realised how important that week had been and how Bertrand and I had moved closer.
I don’t find it easy to sit down and focus on something for a long time and I am not very good at finishing things. The number of projects I have half started is always growing. I became interested in the writing process and found some competitions on the internet for finished manuscripts. This gave me the impetus to get on and complete it. I always work better when I have a deadline. The book was duly sent off for the competition and came no where. It was bound not to really as I hadn’t had it proof read or edited or beat read. It was very raw. I didn’t mind that at all the competition had done its job and my manuscript was ready for the next stage. There was a lot to do when it came back from Beta and proofreaders. I am lucky that I have friends who are very generous with their time and also not afraid to give criticism where it is due.
It was because of their positive feedback that I decided to go ahead and try to get the book published. I had not really heard of many people publishing their own books and people used ‘vanity press’ as though it were a dirty word so I tried to find a publisher. The rejection letters were not bad, they were obviously standard with the same lines virtually in each one telling me that I didn’t fit into their niche. The silences were worse I thought. Not one to flog a dead horse I resigned myself to the long list of would be published authors and put my book away. I was still in some way quite proud of the achievement, I had written a book. People had read it and liked it, even if they were my family and friends.
I had started a blog some time before the trip to Ireland. I tried to write at least a post a week and I was toying with the idea of posting parts of the book as blog posts. Then I had a problem with aligning my pictures. I couldn’t get the pictures on a particular post called ‘Eat that frog’ to line up. I asked for help on the social networks and I met Joel Canfield who kindly offered his assistance. He sorted out my picture problem and he had also explored my blog. He had found my proud post from when I had finished my book and was certain that some publisher would take it up and publish it. Joel sent me some of his snapshots from Ireland, I sent him some of mine. He wanted to know when my book would be published. This was our conversation via LinkedIn:
Me ‘You might wait a long time to read Ramblings. I haven’t even had a nibble. I did think about doing it myself but I think if there has not even been a nibble from a publisher then it probably isn’t again good’.
Joel “I’m curious what makes you equate nibbles from publishers with quality? Publishers have one deciding factor: money. Unless they’re sure your book will make more money than any other manuscript they’ve been offered, they’ll ignore you. It has nothing to do with quality. If your story is worth telling, tell it. A good editor can take a good story and make it great. Don’t wait to be picked. Pick yourself and ship your art.”
That was a very significant conversation. It lead me to not only being published but also to reassessing my feelings about my work, and its worth. I also discovered that hundreds of other worthy people with wonderful stories are doing just that.
Joel helped me to prepare my manuscript for publication and shepherded my though the process. We exchanged hundreds of emails and a few hours of SKYPE calls. He pointed out weak areas and helped me to make them stronger. So now I am a published author and that is still not the end of the story. Without the backing of a big publicity machine like one of the big publishing houses I need to make my work visible to my potential audience. So that it what I am doing. I am seeking reviews by sending out hundreds of review copies and I am giving author interviews and guest posts in the hope that I make myself a little more visible. To write is human to be read divine.
My friends and family are all really thrilled for me and very supportive. My mother did the artwork for the book for me. She is a Chinese water colour artist and she painted the picture of the Beara peninsular for me. She has been a great support throughout, reading excerpts and allowing me to tell some of her stories in my book. My dad read a very early draft and his comments were really helpful in pulling together the final version. My husband doesn’t read in English so it was difficult for him to relate to this book. He is very proud that I have a published book and was so supportive and helpful when I wanted the time to write. I hadn’t told him that I had dedicated it to him. He bought it on his Kindle and was very moved. He has since read the whole book which shows dedication and devotion.
I then invited Kerry to provide an extract from her book…
After the hardware shop we found a small supermarket and bought some lunch to take on our walk that afternoon. I needed to buy some shampoo as well. I had put the empty bottle into my wash bag instead of the full bottle. We had used the shampoo provided at the B&B.
I was selecting some cold meats and salads from the chill cabinet when I heard Bertrand call me excitedly from the sandwich counter. I went over to where two shop assistants were serving freshly made hot and cold snacks to take away. What had excited Bertrand so much was the “deal of the day” – Full Irish Breakfast in a baguette.
What more could a French man want out of life?
We bought one for Bertrand. I chose what I wanted and we drove up the Beara Peninsula. The car soon filled with the smell from the still-warm ingredients in the baguette. We had to pull into a lay-by so Bertrand could wolf down his second breakfast of the day, improved immeasurably with the addition of French bread.
And a synopsis…
Ramblings in Ireland is the story of one particular walking trip and the memories and musings that it inspired. It is not a guide book for rambling in Ireland
British ex-patriate Kerry and her husband explore the West of Ireland. Kerry’s inability to read maps and Bertrand’s insistence that she leads means that they inevitably go off the beaten track. This leads them to reflect and reminisce on upon accents and accidents, family and friends, love and what it means to be alive.
It is a book with a lot of meanderings and tangents. Kerry discusses French versus English and Irish culture viewed through her own and her husband’s eyes. She talks about life in France and growing in England.
You can find more about Kerry and her writing via her blog at http://www.kerrydwyer.net or her facebook page https://www.facebook.com/KerryDwyerAuthor
*
If you would like to take part in an author spotlight, take a look at http://morgenbailey.wordpress.com/submission-information/opportunities-on-this-blog or email me for details.
***
** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!
See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0
or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **
You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel, which is being serialised on Novel Nights In!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.
For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.
As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do. I welcome items for critique for the online writing groups listed below:
Morgen’s Online Non-Fiction Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Novel Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Poetry Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Script Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Short Story Writing Group
We look forward to reading your comments.
Tags: agent, Amazon, author, author spotlight, Barnes & Noble, Barnes and Noble, biographers, biography, books, characters, children’s, cozy mysteries, creative writing, crime, crime series, critique, erotic romance, erotica, Facebook, fantasy, feedback, fiction, fiction author, flash fiction, Goodreads, guest blog, guest blog post, guest post, historical, horror novel, interview, interviewees, Kerry Dwyer, Kobo, LinkedIn, literature, Morgan Bailey, morgen bailey, Morgen with an e, multi-genre, murder mysteries, murder mystery, mystery author, mystery series, non-fiction, Northampton, novelist, novelists, novels, paranormal, paranormal romance, paranormal romances, pinterest, poetry, poetry collections, pseudonyms, publisher, rejection letter, rejection letters, rejections, romance, science fiction, scriptwriters, second person viewpoint, self-publishing, short stories, short story group, Smashwords, story author, story authors, story collections, story writer, submissions, Twitter, vampire, Waterstones, western, western author, Wordpress, writer, writing, writing competitions, writing events, writing group, writing magazines, writing novels, YA, young adult novels, youtube
Welcome to the six hundred and fortieth of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more. Today’s is with author, blogger, singer, and musician Pat Garcia. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further.
Morgen: Hello, Pat. Please tell us something about yourself, where you’re based, and how you came to be a writer.
Pat: Hi Morgen. Officially, my name is Patricia Anne Pierce-Garcia Schaack, but I write and sing under my pseudonym, Pat Garcia. I am an African-American, currently living between Frankfurt and Aschaffenburg Germany, in a small German village. As long as I can remember, I have been writing. I started school at the age of five, and I remember coming home from school after my first day and sitting in a chair and writing out my first story that no one could read except myself. My mother was extremely upset, because both she and my father had hoped that the tablet would last me for two or three weeks. I come out of a very poor community where every penny counted, and needless to say, in my parent’s opinion, I had just wasted an entire tablet. Today, I laugh at it, because I was the happiest little girl in the world. I had written my first story, and although no one else could read it, I had cornered anyone who would listen and read my story to them.
Morgen: What a lovely story, and to be the happiest little girl in the world. I hope you’re still one of them. You live in a lovely part of the world I don’t know Aschaffenburg but I have fond memories of Frankfurt (and seeing a mouse in a dress shop window there!). What genre do you generally write?
Pat: I began to acquire readers for my writing with my blogs. I have six blogs that I write for on a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly basis. These fall into different categories.
- The oldest blog is Wind, Rain, Winding Roads & Sunshine, the By-Ways of Life and can be found at www.patgarciaschaack.com ,which is a blog by Typepad. This blog has a history because it began with me sending hope and inspiration per email to some of the people I knew whom had sons and daughters stationed in Iraq. It was not intended as a blog, and every week I would write an inspirational article. One of the mother’s asked if she could send it to her son, and so an email that was intended for the mothers became a blog posting that went to Iraq, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to the soldiers who where stationed there at that time. It was a beautiful experience for me and after their companies left that area, I really didn’t know what to do. They all thanked me and I stop sending the weekly email. It was only afterwards that I realized how much I missed meeting my Monday morning deadline and decided to learn how to do a blog and bring this blog back to life.
- The second blog began with my journal, Quiet Times. It is edited postings of what I have written in my journal and is also an inspirational blog. This blog appears on my website and is the only one that appears in English and in German. It can be found at www.pgs-patgarciaschaack.com.
- My third blog is Garcia talks about Apple products, and the name of the blog is much longer than I have written here (I have a fable for long names), but it is designed for the non technical user like myself who love Apple products and has migrated over to that side of the fence and buy Apple instead of other operating systems.
- The fourth blog started out as I was writing for Wiki U.K. They were taken over my Overblog Europe. It took me some time to find myself in this blog, and it deals with Health issues concerning the body and mind. It can be found at www.patgarcia.co.uk.
- I started a series some weeks ago about successful women from all over the world whom no one knew about, who had been the forerunners of the success that women enjoy today. The title of the blog is Walk On. The series is called, The Champions Who Walked Among Us and is on WordPress. It can be found at http://garciaandwalkon.wordpress.com.
- Finally, two or three weeks ago, I started a book review blog, because I am a voracious reader and love to read. I usually put myself to sleep by reading a book, and regardless of how tired I am or how late I stay up, I read a paragraph or two of a book, before I go to sleep every night. The blog is titled, Pat Garcia Book Reviews and can be found at http://patgarciabookreviews.com. I reviewed so far, Merlin Fraser’s Inner Space trilogy, L W Smith Death series, Micki Peluso’s And the Whippoorwill Sang, Jenny Worstall’s Make a Joyful Noise, Nichole Dunlop’s Miss Nobody, Marta Merajver Kurlat’s Just Tossed The Ashes and Rosemary “Mamie” Adkins’ Extraordinary Dreams Of An Ireland Traveler.
I also write literary articles. On 2 April 2012, the American Diversity Report in their Southern category published my first literary article. The title of the article is Returning to the Old Southern Landmarks with my pseudonym, Pat Garcia. Since then, I have become a regular “freelance staff writer” and write an article or two per quarter. The last article was published on December 31, 2012 and is titled Taking the Message to the Streets and can be found at the following link: http://americandiversityreport.com/2012/12/31/taking-the-message-to-the-streets.aspx.
So, that is basically my non-fiction or creative historical fiction as in the case with my blog series, The Champions Who Walked Among Us, which is now at article 14, but I also write fiction, which I love to write. My genres are inspirational, multicultural, romantic suspense and women literary fiction, because I believe I do a lot of crossing over with my writing. I am currently working on a series, which contains seven novels and two other novels, which are independent of this series. The first book in my series is currently awaiting its fate. I entered it into the novel writing contest for beginners in writing, and naturally I hope that I will win.
I love historical fiction and will one day like to expand my writing expertise and write a creative historical romance, as well as write a couple of non-fiction books, and maybe do an anthology with the short stories I write.
Romantic Shorts, an online Canadian Publisher, published my first short story last July. According to the publisher and her statistics my story was the hit and went beyond their expectations as well as my own. It can still be read online. The title is On A Rainy Day and it is under my pseudonym.
Morgen: My goodness, that’s some list – I thought I was busy. Congratulations on your short story success. You mentioned using a pseudonym?
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Tags: agent, Amazon, author, author spotlight, Barnes & Noble, biographers, biography, books, characters, children’s, cozy mysteries, creative writing, crime, critique, erotic romance, erotica, Facebook, fantasy, feedback, fiction, fiction author, flash fiction, Goodreads, guest blog, guest blog post, guest post, historical, horror novel, interview, Kobo, LinkedIn, literature, Morgan Bailey, morgen bailey, Morgen with an e, multi-genre, murder mystery, mystery series, non-fiction, Northampton, novelist, novels, paranormal, paranormal romance, paranormal romances, Pat Garcia, Patricia Anne Pierce-garcia Schaack, pinterest, poetry, poetry collections, pseudonyms, publisher, rejection letter, rejection letters, rejections, romance, science fiction, scriptwriters, second person viewpoint, self-publishing, short stories, short story group, Smashwords, story author, story authors, story collections, story writer, submissions, Twitter, vampire, western, western author, Wordpress, writer, writing, writing competitions, writing events, writing group, writing magazines, YA, young adult novels, youtube
Welcome to the newest slot on my blog, the Sunday night Novel Nights In where I bring you guests’ novels in their entirety over a maximum of ten weeks. Tonight’s is the sixth instalment of the first novel in this series and features the third and concluding section of Book 2 (of three) of a novel by literary author, poet and interviewee Rose Mary Boehm.
For shorter pieces I would run the story then talk more about it afterwards but because this is a longer post (11,015 words), here is an introduction to Rose then the sixth part of her novel…
A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm now lives and works in Lima, Peru. Two novels (‘Coming Up For Air’ and the follow-up ‘The Telling’) have been published in the UK, as well as a poetry collection (‘Tangents’). Her latest poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in US poetry reviews. Among others: Toe Good Poetry, Poetry Breakfast, Burning Word, Muddy River Review, Pale Horse Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Other Rooms, Requiem Magazine, Full of Crow, Poetry Quarterly, Punchnel’s, Verse Wisconsin, Naugatuck Poetry Review (contest semi-finalist), Avatar…
Her poem ‘Miss Worthington’ won third price in the coveted Margaret Reid Poetry Contest: http://winningwriters.com/contests/margaret/2009/ma09_epaminondas.php
You can find out more about Rose and her writing at her blog: http://houseboathouse.blogspot.com, and you can also read one of Rose’s short stories on http://shortstorywritinggroup.wordpress.com/2013/01/12/short-story-for-critique-003-mrs-boffa-by-rose-mary-boehm.
Coming Up For Air
A young girl’s struggle to take control of her life – click to read Book I: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. Book 2: Part 1 and Part 2. If you don’t want to wait the 10 weeks for the whole story, you can purchase Coming Up for Air at Amazon.com (just $2.95) Amazon.co.uk (only £1.87). The rest of the ‘adventures of Annie’ can be read in THE TELLING.
***
38
Mother once told me that she was convinced she’d become pregnant the moment she’d sit on a chair on which a man had been sitting just before.
Looking back at my parents from today’s perspective, I feel almost ashamed of not having been able to see them, measure them against their own contexts. Still, I suppose it would be an odd child able to do that at the time of its own struggle with life.
I had been a latecomer, unexpected and scary. My mother, Ilse, was already 38 and my father, Julius, was 47 when I arrived. Clearly, abortion in those days was not even thought about, even though my mother – by normal standards of those days – was ‘too old’ to give birth, and she and her child were considered ‘at risk’. My brother was already eight and no further child had been planned or expected to happen. In other words, between me and my parents, especially in post-War Germany, there was an almost insurmountable abyss – a generation gap of cosmic proportions.
Julius Becker was born in 1892 into a seriously rich family; there were seven living siblings – Grossmama Becker had given birth to a total of 12 children over the years of which seven survived. Several servants saw to the children’s daily needs, while their father and mother did what they were supposed to do: their father ran the mines and the shipping company with an iron fist, and their mother managed the household, gave occasional soirées, travelled and painted. Julius’ father was a despot, while Julius was a sensitive, gifted child with yearnings for adventure and freedom from the straightjacket of tradition. Just like his brothers, Julius was expected to earn a doctorate in whatever academic discipline he cared to choose. His two sisters were supposed to be bright, beautiful and virtuous until they married into other upper-crust families – either rich or aristocratic, if at all possible, both.
Ilse Ernestine Hartefeld was the illegitimate daughter of Ernestine Wilhelmine Bergdorfer, the worst that could have happened to mother and daughter in a Germany around the turn of the last century. Ilse was a gangly child, exceptionally intelligent and hungry for learning. Her stepfather, August Hartefeld, married her mother when Ilse was already four years old. He’d always loved ‘his Erna’, and she finally gave in. Two quite extraordinarily courageous and honest people who much later meant so much to me as my Opa and Oma, my grandfather and grandmother Hartefeld.
While Julius grew up in the heart of industrial Germany in the Ruhr Area, Ilse, nine years younger, looked after her two younger brothers when she wasn’t eagerly learning everything she could in the one-class school of her little village near Dresden in Saxony.
Julius completed his Abitur (the German equivalent of A-levels or a graduation diploma), after which he did his military service – first as a tall, blond, dashing young test pilot, and then getting himself involved in the Turkish-Arabian conflict (aka the Arabian Revolt of Laurence of Arabia fame) on the Turkish side, then finished World War I as a fighter pilot in the Normandy.
Ilse slowly turned into a tall, striking young girl with chestnut hair, high cheekbones and a generous mouth.
The post-WW I Treaty of Versailles and the French annexation of the Ruhr devastated Germany’s economy. The Becker family suffered losses, but were financially sustained by the sheer size of their business and their holdings, as well as business interests outside of Germany. After getting back from the war, young Julius, already 27, began to study engineering in a town near Ilse’s little village, famed throughout Europe at the time as one of the Technical Universities, sure of his father’s cheque arriving punctually every month.
Ilse had had to leave school at 14 to feed herself and help her family. She walked three kilometres every day (six days a week) to the train that would take her to the factory where she’d sew gloves for 12 hours before taking the train back and then walking another three kilometres to get home.
Yes, of course… they met one night at the train station. As far as Julius was concerned this was not only love at first sight, but deepest and most committed one. And Ilse? Ilse probably was dazzled at first and later learned to care for him deeply. It was difficult not to care for this charming young man with the brightest blue eyes which always contained a twinkle, not to be seduced by his devastating smile, impeccable manners and, at that time and for that time, considerable means.
He showed the extent of his irresistible devotion when Ilse was ill and they couldn’t meet for a few days: Julius walked for over three hours from his university (there were no cross-connecting trains, busses, trams, taxis, and most students didn’t have cars) to Ilse’s house where he would just stand for a few minutes, gaze up at her, greet her and then leave again; of course he couldn’t ‘come in’, Ilse’s was a respectable family.
When he wrote home that he had met the girl of his life and wanted to marry, the shock was total. ‘Gold digger’ was perhaps the mildest expression used in connection with Ilse. His father threatened to withhold the monthly cheques unless the ‘affair’ was immediately terminated. He even wrote a letter to the Dean explaining he would no longer pay for tuition because he had discovered his son’s ‘misalliance’
There were hard years ahead. Julius tried to show his father that he could fend for himself, that he didn’t need his money and went off to Berlin to find a job. Both Julius as well as Ilse – in their respective places – had to survive the worst year in Germany’s history: the hyperinflation of 1923. Mother once told me that one week’s wages from one day to the next wouldn’t buy a loaf of bread, that at the worst time they would go to the shops with a washing basket full of money to buy whatever was on offer now because an hour later the same items would require two washing baskets full of useless paper money. The value of the Papiermark (literally translated the Paper Mark), was worth 4.2 per US dollar at the outbreak of World War I and stood at one million per US dollar by August 1923.
In Berlin, Julius was not very successful. He got caught up in the German revolution that almost happened, was nearly lynched in the street by the Communists and finally fell extremely ill. When Julius had been brought home, near death, and nobody held out much hope, his older sister, Emma, was determined: “Why don’t we at least look at the girl?” since Julius, in his fevered dreams, only ever called Ilse’s name.
Emma brought her to meet the parents Becker, after which the story had a relatively happy ending. Julius and Ilse married, but Julius had no idea how to fight for survival, and Ilse had only ever sewn gloves in a factory, and when Julius’ father suddenly died they were left without financial help, while the oldest son (mis)managed the businesses. Corrupt managers and the total ineptitude of brother Jochen and his stock-market speculations of African proportions brought about such huge losses that even such a large fortune couldn’t quite survive it.
Father remembered vaguely how his sisters, ‘nice’ girls from a good family, had been brought up and what was expected of them. Mother imagined how ‘nice’ girls from good families ought to be brought up and behave, while never managing to live in the style to which Father was accustomed and Mother had aspired to. Father didn’t care. Mother did.
*
It’s Sunday. Gisela and I ask whether we are allowed to take off for a summer recreation area on the way to Düsseldorf, where the river Rhine feeds a large, artificially created pool, cordoned off to provide a supervised zone for swimming. We take our swim suits, towels and something to eat and drink, put the bags on the backs of our bikes and pedal off. It’s a good hour and a half either way. We leave early to have several hours to enjoy the sun, have a swim, get tanned…
We carefully put our bikes down on the grass, one on top of the other. Then we help each other to change into the swimsuits – while one holds the towel, the other struggles discreetly. We are hot and exhausted, put our clothes into the bags, the towels on the grass, and start this beautiful summer day by rushing into the water and swimming towards the chain that marks the limits. As we approach, we see two boys swimming towards the chain from the outside, dive under it and come up just next to us, grinning at us and putting their fingers to their lips in the ‘don’t tell’ gesture. We giggle and splash them and turn towards the ‘beach’ where we left our towels. The boys come too.
*
We spent that day with our new friends, sharing our sandwiches and drinks. Nobody had any money. We never did, and they obviously had none in their swimming trunks. We laughed at their antics, were happy, entertained, flattered and forgot the time. The sun was already sinking when we realised that we had to be on our way. The boys left for wherever they’d come from, and we struggled out of our wet swimsuits, hopped on the bikes and kicked off. We both knew we’d have to be back on time or we wouldn’t be allowed to go again, and to our total horror, only half-way, we had to get off the bikes because Gisela’s had a flat tyre. There was no way to communicate with our respective parents – mine didn’t even have a telephone. It was getting dark and we were in a wooded area, the shortcut we normally only took when it was still light; we’d never been out that late.
*
We push our bikes and speculate what’ll happen to us when we get home. “I’ll be ticked off something rotten,” says Gisela, and I add cheerlessly, “You know my mother… she’ll kill me, and I probably won’t be allowed to go again this summer.”
*
We were late. Gisela’s mother stood outside our door, on the pavement – we could see her by the light coming from the hall – and we knew we were in deep trouble. Gisela’s mother started a long, angry monologue, pulling Gisela away with her, and when I stepped through the door, both Father and Mother moved towards me and Mother, before I could explain, slapped me more than once hard in the face until I couldn’t see for tears or speak for sobs.
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Tags: agent, Amazon, author, author spotlight, Barnes & Noble, biographers, biography, books, characters, children’s, creative writing, crime, critique, erotic romance, erotica, Facebook, fantasy, feedback, fiction, fiction author, flash fiction, Goodreads, guest blog, guest blog post, guest post, historical, horror novel, interview, Kobo, LinkedIn, literature, Morgan Bailey, morgen bailey, Morgen with an e, multi-genre, murder mystery, mystery series, non-fiction, Northampton, novelist, novels, paranormal, paranormal romance, paranormal romances, pinterest, poetry, poetry collections, publisher, rejection letters, rejections, romance, Rose Marie Boehm, Rosmarie Epaminondas-Boehm, science fiction, scriptwriters, second person viewpoint, self-publishing, short stories, short story group, Smashwords, story author, story authors, story collections, story writer, submissions, Twitter, vampire, western, western author, Wordpress, writer, writing, writing competitions, writing events, writing group, writing magazines, YA, youtube
Complementing the full interviews on this blog, which will be dropping to weekend mornings from March, another new interview on my interview-only blog has been posted! The (630+) interviews from this blog are there already so there’s plenty to read.
The latest interview on the new blog is with non-fiction author and poet Kathleen O’Dwyer and can be read in full at http://morgensauthorinterviews.wordpress.com/2013/02/09/author-interview-with-non-fiction-writer-and-poet-kathleen-odwyer.
***
If you are reading this and you write, in whatever genre, and are thinking “ooh, I’d like to do this” then you can… just email me and I’ll send you the information. They do now (January 2013) carry a fee (£10 / €12.50 / $15) for the new interviews on this blog but everything else (see Opportunities on this blog) is free.
Alternatively, if you’d like a free Q&A-only interview, I now have http://morgensauthorinterviews.wordpress.com on which I’ve rerun the original interviews posted here then posted new interviews which I then reblog here. These interviews are Q&A only, so I don’t add in my comments but they do get exposure on both sites.
If you go for the interview, it’s very simple; I send you a questionnaire (I have them for novelists, short story authors, children’s authors, non-fiction authors, and poets). You complete the questions, and I let you know when it’s going to go live. Before it does so, I add in comments as if we’re chatting, and then they get posted. When that’s done, I email you with the link so you can share it with your corner of the literary world. And if you have a writing-related blog / podcast and would like to interview me… let me know.
** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!
See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0
or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **
You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel, which is being serialised on Novel Nights In!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.
For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.
As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do. I welcome items for critique for the online writing groups listed below:
Morgen’s Online Non-Fiction Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Novel Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Poetry Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Script Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Short Story Writing Group
We look forward to reading your comments.
Tags: agent, Amazon, author, author spotlight, Barnes & Noble, Barnes and Noble, biographers, biography, books, characters, children’s, cozy mysteries, creative writing, crime, critique, erotic romance, erotica, Facebook, fantasy, feedback, fiction, fiction author, flash fiction, Goodreads, guest blog, guest blog post, guest post, historical, horror novel, interview, Kathleen O’Dwyer, Kobo, LinkedIn, literature, Morgan Bailey, morgen bailey, Morgen with an e, multi-genre, murder mysteries, murder mystery, mystery author, mystery series, non-fiction, Northampton, novelist, novels, paranormal, paranormal romance, paranormal romances, pinterest, poetry, poetry collections, pseudonyms, publisher, rejection letter, rejection letters, rejections, romance, science fiction, scriptwriters, second person viewpoint, self-publishing, short stories, short story group, Smashwords, story author, story authors, story collections, story writer, submissions, Twitter, vampire, western, western author, Wordpress, writer, writing, writing competitions, writing events, writing group, writing magazines, YA, young adult novels, youtube
Hello everyone. A short ditty this week but an action packed few days. I’ve not only created http://morgensauthorinterviews.wordpress.com but have spend nine days solidly (I’m not kidding!) copying / pasting the 630+ interviews that originally appeared on this blog on to the new blog, plus some new ones. Take a look at http://morgensauthorinterviews.wordpress.com/list-of-interviews and you’ll see them all listed in order.
The reason for the new blog? Because I was booking interviews, at one a day, to the end of June and it was crazy (a 9-month backlog at the worst) and posting them all on here as full interviews (where I add in comments) was taking up so much of my time (along with everything else on this blog) that I was getting zilch of my own writing done. I’m a writer, I should be writing, right?
So, something had to be done. I emailed all the (100+) authors scheduled from March to June inclusive saying that I was sorry that I’d no longer be able to run the full interview (for free) on this blog but that I was whittling them down from daily to weekend mornings only and they could have one of those for a nominal fee (£10 / €12.50 / $15) or have a standard Q&A (although I have been adding some comments) much quicker (this / next month) for free.
Needless to say most have gone for the free option and I can’t say I blame them. We writers don’t have money to splash around do we? Besides running 100+ interviews via weekend mornings only would have been nice for my bank balance (which is feeling very sorry for itself right now) but would have made the situation worse.
So I’m now running three a day on the new blog, again linking to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Yahoo and Tumblr (then later mentioned on this blog which also links to these social networks) and the response has been great.
Best of all (for me) the light at the end of the tunnel has grown much brighter – I get back to my own writing in March instead of July. What could be better than that?
Next up is the continuation of my debut novel, The Serial Dater’s Shopping List. There’ll be links if you’ve missed the first three installments. I hope you enjoy it and, as always, I look forward to your comments.
***
** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!
See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0
or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **
You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel, which is being serialised on Novel Nights In!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.
For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.
As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do. I welcome critique for the four new writing groups listed below and / or flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays. For other opportunities see (see Opportunities on this blog).
The full details of the new online writing groups, and their associated Facebook groups, are:
Morgen’s Online Non-Fiction Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Novel Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Poetry Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Script Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Short Story Writing Group
We look forward to reading your comments.
Tags: agent, Amazon, author, author spotlight, Barnes & Noble, Barnes and Noble, biographers, biography, books, characters, children’s, cozy mysteries, creative writing, crime, critique, erotic romance, erotica, Facebook, fantasy, feedback, fiction, fiction author, flash fiction, Goodreads, guest blog, guest blog post, guest post, historical, horror novel, interview, Kobo, LinkedIn, literature, Morgan Bailey, morgen bailey, Morgen with an e, multi-genre, murder mysteries, murder mystery, mystery author, mystery series, non-fiction, Northampton, novelist, novels, paranormal, paranormal romance, paranormal romances, pinterest, poetry, poetry collections, pseudonyms, publisher, rejection letter, rejection letters, rejections, romance, science fiction, scriptwriters, second person viewpoint, self-publishing, short stories, short story group, Smashwords, story author, story authors, story collections, story writer, submissions, Twitter, vampire, western, western author, Wordpress, writer, writing, writing competitions, writing events, writing group, writing magazines, YA, young adult novels, youtube
Welcome to the newest slot on my blog, the Sunday night Novel Nights In where I bring you guests’ novels in their entirety over a maximum of ten weeks. Tonight’s is the fifth instalment of the first novel in this series and features the second section of Book 2 (of three) of a novel by literary author, poet and interviewee Rose Mary Boehm.
For shorter pieces I would run the story then talk more about it afterwards but because this is a longer post, here is an introduction to Rose then the fifth part of her novel…
A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm now lives and works in Lima, Peru. Two novels (‘Coming Up For Air’ and the follow-up ‘The Telling’) have been published in the UK, as well as a poetry collection (‘Tangents’). Her latest poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in US poetry reviews. Among others: Toe Good Poetry, Poetry Breakfast, Burning Word, Muddy River Review, Pale Horse Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Other Rooms, Requiem Magazine, Full of Crow, Poetry Quarterly, Punchnel’s, Verse Wisconsin, Naugatuck Poetry Review (contest semi-finalist), Avatar…
Her poem ‘Miss Worthington’ won third price in the coveted Margaret Reid Poetry Contest: http://winningwriters.com/contests/margaret/2009/ma09_epaminondas.php
You can find out more about Rose and her writing at her blog: http://houseboathouse.blogspot.com, and you can also read one of Rose’s short stories on http://shortstorywritinggroup.wordpress.com/2013/01/12/short-story-for-critique-003-mrs-boffa-by-rose-mary-boehm.
Coming Up For Air
A young girl’s struggle to take control of her life – click to read Book I: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. Book 2: Part 1. If you don’t want to wait the 10 weeks for the whole story, you can purchase Coming Up for Air at Amazon.com (just $2.95) Amazon.co.uk (only £1.87). The rest of the ‘adventures of Annie’ can be read in THE TELLING.
***
33
Gisela and I had finished our homework. The late afternoon sun was about to sink behind the horizon when we decided to walk very fast along the towpath by the canal to see whether we could be fast enough and ‘catch’ it before it disappeared. We knew it was impossible and just a game.
We talk while we walk. Suddenly Gisela stops. “Do you think it’s true about how they make babies?”
“What do you mean… that the man lies on top of the woman?”
“Well, yes, and that he puts his willie into her hole.”
That’s not something anyone ever told me about and definitely hasn’t occurred to me. I have never seen my brother other than at least wearing his underpants, and my father never ever walks through the house in his underwear or even in a dressing gown. I have only ever seen him fully dressed. Still, I have an idea what a ‘willie’ is, I am not that dumb, but the idea that anybody should ‘stick his willie into my hole’ gives me the creeps.
To Gisela I pretend I know exactly what she is talking about. I am too embarrassed to let on that I just discovered how backward I am. So I say boldly, “Of course it’s true, but it’s really disgusting, isn’t it? I don’t think I’ll go for it.”
“Neither shall I. I’ve thought about it often. And I don’t understand how my mother could actually do it with my father…”
Now there’s a thought. This, of course, is a revelation. When I get home I look at my parents with different eyes and decide that they are really quite despicable and that I’ll never, ever…
*
I took high school very seriously and actually enjoyed it. The school was in another part of town, and in the winter we took the tram which rattled past the coking plants, the steel works and even through some leafy roads lined with sycamore trees. In early spring we’d go by bike. There were usually three of us, three girls. We lived very close to one another and became good friends over the years almost by default. With Gisela I discovered how babies are made and with Helga I learned how to smoke.
*
Helga’s mother works and isn’t home yet. That’s why the three of us are alone in her house – Gisela, Helga and I. After sneaking in to see ‘Les Diaboliques’ we realised that we have to do something or we’ll be hopelessly left behind. Not smoking clearly marks us as little girls of no importance, and therefore smoking is one of the first things we have to learn how to do.
Helga has stolen a handful of cigarettes from her mother, one by one so she wouldn’t notice. We each take one and hold it awkwardly, imagining we are Simone Signoret, Rita Hayworth or Betty Grable. Helga holds a match to each one, and we suck the air through the cigarette to make it glow. The smoke fills my mouth and stings, tasting of unpleasant and smoke-filled memories. We hold the smoke in our mouths for a moment before we let it drift out again.
“I don’t think that’s how it’s done,” says Helga. “When my mother smokes she inhales it, it stays in her body for a while and then she exhales and the smoke comes out with her breath, sometimes through her nose.”
“Alright, let’s try…”
The next puff has us inhaling and immediately coughing until our eyes water and sting. We double over, nearly vomiting, and we look at each other with tears in our eyes – we look pale grey to green.
“Okay, guys. This needs practise. Since everyone smokes, it can’t be difficult to get used to it.” By the end of the afternoon we feel rather sick but triumphant: we don’t cough any more, our eyes don’t water, and we hold and light the ‘glimmersticks’ like old pros, ready to conquer the grown-up world, ready to enter a party with something to hold on to, ready to give us the air of utter sophistication and experience. Now we have to practice the ‘look’ (think Lauren Bacall) and we’ll be complete.
*
We’d meet up by the local cinema and from there go to school together – either by tram or by bike, depending on the time of year. On the way we were sometimes met by boys who used the same route but, living closer to the school, joined later. We never actually agreed to meet, but when it happened we were particularly giggly and slightly hysterical.
*
Our French teacher doubles her duties and has us once a week for religion. Even though I like it, I’m usually in trouble because I just can’t get my head around certain Bible stories and their interpretations. As far as I am concerned, some of the stuff just doesn’t add up.
“Miss …?”
“Yes, Anne…?”
“Well, when you say that Judas will roast in hell for his betrayal of Jesus, I disagree.”
“Oh?”
“I think that Judas got a bonus when he got to heaven. And I do think he went to heaven.”
“Why is this then, Anne? Why would you think Judas could get anywhere near heaven?”
“Because he did them all a favour, didn’t he … if it hadn’t been for him, the Big Plan wouldn’t have succeeded. Somebody had to do it. So, I suppose, Jesus and God ought to have been grateful.”
I am really very serious, but the class giggles. They think I do this on purpose to sideline Fräulein Franzen and make her forget what’s on the syllabus for today. Judas – and many other aspects of our Bible studies – just have me baffled. There is no way, I think, that logic and belief need to be mutually exclusive, and to me it’s logical that all the players get a fair deal.
Then there is this thing about ‘God Knoweth Best’ which implies that I know very little… So if I ask God for things and then have to say ‘But not as I want it, but as You want it for me in Your wisdom’, I give God carte blanche and may as well not have bothered. If I ask for a beautiful bicycle and God thinks that’s a bad idea, he won’t give it to me. So why ask?
Then we are being taught that the universe doesn’t lose anything, it just transforms. That’s physics. But physics has to be applied to all things. So, if that’s how things are, then my thoughts are matter, and it must be as bad to want to kill someone as it is to actually kill him. And if that’s so, my soul can’t just disappear after I die, since the universe doesn’t lose anything.
I read that in India they believe in reincarnation. Now that begins to make sense. My soul goes on forever and sometimes is transformed into a body and sometimes it’s in a non-body state. I try to imagine where the non-bodies go to while they hang around until they come back again, but all I can think of is that they are probably peacefully sleeping somewhere until they are woken up to go back.
When I hear people say, ‘God is so cruel. Why did He allow this baby to die? It didn’t even have a chance to live…” I think that life isn’t all that hot anyway – at least from what I can detect so far – and then I have a feeling that God doesn’t ‘allow’ anything. He just doesn’t get that actively involved. He got the creation ball rolling and then retired into a benign but remote presence to let us get on with it.
I imagine that the soul probably makes a deal in its non-body place: ‘I go down there even though it’s not my turn yet. But don’t you dare to leave me there longer than the three years you promised. I am willing to teach these people about loving and losing and heartbreak, but don’t you trick me! And don’t forget: I get another 150,000 years bonus for that!’
There is no way I can make my teacher understand any of this. She isn’t even willing to consider the options. So I get sent out of class yet again and have to write 100 times ‘I must not be so obnoxious’. For tomorrow.
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Welcome to the newest slot on my blog, the Sunday night Novel Nights In where I bring you guests’ novels in their entirety over a maximum of ten weeks. Tonight’s is the fourth instalment of the first novel in this series and features the first section of Book 2 (of three) of a novel by literary author, poet and interviewee Rose Mary Boehm.
For shorter pieces I would run the story then talk more about it afterwards but because this is a longer post (9,173 words), here is an introduction to Rose then the fourth part of her novel…
A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm now lives and works in Lima, Peru. Two novels (‘Coming Up For Air’ and the follow-up ‘The Telling’) have been published in the UK, as well as a poetry collection (‘Tangents’). Her latest poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in US poetry reviews. Among others: Toe Good Poetry, Poetry Breakfast, Burning Word, Muddy River Review, Pale Horse Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Other Rooms, Requiem Magazine, Full of Crow, Poetry Quarterly, Punchnel’s, Verse Wisconsin, Naugatuck Poetry Review (contest semi-finalist), Avatar…
Her poem ‘Miss Worthington’ won third price in the coveted Margaret Reid Poetry Contest: http://winningwriters.com/contests/margaret/2009/ma09_epaminondas.php
You can find out more about Rose and her writing at her blog: http://houseboathouse.blogspot.com, and you can also read one of Rose’s short stories on http://shortstorywritinggroup.wordpress.com/2013/01/12/short-story-for-critique-003-mrs-boffa-by-rose-mary-boehm.
Coming Up For Air
A young girl’s struggle to take control of her life – click to read Book I: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. If you don’t want to wait the 10 weeks for the whole story, you can purchase Coming Up for Air at Amazon.com (just $2.95) Amazon.co.uk (only £1.87). The rest of the ‘adventures of Annie’ can be read in THE TELLING.
***
25
I am in love! I know I am! Wilfried is the oldest boy in my new class. He is 14! He is in our class because he had to repeat several times. He is very handsome, with dark hair that’s cut less short than other boys’ and sometimes it falls into his eyes. I sit in the middle of the class towards the back, and Wilfried sits further to the front in one of the right-hand side benches by the wall.
Whenever I look in his direction, he seems to be watching me. He has big, shiny brown eyes and a quick and naughty smile. From time to time he ‘sends’ me coveted swaps on the back of which he writes ‘Ich liebe Dich’. It’s a bit embarrassing, but I am also excited. The swaps are passed from desk to desk until they arrive in my hands which means that everyone knows and giggles.
When we are in the school yard during breaks, Wilfried catches me more often than any of the other girls and holds my arm just a bit longer, and when we go back inside for our next lesson, he hangs around just close enough to make it obvious. Once he even pushes one of the other boys out of the way. This must be love, and I have a funny fluttery feeling inside that makes me giggle a lot.
*
We didn’t know it then, but while we were in what was East Germany (to become the GDR, the German Democratic Republic), even though we went hungry more often than not, we had been relatively well off; we were spared the results of the Morgenthau Plan (Program to Prevent Germany from Starting World War III) which didn’t remain active for many years, but while it was being implemented, things were dire.
Letters had kept us somewhat up to date about family, friends and neighbours in the Western Allies’ occupation zones: many had either frozen or starved to death during the worst winter in living memory, and armies of half-starved, skinny kids dressed in rags had been seen scavenging through rubbish bins for anything at all to eat – discarded potato peels being about the only thing left to ‘recycle’. Then we received the sad news that Father’s mother, Grossmama Becker, had died of hypothermia, facilitated by acute starvation. Grossmama had been a proud woman and must have been either too embarrassed to ask for help, or those she did ask couldn’t give it. She died in the spring of 1948 – just a few months before we would return.
Even though the original plan proposed by American Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr. had been somewhat softened before it was implemented, it still had every intention to turn Germany into ‘a country primarily agricultural and pastoral in character’ and was agreed to, and signed by, Franklin D Roosevelt and Winston Churchill at the Second Quebec Conference in September 1944. The first ‘level of industry’ plan from 1946 foresaw to lower German heavy industry to 50% of its 1938 levels by laying waste to 1,500 of its manufacturing plants.
Soon it became only too apparent that these policies not only devastated Germany, but created a chain reaction. They put the brakes on a general European recovery, thus resulting in huge expenses for the occupying powers who had to make up the most glaring shortfalls through a relief programme.
It also became soon obvious that something had to be done – and not only for humanitarian reasons: with the onset of the Cold War, the Allies got very worried about Europe’s political leaning, fearing that the lethal combination of abject poverty and famine would drive especially the Germans into the arms of Communism and, since the long-term economic health and continued prosperity of the US depended on trade, export markets had to be either revived or created.
Enter the Marshall Plan. Secretary of State George Marshall’s ‘European Recovery Program’ was to take the form of easy loans. In 1949, the plan was extended to include the newly created Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany, aka West Germany), the idea being that the Europeans would use Marshall Plan aid chiefly to buy manufactured goods and raw materials from the United States.
But that was later, and even then it didn’t solve the immediate need of the German people in the US and British occupied zones who, in two of the most severe winters on record, were either starving or freezing to death. In the winter of 1946, after touring the American occupied zone of Germany, ex US President Herbert C Hoover was not only extremely critical of US occupation policy, but what he saw made him despair.
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Sadly not me… unless you like curvy. No, I definitely have what Jane Wenham-Jones eloquently calls ‘Writer’s Bottom’. I gave up my day job in March and the chair I inherited (they moved and downsized the office during my notice period) does feel a little snugger these days. I have Jane’s new eBook 100 Ways to Fight the Flab so I’ll be working my way through them, although no.69 will have to wait until I’m no longer single! You must read a review by Sebastian on Amazon, it’s hilarious!
Anyway, back to the ‘shaping up nicely’. I was referring to the blog, or rather blogs. I mentioned last week that I’d set up four new critique blogs and Facebook groups. A fifth, http://nonfictionwritinggroup.wordpress.com, joined them today. The only non-fiction I write is about writing, but I wanted to have a critique group that could help non-fiction writers… I’ve interviewed so many.
I’ve had a few submissions to the four original blogs, two items outstanding which I’m tardy getting to, all will become clear why in a minute, but would welcome more. The details of the blogs are in the footer below and http://morgenbailey.wordpress.com/online-writing-groups.
In last week’s Shout-out I talked about increasing the author spotlights, which are now weekday evenings so there won’t be one tonight, and that the interviews had taken over my life. What I’ve had to do (and I hated doing it) was to have a cut-off at the end of February and email the interviewees scheduled for March to June that I could no longer run them for free (today’s was the 624th!). I offered them the spotlight instead and some have gone for that. I wanted to find an alternative to just stopping the interviews, because all the authors had gone to the trouble of replying to my questions and a light bulb moment on Tuesday lead to the creation of http://morgensauthorinterviews.wordpress.com.
So what I’ve been doing for the past five days is re-posting the original full interviews. I’m actually only up to no.380 so over half way and I intend to keep going so they’ll all be up by midweek next week. It’s taking so long because they’re months old so I’ve been updating the footers; with the new blog links etc.
Once they’re all up, I’ll then be able to introduce new free Q&A interviews; my questions, the author’s replies but no extra comments from me. I’ll then reblog them on this main blog (which will just show an extract then a link to the interviews blog) so you get to hear about them, although the new blog is also linked to Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo, Tumblr and LinkedIn as this one is so you may spot those notifications first.
Apart from the full interviews on this blog, everything else here, and on the other blogs, are free – a list is on http://morgenbailey.wordpress.com/submission-information/opportunities-on-this-blog and http://morgensauthorinterviews.wordpress.com/opportunities-on-the-main-blog. There is plenty of choice. If I’ve not interviewed you yet and you’d like to go for the full interview, it’s only £10 / €12.50 / $15 so won’t break the bank.
That’s about it for this week. Next up (in about an hour) is the second instalment of my debut novel, The Serial Dater’s Shopping List, on Novel Nights In (NNI) where you’ll get to meet Tim the Weeble and Lawrence the stick-thin social worker.
The NNI slot returns tomorrow night with the third instalment of Rose Mary Boehm’s novel ‘Coming Up for Air’. I hope you enjoy them both and we would love your comments. Clicking on the ‘like’ button is great, and we do appreciate you doing that, but staying just a moment longer to tell us what you think really means a lot.
So that’s about it. I’m going to crack on with reposting the interviews. I’m further behind than I wanted to be because this morning, when I was supposed to be getting ready to go to do my stint at my local British Red Cross shop (I deal with their donated books), I decided to rearrange my bedroom. It’s only the ‘box’ room (because I have two lodgers) so I had my wardrobe in my office which was OK but I knew if I did some moving around it would fit… well, I did it, with about an inch to spare, and crazy as it may sound, especially because it’s the winter here in the UK and my bed is now nearer the radiator, I’m looking forward to going to bed even more so tonight… with Jane’s book for company methinks.
***
** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!
See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0
or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **
You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel, which is being serialised on Novel Nights In!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.
For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.
As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do. I welcome critique for the four new writing groups listed below and / or flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays. For other opportunities see (see Opportunities on this blog).
The full details of the new online writing groups, and their associated Facebook groups, are:
Morgen’s Online Non-Fiction Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Novel Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Poetry Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Script Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Short Story Writing Group
We look forward to reading your comments.
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Tonight’s guest blog post is brought to you by journalist and blogger Fred Willard.
The Merits of Digital Publication in the 21st Century
Although most people possess a rough idea of what journalism entails, it actually has a very specific definition. Journalism, properly defined, should sound something like this: the preparation and dissemination of auditory (news), visual (newspapers), or audiovisual (broadcast news) public media aimed at conveying current factual information, usually in a terse and easily digestible format.
As marketers are quite familiar of, journalism can sometimes entail messaging a general audience or it may involve trying to reach a specific demographic. For instance, the New York Times or Washington Post has a very different target audience than Fox News. The biases follow accordingly. Nonetheless, the internet is really changing the face of news. From downloading articles to smartphones or reading “the paper” from Huffington Post, tomorrow’s news definitely contains a digital dimension.
Tomorrow’s Media
Although the internet brings increased visibility and perhaps readership to journalists’ stories, it also brings on novel problems and merits. For instance, CNN correspondent and Sunday show anchor, Fareek Zakaria, recently received an unwelcome blotch on his resume when he was accused of failing to attribute his source. See, today’s access to information makes people feel as though they can copy and paste snippets of other’s articles; in fact, this is still called plagiarism. Nonetheless, in today’s digital cyberspace, there is an increased opportunity to become discovered for good work or work that sparks the public imagination.
Amazon’s New Employees
Sites like Amazon are increasingly hopping into the self-publishing game. Young and talented authors from around the globe are submitting their books through Amazon in hopes of becoming the next E.L. James and Fifty Shades of Grey hotshot. You see, E.L. James published an erotic novel in 2011 that caught on. And it caught on in a big way. The book sold millions of copies and put previously unknown E.L. James on the popular culture map through frenzied word of mouth.
Amazon and You
Other authors are emulating the formula that made Ms. James an overnight sensation. Here’s how the game works: Amazon takes a commission for offering budding writers the flexibility and easy publication of its online services and purveyance. Using a somewhat mysterious algorithm, Amazon then lists your book based on views and popularity. Additionally, your book can skyrocket through work of mouth or sales; the latter is really the actualized version of adequate word of mouth.
Self-Publication for the Win!
The real beauty of Amazon, though, is two-fold. In addition to being assured quick and reliable publication, much of the time and effort that previously went into marketing the finished novel or non-fiction piece can go into more writing! In many ways, the basic mechanics of Amazon’s review system work like eBay’s do it yourself review infrastructure. Customers qualitatively say what they enjoyed about the book. Quantitively, Amazon customers report satisfaction with the book on a five star basis. The next E.L. James is waiting to be hatched!
Thank you, Fred.
Fred Willard writes about his career in journalism, blogging, marketing & public relations at www.howdoibecomea.net.
***
If you would like to write a writing-related guest post for my blog then feel free to email me with an outline of what you would like to write about. If it’s writing-related then it’s highly likely I’d email back and say “yes please”.
The blog interviews return as normal tomorrow morning with historical and crime fiction author Colin Falconer – the six hundred and twenty-third of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, bloggers, autobiographers and more. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further. And I enjoy hearing from readers of my blog; do either leave a comment on the relevant interview (the interviewees love to hear from you too!) and / or email me.
***
If you are reading this and you write, in whatever genre, and are thinking “ooh, I’d like to do this” then you can… just email me and I’ll send you the information. They do now (January 2013) carry a fee (£10 / €12.50 / $15) for the new interviews on this blog but everything else (see Opportunities on this blog) is free.
If you go for the interview, it’s very simple; I send you a questionnaire (I have them for novelists, short story authors, children’s authors, non-fiction authors, and poets). You complete the questions, and I let you know when it’s going to go live. Before it does so, I add in comments as if we’re chatting, and then they get posted. When that’s done, I email you with the link so you can share it with your corner of the literary world. And if you have a writing-related blog / podcast and would like to interview me… let me know.
Alternatively, if you’d like a free Q&A-only interview, I now have http://morgensauthorinterviews.wordpress.com on which I’ve rerun the original interviews posted here then posted new interviews which I then reblog here. These interviews are Q&A only, so I don’t add in my comments but they do get exposure on both sites.
** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!
See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0
or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **
You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel, which is serialised on Novel Nights In!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.
For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.
As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do. I welcome critique for the four new writing groups listed below and / or flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays. For other opportunities see (see Opportunities on this blog).
The full details of the new online writing groups, and their associated Facebook groups, are:
We look forward to reading your comments.
Tags: agent, Amazon, author, author spotlight, Barnes & Noble, biographers, biography, books, characters, children’s, CNN correspondent, creative writing, crime, critique, E.L. James, erotica, Facebook, fantasy, Fareek Zakaria, feedback, fiction, Fred Willard, Goodreads, guest blog, guest blog post, guest post, historical, interview, Kobo, LinkedIn, literature, Morgan Bailey, morgen bailey, Morgen with an e, multi-genre, murder mystery, non-fiction, Northampton, novelist, novels, paranormal, paranormal romances, pinterest, poetry, poetry collections, publisher, rejection letters, rejections, romance, science fiction, second person viewpoint, self-publishing, short story group, Smashwords, story author, story authors, story writer, submissions, Sunday show anchor, Twitter, vampire, western, writer, writing, writing competitions, writing events, writing group, writing magazines, YA, youtube
Welcome to the newest slot on my blog, the Sunday night Novel Nights In where I bring you guests’ novels in their entirety over a maximum of ten weeks.
And now I’ve added Saturday nights with the serialisation of my chick lit novel The Serial Dater’s Shopping List!
Tonight’s is the third in the Sunday series and features the conclusion of Book I (of three books) of a novel by literary author, poet and interviewee Rose Mary Boehm.
For shorter pieces I would run the story then talk more about it afterwards but because this is a longer post (8,360 words), here is an introduction to Rose then the third part of her novel…
A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm now lives and works in Lima, Peru. Two novels (‘Coming Up For Air’ and the follow-up ‘The Telling’) have been published in the UK, as well as a poetry collection (‘Tangents’). Her latest poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in US poetry reviews. Among others: Toe Good Poetry, Poetry Breakfast, Burning Word, Muddy River Review, Pale Horse Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Other Rooms, Requiem Magazine, Full of Crow, Poetry Quarterly, Punchnel’s, Verse Wisconsin, Naugatuck Poetry Review (contest semi-finalist), Avatar…
Her poem ‘Miss Worthington’ won third price in the coveted Margaret Reid Poetry Contest: http://winningwriters.com/contests/margaret/2009/ma09_epaminondas.php
You can find out more about Rose and her writing at her blog: http://houseboathouse.blogspot.com, and you can also read one of Rose’s short stories on http://shortstorywritinggroup.wordpress.com/2013/01/12/short-story-for-critique-003-mrs-boffa-by-rose-mary-boehm.
Coming Up For Air
A young girl’s struggle to take control of her life – click to read: Book I: Part 1 and then Part 2. If you don’t want to wait the 10 weeks for the whole story, you can purchase Coming Up for Air at Amazon.com (just $2.95) Amazon.co.uk (only £1.87). The rest of the ‘adventures of Annie’ can be read in THE TELLING.
***
18
On 30 April, 1945, in his bunker under the devastated city of Berlin, Adolf Hitler blew his brains out while the whole of Germany lay in ruins, with every major city destroyed by Allied bombs. Bridges had been blown up, train tracks had been bombed and every road was clogged with refugees. Thousands of women in eastern Germany drowned themselves rather than submit to rape by the Russian soldiers who were advancing rapidly towards Berlin. Boys of 14 and younger, and old men of 60 and older had been forced to fight the advancing Allies in a hopeless, last-ditch effort. German soldiers who had survived and returned from the eastern front stripped off their uniforms and swam naked across the river Elbe to surrender to the Americans. The Germans were terrified of the Red Army who already had gained a reputation during their advance for committing unspeakable atrocities.
People cowered in their underground bomb shelters in the cities or waved white flags of surrender from their windows in the smaller towns and villages. Thousands of homeless people had taken shelter in the bombed-out shells of churches and were cooking over open fires in the streets. Refugees trying to flee from the war zone sat for days beside the railroad tracks waiting for trains which never came. Others tried to escape on foot with their meagre possessions but had nowhere to go, and Allied planes were strafing everything that moved.
Subways were flooded, phone lines and electricity cut. The water supply in the bombed cities was either contaminated or non-existent, and there was no food, clothing, or medicines… Thousands of dead civilians were still buried under the destroyed buildings in every large city, adding the stench of decomposing flesh to the general confusion and misery.
On 27 April, 1945, American troops advanced eastward across Germany to link up with their Russian allies. The Russians had been marching west, across Poland, towards Berlin and beyond.
The American tanks had lined up on one side of the village by the upper woods; the German remainders were digging in on the other side, by the lower woods. Our village lay stretched out between the two fronts. Sporadic exchange of fire would send us scuttling down to the shelter. Many houses and farms were burning now, hand-to-hand fighting had begun in the streets. I had also seen some youths ducking down along the road carrying bazookas.
We heard the crackling sound of burning wood just after the explosion and raced upstairs to put the fire out, each one of us armed with one of the buckets filled with water that had been strategically placed on each landing. Before we reached the attic, we saw water trickling down the stairs. In the attic stood a zinc bathtub filled with water for just such an occasion. The shot from one of the tanks had ripped through the roof on its way to the opposing army, and shrapnel had hit the bathtub. What we’d heard was the water dripping down the stone stairs.
It’s over. Our white sheet hangs from the window but Adelheid’s father is furious.
“Germans do not capitulate!”
“Oh, do be quiet once and for all. What do you think will happen to you? We don’t ‘capitulate’ you silly man, we are being liberated, especially from people like you!
This sheet will probably save even your mean neck!”
**
19
As the American planes, jeeps and tanks rolled over our fields to ‘park’ behind the house, I watched with alarm the damage they did to the growing corn. It was still green and very young. For me, this was the obscenity, the blasphemy, this was the ultimate disregard for life, for growing food. In my small world this was worse than killing people… after all, the dead had been with me as long as I could remember.
Mother was relieved that the Americans had reached us first.
“Gott sei Dank! I prayed so hard that the Americans would get to us before the Bolsheviks!”
My brother had come into the kitchen from his nightly radio listening.
“They said on the radio that the Americans are about to take Berlin!”
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Tonight’s guest blog post is brought to you by author and tutor Tad Wojnicki.
Who Needs A Writing Workshop?
Every local newspaper lists free opportunities for self-improvement — art classes, aerobic workouts, meditation zazens, book schmooze-fests – and, of course, writing workshops. We’re on a constant overload.
So when a well-known writing workshop leader shot at me, “Why don’t you teach your own writing workshop?” I was dumbstruck.
“Who needs another writing workshop?” I asked.
Today, having taught a creative writing workshop for almost twenty years, I don’t ask anymore. I know now there’s plenty of room for self-improvement.
But throughout all these years I haven’t stopped asking myself: What makes one come? What makes one stay? What makes a workshop a learning experience?
Teaching the workshop afforded me a close look into myself — the reasons my workshoppers come, it turned out, are the same reasons that made me always come:
1. Pregnant with a story.
Bad things happen to all of us. We have to exteriorize the experiences in order to become stabilized — “Everybody has a story to tell,” the saying goes. We need to unload the burden. To unload the burden writers need to write it, unload it in writing.
Sometimes, the burden is happiness. Recently, a story written in the workshop placed second in The Heartlight Journal’s Childhood Memories Contest. For the Author, John, it was the first publishing credit and first cash won for writing. Traditionally, we threw a party for the winner. What’s fascinating, for John, 75, the workshop exercise was a part of his reconciliation with his family — a happiness he could hardly wait to unload. Most of the times, alas, the burdens haven’t been happiness.
Some of my workshoppers have shared stories of child abuse, rape, heart-attacks, homophobia and anti-Semitism. We listen, let the writer relieve the past, offer a hug, sometimes a glass of wine. We sympathize. We identify. We suffer all.
However, writers get a terrific break: why other people cry sharing their misfortunes, writers laugh all the way to the bank.
2. Community of writers.
I have known a party animal or two among my writing friends, but writing is the loneliest business. Must be. Writing is expressing one’s crazy vision — can’t be done in company. On the other hand, we need the community of other crazy people to stay sane.
Teaching the workshop made me also realize why workshoppers stay. They stay for the same reason I have always stayed in any workshop:
3. Workshoppers keep working.
There’s no ersatz for the joy of the act of jotting words down on paper. Without writing a writer is not a writer. The highways to success are littered with wanna-be’s.
But distractions and discouragements are aplenty and it takes a true aficionado to never stop. Therefore most people need the sound of pen scratching the paper to keep going. A workshop provides just that.
You forget the chores, bores, and worries, and happily go on, writing for your life.
4. Feedback.
I mean real feedback — an ongoing, knowledgeable critique of your work in progress — not a “kiss” you get from your Mommy, or a dismissing shrug from an ignoramus. I teach my workshoppers the basics of literary criticism. They learn fast. In turn, they give each other incisive, zingy, caring critiques. “Never show a fool half-completed work,” I use a Jewish axiom. Resource Box
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Tad Wojnicki is the author of a novel, Lie Under the Fig Trees, and a hybrid work, Typhoon: A Haibunette with Life Drawings.
His poetry chapbook, Haiku On the Road is forthcoming from the Writers and Lovers Studio / www.writers-and-lovers.com.
Morgen: My mum’s the harshest critic of all. Thank you, Tad!
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If there isn’t a writing group near you or you’d like some extra feedback, take a look at the following groups:
***
If you would like to write a writing-related guest post for my blog then feel free to email me with an outline of what you would like to write about. If it’s writing-related then it’s highly likely I’d email back and say “yes please”.
The blog interviews return as normal tomorrow morning with multi-genre author Carmen Anthony Fiore – the six hundred and sixteenth of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, bloggers, autobiographers and more. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further. And I enjoy hearing from readers of my blog; do either leave a comment on the relevant interview (the interviewees love to hear from you too!) and / or email me.
** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!
See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0
or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **
You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.
For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.
As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do, and a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words (and post stories of up to 3,000 words), or posted for others to critique (up to 5,000 words) on the new Morgen’s Online Short Story Writing Group. Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me posting it online in my new Red Pen Critique Sunday night posts, then do email me. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry and Morgen’s Online Poetry Writing Group.
Four new online writing groups:
We look forward to hearing your comments.
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Tonight’s first of two guest blog posts is brought to you by Benjamin Cohen.
Five Qualities Every Good Writer Must Have
A lot of people think writing is easy. In reality though, to write a captivating piece of literature takes time and practice. Of course, some writers naturally have talent while other people have to work on their craft. Writing is fluid though – ideas and styles can change as time progresses, so if things aren’t clicking today, that doesn’t mean they won’t today. Nonetheless; there are certain qualities any good writer should have. If you’re wondering if you have what it takes, ask yourself if these 5 qualities describe you.
Focus
A writer must be able to focus and stay on topic. A story must have a central idea – one that is clear and easy to follow. Every paragraph must have a solid main point that the reader comprehends well. What separates good writers from great writers is often the ability to focus. Unfortunately, this is a trait that might take years to fully hone. Without focus, a writer is in serious jeopardy of losing the attention and/or respect of his or her audience.
Grammar
A writer should have the best grammar possible. Many people scoff at this idea, but in reality, poor grammar can confuse readers, and again, influence their opinion of you. Grammar goes much further than adhering to a set of rules – proper grammar allows your words to flow well and appeal to readers’ eyes and ears. Grammar really is a dying art, and many writers cause their readers confusion by writing with poor grammar. Luckily, any writer, over time, can develop excellent grammar. One way to improve is to read their work aloud. Awkward phrasing and poor grammar will be easily apparent when doing so.
Research Skills
A writer must have above superb research skills. This is because even if you excel at writing what you know, you must eventually seek greener pastures and write about something new. In order to do so, you must throw yourself into researching the topic. Even if you create a piece of work that is compelling and focused, but contains research errors, your piece and your reputation will suffer. Research skills are more important now than in the past, because so much of what’s out there online is fabricated. Proper research may involve traveling, interviewing and more, so be ready for this.
Knowing Your Audience
A lot of writers suffer when it comes to writing to their audience. However, a skilled writer should know how to write in various styles while also keeping their audience in mind. For example, someone writing a research article will want to use a different tone than someone writing a novel. That is not to say that certain fundamentals do not exist in all writing, just that a person needs to keep their readers in mind. Depending on whether you’re writing to teens, stay at home moms or PhDs, you will need to know how to appeal to different audiences.
Thick Skin
All writers should have thick skin – you will never be universally praised. For every reader who loves your work, 5 will hate it. This doesn’t mean you are a failure – just normal. You must learn to take criticism with a grain of salt. Furthermore, you have to prepared for rejection. Even JK Rowling had a hard time getting her first novel published.
Thank you, Benjamin.
Benjamin Cohen writes about his career as an author, his education in English literature and most recently, the best online colleges for liberal arts degrees.
***
If you would like to write a writing-related guest post for my blog then feel free to email me with an outline of what you would like to write about. If it’s writing-related then it’s highly likely I’d email back and say “yes please”.
Next up is ‘My book on the library shelf’ multi-genre author and interviewee Terri Morgan, then the blog interviews return as normal tomorrow morning with historical mystery author Eleanor Sullivan – the six hundred and fourteenth of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, bloggers, autobiographers and more. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further. And I enjoy hearing from readers of my blog; do either leave a comment on the relevant interview (the interviewees love to hear from you too!) and / or email me.
** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!
See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0
or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **
You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.
For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.
As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do, and a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words (and post stories of up to 3,000 words), or posted for others to critique (up to 5,000 words) on the new Morgen’s Online Short Story Writing Group. Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me posting it online in my new Red Pen Critique Sunday night posts, then do email me. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry and Morgen’s Online Poetry Writing Group.
Four new online writing groups:
We look forward to hearing your comments.
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Welcome to the six hundred and twelfth of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more. Today’s is with multi-genre author Anne Hosansky. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further.
Morgen: Hello, Anne. Please tell us something about yourself, where you’re based, and how you came to be a writer.
Anne: I live in New York City and work at home, which means I can get to my “office” in one minute.
I didn’t as much “come” to writing, as circle back to it. As a child I was always writing, mainly poems. My grandfather was the first (and only) person to believe I’d grow up to be a writer. You’ll be interested in knowing, Morgen, that he was British, a sports writer for The London Times. When I was a rebellious teenager I told him I was going to be an actress. “You’ll outgrow it,” he predicted. It took several decades, while I did act with various theatre companies. When I gave birth to my second child, I decided it was too difficult to juggle theatre and motherhood, so I stayed home and gained an extra 50 pounds out of boredom. I joined Weight Watchers to lose the pounds and heard that the company was looking for an editor. I applied, was hired, and began writing articles about weight loss. That was the beginning of getting back to my first love: writing. I left the organization after some 18 years, and began writing freelance articles and short stories.
What triggered my first book was my husband’s terminal illness and death in 1990. I wanted to write about our bizarre experiences in dealing with doctors. After my husband died, I continued writing about trying to make a new life for myself, writing it as I lived it. The result was my memoir Widow’s Walk.
Morgen: Sorry to hear about your husband. They say “write what you know”, and it is easier. Healthy eating has always been a popular subject – Jane Wenham-Jones blogged on my site only this week about her writer’s bottom. I’m also based at home and would sit in my pyjamas all day if I didn’t have to walk my dog. You write non-fiction, what else do you decide to write about?
Anne: Actually I write both fiction and non-fiction. With articles the idea comes from something I want to say or that seems relevant to the issues of the day. For instance, I’ve written many articles about being a caregiver for a loved one. After Widow’s Walk was published I decided to write about other people’s experiences on coping with loss. I interviewed dozens of inspiring people who also made new lives for themselves. This became my second book, Turning Toward Tomorrow.
Morgen: What have you had published to-date? Do you write under a pseudonym?
Anne: In addition to the two books I mentioned, I have a new one – Ten Women of Valor. It’s a totally different topic, our first Biblical heroines from a feminist viewpoint. I’ve also had numerous articles and short stories about a variety of topics published in magazines.
I don’t use a pseudonym. However, while working for Weight Watchers I wrote the advice column in the magazine under the name of Jean Nidetch (the founder). My therapist asked whether it bothered me to have my writing under someone else’s name. I thought about that, and haven’t done it since.
Morgen: I’d feel the same, unless I was being paid to ghost-write. You’ve self-published, what lead to you going your own way?
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Last Saturday I started this section of the blog to say what I’ve been up to. It did go on a bit (you can read it here) and although a lot’s happened this week, I’ll try to keep this short (I do waffle for England).
Last Sunday morning while going round the park with my dog, I came up with the idea (although it had been milling for a while) of expanding, or at least diluting, the red pen critique I do, and build a blog where others can more involved in critiquing short stories.
Morgen’s Online Short Story Writing Group was then born… and a few minutes later Morgen’s Online Poetry Writing Group… then by the end of Sunday, Morgen’s Online Novel Writing Group, and the following day Morgen’s Online Script Writing Group.
So, there are now four groups where… readers and writers critique each others’… short stories, poetry, novels and scripts. I then created Facebook pages for them (listed at the end of this post’s footer), inviting some of my Facebook friends. If you’re on Facebook, feel free to join in.
I put a shout-out on Facebook and Twitter that these blogs / groups exists and have had almost a dozen submissions already for the first three groups (so if anyone has a <5,000-word script extract they’d like to submit…!).
To-date I’ve posted:
Plus I’ve started daily exercises with four prompts for each so an hour’s worth of writing every evening for those who say they can’t find the time, or inspiration, to write… most of us, I think.
Because of these groups, I’ll be stopping the Red Pen Critique slot after the two I have booked in (tomorrow and Sunday 20th) – (a) because I’m doing the same thing in the short story and novel groups (I’m not qualified to really comment on poetry or script as I don’t write much of them but no doubt I will have something to say!) and (b) because I’ve been doing my red pen and then typing up the notes which takes a few hours each – for example I’ve written 14 sides of a shorthand notepad (about A6-size) just for a 2,200-word story!
The Short Story Saturdays (sss) slot has also now stopped because it was also posting and reviewing stories so is duplicated by the new short story group.
I’ll also be cutting down on the blog interviews: I’m currently booked up (still at one-a-day) until the end of June, when they will go to weekend mornings only, with the author spotlights then moving from Wednesday and Saturday evenings to weekday mornings. I am now charging (£10 / €12.50 / $15) for the interviews (because they take at least an hour a day to do – I add in comments as if we’re chatting) but everything else will still be free of charge. Wednesday evening will become another guest blog spot and Saturday evenings… not sure yet, maybe I’ll be posting some writing of mine.
I’ve also handed over the reins of my (in-person) Monday night writing group to a colleague who’s now going to host it every other Monday at her house. I’ll still go from time-to-time but it’s one less thing I have to do.
Last Sunday saw the start of the new Novel Nights In slot, where I run a guest novel in a maximum of 10 instalments. The novels can be self- or traditionally published but if the latter, I’ll need permission from your publisher that they’re happy to run it.
The 5pm Fiction has had a break since I started NaNoWriMo at the beginning of November but that returns February 1st. The idea was that it would give me three months to edit novel number two (a mystery written in 2009) but it’s making slow progress.
So, all-in-all a busy week with a lot of changes (I’m hoping for the better). No writing of my own done (not even the exercises – tut tut!), but hopefully the groups will more or less take care of themselves with a bit of admin from me. I will critique each one but the plan (from now on) is not to put the critique on the blog but provide links to scans of my markings. Invariably they’ll look scary but hopefully everyone will learn something from them. Each blog group has a ‘Submissions’ page stating what I need but do email me (morgen@morgenbailey.com) if you have any queries.
I quit my job in March 2012 so I could spend more time writing, I’m hoping 2013 will see me actually doing just that!
***
** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!
See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0
or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **
You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.
For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.
As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do, and a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words (and post stories of up to 3,000 words), or posted for others to critique (up to 5,000 words) on the new Morgen’s Online Short Story Writing Group. Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me posting it online in my new Red Pen Critique Sunday night posts, then do email me. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry and Morgen’s Online Poetry Writing Group.
Four new online writing groups:
Tags: agent, Amazon, author, author spotlight, Barnes & Noble, biographers, biography, books, characters, children’s, creative writing, crime, critique, erotica, Facebook, facebook friends, fantasy, feedback, fiction, Goodreads, guest blog, guest blog post, guest post, historical, interview, Kobo, LinkedIn, literature, Morgan Bailey, morgen bailey, Morgen with an e, multi-genre, murder mystery, non-fiction, Northampton, novel group, novelist, novels, paranormal, pinterest, poetry, publisher, rejection letters, rejections, romance, science fiction, second person viewpoint, self-publishing, short story group, short story writing, Smashwords, story author, story authors, submissions, Twitter, vampire, western, writer, writing, writing competitions, writing events, writing magazines, YA, youtube
Tonight’s (extra) guest blog post, on the topic of being a trim writer, is brought to you by novelist, speaker, journalist, tutor, presenter and writing guru Jane Wenham-Jones.
How to tackle a writer’s bottom
“My BMI is 22, my hip to waist ratio passes muster with the medical profession and given the right light, when wearing the right underwear, I have even been referred to “slim”. A small miracle given my alcohol intake, addiction to crisps and erratic approach to exercise….”
So speaks Jane Wenham-Jones, the author who coined the term “Writer’s Bottom”. Here, she brings you her top 100 tips for keeping a spreading rear end at bay. Quirky, hilarious, uplifting, occasionally bizarre, every one of these tried-and-tested methods will have you looking and feeling slimmer and fitter – even with a glass in your hand.
Tonight, Jane tells us more about 100 Ways to Fight the Flab – The Wannabe Guide to a Better Bottom…
I take the credit for coining the term “Writer’s Bottom” – the lardy backside you get when you sit on it too long cos you’re penning your masterpiece. And now consider myself a bit of an expert. I wrote a chapter on the syndrome in my first how-to book: Wannabe a Writer? And it’s the section of the book readers seem to mention the most so I thought it might be fun to expand on my dietary and fitness advice. Not that it is probably quite the right description. I doubt it is the sort of thing your doctor or nutritionist would probably point you towards, involving as it does, crisps wine and chocolate, but look at it this way – I am not morbidly obese (which is a small miracle). So it must work.
All the tips are tried and tested (with the possible exception of having lots of fantastic sex) and I am hoping for positive feedback from my hordes of grateful readers (before and after pictures especially welcome).
Interviewers so far – queuing round the block, natch, to learn my secrets – seem less interested in my quirkiest method for toning one’s gluts and only keen to establish which foods I love and hate. So here goes:
I like small nibbley things that go with champagne. I love canapés and little salty things and those paper cones of tiny fish and chips. Also you can’t beat really great bread with butter. With a chilled white burgundy. Anything with lots of small dishes like meze and tapas is right up my street. Adore a curry and anything spicy.
HATE dodgy animal parts or anything offally or suety. Loathe milk, overcooked greens and Mother’s Pride type bread. There was a time when a steak and kidney pudding and cabbage would reduce me to tears. In fact even thinking about S&K pudding works as aversion therapy. See tip number 31.
If you are sitting on a hot tip or trick that will help keep Writer’s Bottom (stomach / arms / thighs / chins) at bay, then we are running an exciting competition to go with this book – to win a writers’ retreat worth £875! Rules and entry code on my blog (http://janewenhamjones.wordpress.com/100-ways-to-fight-the-flab-tip-writing-competition). You don’t have to buy the book to enter but…
1) you might not win if you don’t – it has to be a DIFFERENT tip from the 100 listed already;
2) you don’t want to be tight, do you?
If you’re happy to have the book on iTunes instead of Kindle, you can be parsimonious, if you move quickly, because it is FREE right now if you click here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/100-ways-to-fight-the-flab/id591647028?ls=1
Thank you, Jane. Good luck, everyone.
Jane is the author of four novels and two non-fiction books – Wannabe a Writer? – a humorous look at becoming a scribe – and Wannabe a Writer We’ve Heard Of? a guide to the art of book and self promotion. As a freelance journalist she has appeared in a wide range of women’s magazines and national newspapers and writes regular columns for Woman’s Weekly and Writing Magazine, where she is the agony aunt.
Jane is an experienced tutor who is regularly booked by writing conferences and literary festivals to run workshops and give talks on all aspects of the writing process. She is also a member of Equity, has presented for the BBC on both TV and radio and has done her fair share of daytime TV, particularly when promoting her controversial second novel Perfect Alibis (subtitled How to have an affair and get away with it…) It was those – sometimes hair-raising – TV experiences that inspired Prime Time, her new novel.
For more information see http://www.janewenham-jones.com and http://janewenhamjones.wordpress.com. Prime Time is available as a paperback and eBook.
100 Ways to Fight the Flab – The Wannabe Guide to a Better Bottom is also available now on Kindle.
***
If you would like to write a writing-related guest post for my blog then feel free to email me with an outline of what you would like to write about. If it’s writing-related then it’s highly likely I’d email back and say “yes please”.
The blog interviews return as normal tomorrow morning with novelist and children’s author Michael Rowland – the six hundred and tenth of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, bloggers, autobiographers and more. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further. And I enjoy hearing from readers of my blog; do either leave a comment on the relevant interview (the interviewees love to hear from you too!) and / or email me.
** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!
See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0
or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **
You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.
For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.
As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do, and a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words (and post stories of up to 3,000 words), or posted for others to critique (up to 5,000 words) on the new Morgen’s Online Short Story Writing Group. Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me posting it online in my new Red Pen Critique Sunday night posts, then do email me. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry and Morgen’s Online Poetry Writing Group.
Four new online writing groups:
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Welcome to the newest slot on my blog, the Sunday night Novel Nights In, where I bring you guests’ novels in their entirety over a maximum of ten weeks.
And now I’ve added Saturday nights with the serialisation of my chick lit novel The Serial Dater’s Shopping List!
Tonight’s is ‘Coming Up For Air’, the first in this series and features part one of this novel by literary author, poet and interviewee Rose Mary Boehm.
For shorter pieces I would run the story then talk more about it afterwards but because this is a longer post (10,006 words), here is an introduction to Rose then a little about her novel before it begins…
Rose Mary Boehm
A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm now lives and works in Lima, Peru. Two novels (‘Coming Up For Air’ and the follow-up ‘The Telling’) have been published in the UK, as well as a poetry collection (‘Tangents’).
Her latest poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in US poetry reviews. Among others: Toe Good Poetry, Poetry Breakfast, Burning Word, Muddy River Review, Pale Horse Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Other Rooms, Requiem Magazine, Full of Crow, Poetry Quarterly, Punchnel’s, Verse Wisconsin, Naugatuck Poetry Review (contest semi-finalist), Avatar…
Her poem ‘Miss Worthington’ won third price in the coveted Margaret Reid Poetry Contest: http://winningwriters.com/contests/margaret/2009/ma09_epaminondas.php. You can find out more about Rose and her writing at her blog: http://houseboathouse.blogspot.com.
Coming Up For Air
A young girl’s struggle to take control of her life
What did readers have to say about it? In Amazon most gave it five (5) stars – these reviews can be read online in their entirety: http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Air-Rose-Mary-Boehm/product-reviews/1907407073
- “A wonderful surprise. Looking forward to reading it again.”
- “Rose Mary Boehm is an exquisite writer […] Take a look at life through the eyes of young Annemarie Becker, […] gain access to a piece of history unknown for some, distant for many and enlightening for all.”
- “This is the story of Anne Marie Becker who grew up during World War II. She was only two-years-old when the bombs started falling. As the author states, part of this novel is fiction, part fact and part autobiographical. In any case, Coming Up For Air is a hard book to put down.”
- “This tale took me to a place in history I had never seen before, with eyes of a child. I had a hard time putting it down. It was fast moving […]”
You can read other reviews at Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7957702-coming-up-for-air.
You can also view her book trailer on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg7zN8kNaO4.
If you don’t want to wait the 10 weeks for the whole story, you can purchase Coming Up for Air at Amazon.com (just $2.95) Amazon.co.uk (only £1.87). The rest of the ‘adventures of Annie’ can be read in THE TELLING.
Foreword
When, in the 70s, in London, young friends of mine asked me about ‘my side of the story’, I wasn’t sure where to start, whether I had one (a story to tell), or whether I actually wanted to talk about it. When I began the dig, I found memory fragments rather than a story, and I found a small voice. I decided to ‘start at the very beginning’. The novel you are about to read is the result. I wrote it in three parts:
- Book I (Another Kind of Childhood) is unashamedly autobiographical
- Book II (The Unbearable Burden of Sex) consists of my tales and tales from friends
- Book III (Spitting against the Wind) is pure invention.
Some characters in the novel are based on real people, others are blends of people I’ve known; events, places, dates and time I shifted at will, and all names of the protagonists are fictitious.
I have tried to convey a time of love, fear, solidarity, bewilderment, pain, hypocrisy, fun, hope, friendship, optimism, promises and expectations. But, more than that, I intended to show today’s young adults that there is nothing new under the sun, and that we can free ourselves from repeating errors (quite a few of which are born from the many confusing messages life imparts) in our reactions to our world.
Be patient, gentle reader, the voice of the small child who understands very little grows up during the story into someone who begins to understand even less.
***
Book I: Another Kind of Childhood
1
Mother carries me down to the shelter and I feel safe. I sit on her arm, and she holds me close. I clutch her neck with my arms and know everything is alright.
Father carries me down. He doesn’t sit me on his arm: he wraps me into a blanket and presses me tightly to his chest. I slowly slip down through the blanket.
*
Already in World War I, the Rhine-Ruhr area was a prime target for Britain and France, who even then planned air attacks on its industrial cities.
In World War II, the Rhine-Ruhr power stations and coking plants topped the list of targets for the British strategic air war against Germany. The Rhine-Ruhr industrial region was the ‘Armory of the Third Reich’, where the industrial giants of their time manufactured the components for Hitler’s tanks, aircrafts, submarines, cannons, etc.
In May 1940, British Bomber Command opened the strategic air war against Germany, and night after night British bombers took off in the direction of the industries of the Ruhr.
Following the German air attacks on British cities in the autumn of 1940 and the spring of 1941 which had caused around 40,000 deaths in London alone, the British Air Ministry and the War Cabinet decided in favour of air attacks on important German industrial cities such as Cologne, Düsseldorf, Duisburg, Essen and Hamburg. The Unison plan envisaged strategic air raids on the populated areas in various industrial cities.
I must have been about two-and-a-half or three years old when the bombers began to come with ever increasing frequency.
For me, there existed no history, no guilt, no hate, no understanding. All I knew was my life between ‘upstairs’ and ‘downstairs’, and the sound of the district siren screaming from the schoolhouse opposite our house, paralysing me with fear. I knew that night meant danger and that this piercing sound, accompanied by the staccato of the anti-aircraft guns, would inevitably be followed by the low hum of overhead bombers and then the ear-splitting explosions which shattered windows and doors, shook walls and made me want to curl up into a ball.
The ‘shelters’ were the cellars of the buildings in which we lived. As soon as the air-raid siren started its deafening warning, Mother, Father, my brother and I would hurry downstairs to the shelter. But not without my dolls. I was the ‘mother’ of a collection of motley down-and-outs. One had a hole in its celluloid head and its hand was mangled. I used to chew the celluloid fingers.
In November 1944, the US Secretary of War ordered the US Strategic Bombing Survey, one of the last directives coming from the late President Roosevelt who had always believed that an impartial and expert study of the effects of American aerial attacks on Germany would allow the Americans not only to evaluate the potential of air power as an instrument of military strategy, but also help plan the future development of the United States armed forces, while determining future economic policies with respect to the cost of national defence and, as expected, the report’s major conclusion was that strategic bombing, particularly the destruction of the German oil industry and truck manufacturing, contributed tremendously to Allied successes in World War II.
Not that it is very important to those who are at the receiving end, but there is a distinction to be made between tactical and strategic bombing: strategic bombing missions seek to destroy a country’s industrial infrastructure, throwing in a few cities for good measure, while tactical bombing missions go for military targets such as airfields, ammunition dumps, command facilities, troop concentrations etc. Never before had the world seen strategic bombing as used in World War II. In some cases thousands of aircraft dropped tens of thousands of tonnes of munitions on a single city.
Between them, the Allies were able to bomb around the clock. During the day, the US Air Forces made precision raids against specific targets with their well-defended aircraft, while the less protected British bombers crossed into Germany under the cover of night and massed over the cities by the hundreds.
**
2
I am small. Everyone else is very tall. The big ones take care of me. They smile at me, hold me. Sometimes they sound angry and sometimes they sound frightened. Sometimes they make me laugh and I love them very much. One of the big people is Father, one is Mother, then there is my big brother. Father is the most beautiful and the strongest. He is not with us very often. On some evenings he comes into the room where I sleep.
The wallpaper by my bed is covered with little pink flowers that are connected by thin whirly lines. I always look at them before I sleep, and I have found out where one pattern ends and the same pattern begins. It has a rhythm. It never changes, it never ends. I like it. There is a secret spot where I can peel the thick paper off the wall. That feels almost as nice as peeling off a scab. But when Father stands by my bed and smiles at me, I forget about the pattern.
He makes me feel warm all over. Like my blanket. Soft and cosy. His eyes shine when he looks at me. I drown in that blue, blue, moist warm shine. I want to get close to him, smell him, touch him, feel the roughness of his suit, creep into his arms. I want to stay like this forever.
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As I walked my dog around the park this morning, Sunday 6th January 2013, the idea came to me of setting up an online short story writing group.
I’ve recently set up a Feedback section on this blog, but that’s just a list of readers / writers willing / offering to provide feedback and they then go off and talk amongst themselves (hopefully!). But I know from my now-weekly Red Pen Critique slot, how useful open critique is to other writers. Hence, Morgen’s Short Story Writing Group was born, and while I was designing it, Morgen’s Poetry Writing Group formed in my brain.
The plan is for me to post your stories or poems on the relevant home page then list them within the relevant genre / form headings for readers to enjoy and let you know what they thought (positively / constructively). It will be fiction prose and poetry only, sorry non-fiction authors.
For the short story site, there’s no lower word count limit so if you have a 50-word story you’re burning to share then feel free to send it to me. Because of my existing workload (stupidly busy) I am asking for a 5,000-word upper limit but much more than that and it strays into novelette territory anyway.
For the poetry site, there’s no lower line limit so if you have a haiku you’re burning to share then feel free to send it to me. Because of my existing workload (stupidly busy) I am asking for a 50-line upper limit so email me first if your poem goes over that.
There’ll be no payment for the stories or poems put on these blogs because it’s all about feedback. They will also count as being published so bear this in mind when planning to submit to competitions etc.
Each story or poem can carry below it a 250-word max third-person biography of the author, one contact link (e.g. their website), one photograph of themselves (if they wish to include one) and / or a cover of their latest (or favourite) book (if they have one).
To submit your stories, see Short Story submissions / Poetry submissions.
Each new posting is advertised on my Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr and Yahoo profiles so it is a chance for extra traffic to your website too.
There are also two extra sections on each blog, just for visitors (you!)…
- Q&A: where writers / readers ask and answer questions;
- Writing Tips: where writers / readers leave their favourite writing tips.
I shall be monitoring comments on both sites, so please leave positive / constructive feedback. Anything spiteful will be removed (or not approved in the first place).
Is there anything else that you’d like to see on these blogs? If so, let me know.
Thank you for taking part and I hope it proves useful and enjoyable to all concerned.
Morgen With An ‘E’
morgen@morgenbailey.com
http://morgenbailey.wordpress.com
***
Next up (in about an hour) is my aforementioned Red Pen Critique followed by (about an hour or so after that), the first instalment of a new feature Novel Nights In. Then in the morning is my 605th interview, this time with novelist and screenwriter Mark Adam Kaplan.
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For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback privately, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.
As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do, and a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words (and post stories of up to 3,000 words). Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me posting it online in my new Red Pen Critique Sunday night posts, or posted for others to critique (up to 5,000 words) on the new Morgen’s Short Story Writing Group), then do email me. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.
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Welcome to the six hundred and fourth of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more. Today’s is with multi-genre author Rebeccah Giltrow. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further.
Morgen: Hello, Rebeccah. Please tell us something about yourself, where you’re based, and how you came to be a writer.
Hello. I’m Rebeccah, a 30-year-old procrastinator based in the small village of Kessingland, just outside of Lowestoft (famous for being the most easterly town in England). I started writing as soon as I could hold a pen and wrote for many years until I fell out of love with all things literary when I was about 15 or 16 years old. My love for the subject was rekindled a few years later and after taking a creative writing module the 3rd year of my degree at University of Essex, I realised that I wanted to write. Strike that. I needed to write. I took a year out after graduating to make some money, and returned to university in 2006 to study MA Creative Writing. Since then, it’s the only thing I do that makes me happy. It’s not easy, but I enjoy it, and I’m learning so much by doing it.
Morgen: What a shame you fell out of love, but great that you came back to it. And yes, I know all about that ‘need’. I’ve described you in the introduction as being a ‘multi-genre author’, what genre do you generally write?
Rebeccah: I don’t have a specific genre. I like to poke my finger into many pies just to see if I can do it. My novel, Lexa Wright’s Dating Sights, is a chic lit romcom. That’s the first time I’ve written anything like that, and I really enjoyed it, so it’s something I may write again.
I tend to steer towards ‘real life’ writing, even if it is fiction. I love the idea of fantasy, where you can be as extreme as you want, making up unusual words and inventing mystical places, but I always find myself writing about things that could happen in reality. One day I’ll take the leap into something more exotic!
I think I’d consider all genres, and only decide against them once I’ve tried to write them and realise that I can’t do it, or I don’t enjoy it.
Morgen: My first-published novel is a chick lit and like you, it was great fun (just as well as I wrote the 117,540-word first draft for NaNoWriMo 2009. What have you had published to-date?
Rebeccah: In 2009 I was asked to write for a local magazine, The Kessingland and Broadland Times. I contributed children’s stories, articles, interviews and poetry to the bi-monthly publication. I have also self-published a collection of short stories; 12 Days of Krista May Rose, inspired by the traditional song, The Twelve Days of Christmas, and my full-length novel, Lexa Wrights Dating Sights. I published both books through Createspace for Amazon.
Morgen: I’m thinking of going that way for my novel, although I’m still getting constructive feedback on it so am waiting until that peters out. You’ve self-published, what lead to you going your own way?
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Hello everyone. This is me… on the right – a water baby – except of course I’m a bit older and wiser (and almost as far away from the sea as one can get in Britain).
A couple of weeks ago, I created http://morgenbailey.wordpress.com/me/morgens-saturday-shoutouts to inspire me to put a weekly post up about what I’ve been doing, see as the other posts are either about or by my guests.
I’d love to tell you that since that page went up that I’ve been working hard at my own writing, but sadly (and as per usual) this blog’s taken over and I’ve done nothing to my second novel, a mystery entitled ‘After Jessica’. What’s more annoying is that I have six wonderful first readers (hi Jenny, Graham, Tony, Robin, Catherine and Jessica) all waiting for me to get it done and send it over. Of course I don’t expect them all to come back to me (and certainly no quicker than I’ve been) but just knowing that one or more of them might should be pushing me to get it done… I know, it’s down to me to find the time and had it been November, I’d be doing just that for NaNoWriMo. I shouldn’t be hard on myself because I did / won my fifth NaNo in November and then had a backlog of emails etc then there was Christmas. Yeah, I know… it’s only three days.
So, in the meantime of me doing anything productive of my own, in case you’ve not stopped by my Morgen With An ‘E’ page, I’ve replicated it below to prove that actually I can sit my bum in my chair and do some work. I hope you’re sitting comfortably…
Hello. I’m Morgen With An E, a writer of over 7 years (although I do remember writing a story about an ampersand when young and dabbling with limericks in my 20s, and I’ve always had my head in a book; formerly Stephen King but my tastes have softened somewhat… to crime and humour). I’m passionate about the craft, and wanted to share with you my knowledge and experience gleaned to-date, having studied under the tutorledge of Sally Spedding, Judith Allnatt, Sue Moorcroft, Joanna Barnden, Jane Adams, and Myra Schneider, and most recently Helen M Hunt. My contact details are here.
I write fiction, mainly short stories and novels with some poetry, and have been published in the UK, the latest being two flash fiction pieces in Cake issue no.3. I also submit to magazines and competitions in the UK and overseas and won Ripping Pages competition January 2008 with a poem ‘Fight for life’, was shortlisted in the Verulam Writers’ Circle ‘Get Writing’ Competition 2010 with Feeding the Father, a based-on-a-true-story monologue, which was also shortlisted in the Writers’ News Short Story Competition October 2010 (so near and yet so far). I won the Northampton Writers’ Group Members Only Short Story Comp July 2010 and was also shortlisted at Verulam Writers’ Circle ‘Get Writing’ 2011 Competition. ‘Feeding the Father’ is available as a free eShort here (there are three other freebies) and will feature in an upcoming anthology ‘It’s all about me’.
I’ve written four and a bit novels (three for NaNoWriMo – www.nanowrimo.org: 53,000 in November 2008, (novel no 2 Jan-Oct 2009), 117,540 words in Nov 2009 (in 29 days!), 51,300 words November 2010 and scraped through the 50,000 barrier (with less than an hour to spare) in 2011. The ‘bit’ is a conversion of my Script Frenzy 2010 script which I’ll continue at some stage.
I wrote my first-ever script for NaNo’s sister site Script Frenzy – www.scriptfrenzy.org – which was a challenge to say the least. The target was 100 pages rather than 50,000 words but the layout so different that it was a much slower process. Although I’m glad I did it (102 pages), it didn’t make me want to be a script writer (although I wrote a 5-minute play for Northampton Literature Group’s July 2010 task which was fun) so am sticking with the novels, short stories and occasional poetry. I have also had one of my monologues displayed alongside one of Jaroslaw Ancuta’s drawings – see www.jaroslaw-ancuta.com.
I’ve also had writing-related articles published in the NAWG April 2011 ’Link’ magazine (Chorleywood Literature Festival Review), August 2011 (Blog interviews & Bailey’s Writing Tips) and October 2011 (The Benefits of Attending Writing Events) and a twisted fairy tale in April 2012 editions. I’ve been mentioned on Rosanne Dingli’s website as well as a short story (‘The Threadbare Girl’) published on Nathan Weaver’s site. This blog’s My Collaborations page lists everything to-date. ‘The Threadbare Girl’ is available as a free short story and part of my ‘Story A Day 2011′* anthology on Smashwords ($0.99 (£0.77 / AS$1.50)) *which has just received its first review on Amazon, a glowing 5*.
In July 2011 I guested on Tia Silver Bach’s blog on the subject of NaNoWriMo. In September, Jodine Turner invited me to talk about writing essentials. Later that month I said what it was (is) like to be a writer in the U.K. entitled The view from across the pond on JD Mader’s non-fiction blog.
In December 2011 I was nominated (by K.S. Brooks), and awarded (by JD Mader), a Versatile Blogger Award. Coming a few hours after the first (a 5*) review for my The 365-Day Writer’s Block Workbook they certainly made my day. Then Chaz Wood’s wonderfully dark blog I talked again about writing essentials (yes, it’s deja vu ).
In January I guested on Fiona Veich Smith site to talk about overcoming writer’s block.
Then late February 2012 Cindy Vaskova bestowed a ‘Liebster Blog Award’ on myself and four other bloggers: Nerine Dorman, Icy Sedgwick, Sonya Clark and Emma Newman. One of my duties is to 1. Link back to Cindy (easy). 2. Nominate five others (not quite so easy but doable). 3. Post the award on my blog (done). 4. Bask in the love from the most supportive people in the blogosphere (easy, I do that already ). 5. Have fun and spread the karma! (peasy). Thank you, Cindy.
In April I was one of Catherine Noble‘s ‘crafty fella‘s… that’s certainly a first. Thank you, Catherine, and later that month I was added to the Towcester Writers Group website, was awarded a ‘Lucky Seven’ by Kasia James, and listed as a top blogger by Finish Your Book (another WordPress site). I also met up with JD Mader again on the topic of the art of interviews.
Late May I was presented (online) with a ‘Beautiful Blogger Award’ by Sean Durity followed by another Versatile Blogger Award from Darlene Jones, and then another ‘Beautiful Blogger Award’ by Dicy McCullough. And I revisited the topic of writing essentials for Nancy Dodd and then on Siggy Buckley’s site with a piece entitled Do as I do, not and as I say.
In June I was no.7 of 21 on a list of other bloggers who interview authors, won another Versatile Blogger Award from DK Thomas and a WGT Kreative Blogger Award from Siggy Buckley. I was also Jadis Shaw’s ‘featured book’ with a Story a Day May 2011 giveaway. Also that month I became an Associate of the Society of Authors.
Then in July I was listed 12th in Best Colleges Online’s Top 100 creative writing blogs, on the Fantastic Books Publishing blog as a ‘Useful Resource for Writers’ and a ‘helpful people & sites’ on Burrst.com.
In August I was awarded a Sunshine Blogger Award by Sophie E Tallis then I spotted my blog as one of Sheila Pearson’s favourites and Sophie E Tallis awarded me a Very Inspiring Blogger Award (I never knew there were so many). Tony Riches asked me for 10 writing tips for new writers then a few days later I wrote a guest post for Tom Rizzo on crime writing. Later that day, Sheron McCartha listed this blog’s Books: Other’s Peoples / Novels & Novellas page on her sci-fi book review blog. The next day Gail M Baugniet listed this blog as an awesome blog to visit and a few days later I was mentioned on Helen Yendall’s blog. On the 22nd Christopher Farley awarded me a One Lovely Blog Award. It was a busy month!
Then in September Agnes Meadow invited me to be a (paid!) speaker (as “Queen Blogger”) at her Loose Muse event in Covent Garden, London, mid-March 2013 (I accepted, of course), Jaidis Shaw named me as one of her Author Resources on her new blog. and the same day Dorit Kedar told me via Facebook that thanks to some advice I’d given her she had a short story placed in an anthology. Mid-month novelist and writing guru Jane Wenham-Jones mentioned me in one of her Woman’s Weekly ‘Just Jane‘ columns. Then on the 24th September I was announced as one of Tribal Messenger Daily’s Top 50 blog for authors.
October 2012 started with me being nominated by Anne O’Connell for a Super Sweet award, then on the 2nd I was interviewed by Tom Blubaugh. On the 6th I signed up to (using my Twitter account, it was that easy) with RebelMouse which picks up my content from Twitter and Facebook as I produce it so I never have to do a thing. Then mid-October I I’ve joined Wattpad. Are you on there? Do let me know. A couple of days later I was notified that a free eBook entitled ‘Ditch the Publisher’ I’d contributed to (my section’s no.7, entitled ‘The eBook revolution’) was released. Then William R Bell ‘This is Your Life’d me. And late October I received an email inviting me to join storylane where I was asked to lay myself bare (not literally, you’ll be pleased to know) but perhaps sharing a little too much information about my private life… including my most embarrassing moment!
A great start to November with the kick-off of my latest crime novel ‘Once Perfect’ (and this is going to be very grim) for NaNoWriMo 2012 and I uploaded my first (third-written) novel, my one-and-only-chick-lit-to-date, The Serial Dater’s Shopping List on to Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and Smashwords (and will be on iTunes, B&N etc. shortly). On the morning of Wednesday 7th November, I woke up to find I’d received a Written Acts of Kindness Award. The next day, Yasmin Selena Butt mentioned me on her blog. Then on the 11th I was interviewed by Richard Godwin at his Slaughterhouse! 
On the 21st I woke up to a comment on my blog from Sophie E Tallis and a p.s. that she’d nominated me for a One Lovely Blog Award. Then I submitted a 55-word story to Austin Briggs monthly competition.
I finished NaNoWriMo, with a few minutes to spare, ‘winning’ with 51,555 words then on the morning of 1st December, I was shortlisted on Austin’s competition. One of my interviewees epic fantasy novelist Yvonne Herzberger won. I received an email late on 4th December telling me I had won a professional video trailer from Writania for The Serial Dater’s Shopping List (TSDSL) with my pitch of ’31 dates in 31 days – what could possibly go wrong?’. Then on the 5th I woke up to find I’d been nominated for a Blog of the Year 2012 award. On 9th December TSDSL was featured on online magazine Female First! On the 18th December, Tracy Kauffman added me to http://literary.yolasite.com/bloggers.php. and later that evening I posted a part 3 of 3 guest post by crime novelist Neil Yuzuk who announced that he’s named one of his characters (a secretary, and I was a secretary!) after Rosanne Dingli and me!
January 2013 got off to a flying start with Cheryl Carpinello interviewing me on the 1st.
There is more on the Morgen With An ‘E’ page but I think that’s more than enough. So, hopefully another thrilling instalment next Saturday with some news that I’ve actually accomplished something this week…
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See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0
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You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.
For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.
As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do, and a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words (and post stories of up to 3,000 words). Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me posting it online in my new Red Pen Critique Sunday night posts, then do email me. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.
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