Morgen: Hello Bridget. Please tell us something about yourself, where you’re based, and how you came to be a writer.

Bridget: I am originally from Northern California but moved to Los Angeles right after high school. Writing is second nature to me. I have been telling stories since I was little.

Morgen: How wonderful. I’d say about half the authors I’ve interviewed have written forever, the other half wishes they had. What genre do you generally write and have you considered other genres?

Bridget: Contemporary/chick lit, although I have also written a musical and been known to write children’s books for my kids.

Morgen: What have you had published to-date?

Bridget: I have just published my first novel “Searching for My Wand”, which tells the story of Glenda, a young woman named after Glinda the Good Witch. As such, she has spent a good portion of her life trying to live up to the reputation of a fictional character.

Morgen: That sounds like fun. Have you had any rejections?

Bridget: I really haven’t, but then I decided to self-publish after a two-year period in which I was ridiculously prolific. The responses to the novels I wrote were so positive that I was anxious to get them seen sooner rather than later. Traditional publishing is so much slower.

Morgen: Oh isn’t it just. That’s part of the reason why we’re all eBooking. You’re, I think, only about the third author I’ve interviewed who’s not had any rejections. So I don’t suppose then that you have an agent? Do you think they’re vital to an author’s success?

Bridget: No, and I’m not sure how vital they are. I guess I’m going to find out.

Morgen: So you’ve self-published, is that as an eBook? Do you read eBooks or is it paper all the way?

Bridget: This is a funny subject to me, because I love paper books and at the moment my book is only available as an eBook. I would love to have it in print, but I’ve yet to find a cost effective way of making that a reality.

Morgen: So would I but it’s not just the cost but the time spent going out finding people (unless you’re selling online alongside the electronic version) to buy it. How much of the marketing do you do for your book?

Bridget: I am doing it all, and I have to say it is at times overwhelming. I have a blog I started a year ago, and of course there is Twitter and Facebook, but I have spent a lot of time (and will continue to) doing guest posts and interviews in an effort to get the word out.

Morgen: It seems to take ages, doesn’t it (but hopefully you’re enjoying it ). I hadn’t realised until I started these interviews last June how many there were of us doing the same thing. Do you have a favourite of your books or characters? If any of your books were made into films, who would you have as the leading actor/s?

Bridget: I love “Searching for My Wand”, but then I love all of my novels, and the musical, too. My characters generally have a sense of humor which shines through even in difficult times. As for actors, I was thinking about this the other day and thought of Matt Bomer to play Glenda’s husband. He’s the star of “White Collar” a TV show over here.

Morgen: I don’t think we have that here – I’ll have to Google him. So presumably you chose the title / cover of your book? How important do you think they are?

Bridget: This is the good thing about self-publishing. I have had control over everything. I did the cover, the book trailer, the title, etc.

Morgen: I’ve done everything myself (with assistance from my editor) but a book trailer is something I’ve yet to dabble with. What are you working on at the moment / next?

Bridget: I just finished a wildly funny novel, “The Salacious Marny Ottwiler” that had me laughing the entire I was writing it. I was honestly sorry to end it. Still, I had four other novels completed before I even started that one, and I am probably going to publish “On a Hot August Afternoon” next.

Morgen: What great titles. If you had such fun writing it I’m sure your readers will also feel sorry that it ends – maybe you could do a serial? Do you manage to write every day? Do you ever suffer from writer’s block?

Bridget: I do write every day. I hate the days when I am too busy to get to it, and as my kids can attest, get very cranky about it. Writer’s block is rare for me.

Morgen: Me too (although it’s just the day job that gets in my way – and that’s going next week ). Do you plot your stories or do you just get an idea and run with it?

Bridget: I am definitely a runner. I am constantly surprised by where my characters take me. In “Searching for My Wand,” there is a huge and surprising plot twist that I had no idea was coming.

Morgen: I love that. It’s got to be my favourite aspect of writing. Do you have a method for creating your characters, their names and what do you think makes them believable?

Bridget: I try to give my characters simple, relatable names because there is nothing I hate more than trying to read a book with names I’m not even sure how to pronounce. I don’t think you can get into the rhythm of the story if you are constantly trying to figure out how to say a name. I want my characters to be your friend or a family member, and I make them believable by putting them in very real situations.

Morgen: That’s how it should be. Even with sci-fi or fantasy it should be relatable however weird and wonderful. Do you write any non-fiction, poetry or short stories?

Bridget: In the past few months I have tried my hand at short stories, but I don’t think they are my strong suit. Poetry is not really my thing but I have learned to write lyrics, which is not something I ever would have thought I would end up doing.

Morgen: Shame about the short stories (they’re my first love) but then I feel the same about novels – too many threads to think about. Do you do a lot of editing or do you find that as time goes on your writing is more fully-formed?

Bridget: I start out getting the story down. Then I have others read it and give notes, and then I edit some, but usually not a lot.

Morgen: I do less than I used to but it’s all about practice (same with anything) isn’t it? Do you have to do much research?

Bridget: Not so far. My stories are contemporary, and since I put my character in every day circumstances, I haven’t had to research too much. I would certainly love to get to travel more, though.

Morgen: What point of view do you find most to your liking: first person or third person?

Bridget: First person is definitely the easiest for me.

Morgen: It does get you inside your character. Do you have pieces of work that you think will never see light of day?

Bridget: Tons of it.

Morgen: Oh dear. I have quite a lot of old stuff but I hope I’m older (definitely am) and wiser (in theory) to buff it. What’s your favourite / least favourite aspect of your writing life? Has anything surprised you?

Bridget: My least favorite part is not having the money to promote more. I would love to be able to hire a publicist and wish I could pay the woman who did the formatting for me, etc. Also, like I said, travel would be nice.

Morgen: I do think the more an author has available, the better they’ll do because if they only have one novel up (I’m the same at the moment with a short story collection) and a reader really likes it, there’s nothing else for them to go and buy. What advice would you give aspiring writers?

Bridget: Write, write, and then write some more.

Morgen: Absolutely – practice. If you could invite three people from any era to dinner, who would you choose and what would you cook (or hide the takeaway containers)?

Bridget: I did a post on this on my blog and said I would invite Emma Thompson because I adore her. I think her Oscar speech was the most brilliant speech ever written. If you know anything nasty about her, don’t tell me, because in my book she can do no wrong. That said, it might be fun to invite Kenneth Branagh to dinner too, and then we’ll invite Colin Farrell because he’s always entertaining. I think for dinner we’ll have either turkey or roast beef, mounds of mashed potatoes, and some corn, followed by angel food cake with chocolate buttercream frosting.

Morgen: I’m a fan of Emma Thompson. She’s brilliant in my favourite film (who no-one’s ever heard of: Stranger Than Fiction) where she plays a neurotic writer. She used to be married to Kenneth Branagh so an interesting choice (although I still think they get on well) and Colin Farrell was hilarious in In Bruges so great choices. Is there a word, phrase or quote you like?

Bridget: “Isn’t fun the best thing to have?” from the original “Arthur”.

Morgen: What do you do when you’re not writing?

Bridget: I love to draw as is evidenced by the drawings in “Searching for My Wand”, and of course I like to spend time with my kids.

Morgen: I love drawing too. I have loads of pads, pencils and so on but it’s finding the time. Once the day job goes… Are there any writing-related websites and/or books that you find useful?

Bridget: I am all over a variety of blogs reading anything I can to better myself and my career. For writing advice I like Kristen Lamb.

Morgen: Not sure I’ve heard of her (OK Google, here I come ). Are you on any forums or networking sites? If so, how valuable do you find them?

Bridget: I keep signing up for things and then wondering if they are doing me any good. I’m on Twitter @bridgetstraub, and Facebook, and Linkedin, and most recently Triberr, although I haven’t really figured that one out yet.

Morgen: Mmm. I’ve been on Triberr for a while and it’s a great tool although it’s annoying that Twitter made them de-auto the tweets so now I have to remember to go in and tweet them but then it’s brilliant that you’re part of a group who does the same so we all get to share each other’s work. What do you think the future holds for a writer?

Bridget:I really think self-published writers are going to win the respect that traditionally published writers have. There is so much talent out there, and publishing is rapidly changing.

Morgen: Isn’t that great. Where can we find out about you and your work?

Bridget: iTunes, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, the book trailer and first chapter.

Morgen: Is there anything else you’d like to mention?

Bridget: Only that I love hearing what people think of the book and hope everyone enjoys it.

Morgen: Please do comment, folks, if you’ve read the book – feedback is so vital to an author. Is there anything you’d like to ask me, Bridget?

Bridget: No, but I would like to thank you for this opportunity to share my work. It is truly appreciated.

Morgen: Oh you’re so welcome, lovely to meet you and thank you for letting me grill you.

Bridget Straub (author, lyricist) has co-written the musical “Room to Grow” with Laura Hall. Bridget has her own blog at http://bridgetstraub.com and has written guest posts for several other bloggers while also blogging for the Studio City Patch. She has completed four novels. The first, “Searching for My Wand” was published in December 2011.

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 questions. You complete them, I tweak them where appropriate (if necessary to reflect the blog ‘clean and light’ rating) 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. You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything… and follow me on Twitter where each new posting is automatically announced. You can also read / download my eBooks and free eShorts at Smashwords.

Unfortunately, as I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t review books but 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 reading it / talking about and critiquing it (I send you the transcription afterwards so you can use the comments or ignore them) on my ‘Bailey’s Writing Tips’ podcast, then do email me. They are weekly episodes, usually released Monday mornings UK time, interweaving the recordings between the red pen sessions with the hints & tips episodes. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.  And I have a new forum at http://morgenbailey.freeforums.org.

Don’t Get it Right, Get It Written

This is the mantra I have tattooed on the inside my eyelids.

One of the things that I hear time and time again when I talk to would-be writers is,  ‘I’d really like to write, but I just don’t know where to start.’ The simple truth and the most useful advice I can give is you can start anywhere.  It doesn’t matter where you start just take that leap and get going on your story.  You can always and almost always will go back and edit that opening into something more interesting or compelling, or mysterious. So when you start just imagine those first few sentences as the bridge that will take you into your story.

Choose your favourite pen and a lovely notebook or open up a new page on your screen and just write. Don’t edit, don’t look at the red wiggly lines under the misspellings or cross out stuff – just write – anything and everything is just fine, because this is a for-your-eyes-only copy.

No one else will get the chance to judge your poor grammar, your weak sentence structure, your lousy spelling or the fact that your ideas have not come out in any thing like a logical order, nor that you have dropped doughnut jam on a good bit half way down the first page <writer pauses to lick off > And when it comes to making judgements about your writing, at this stage that means YOU too. On this first journey through the first version don’t get in your own way. Switch off that critical inner voice.  Tell the voice I told you it was okay, no, really – and just keep on writing.

Editing comes next – and for me is about delivering the clearest most readable version of that thought you had in your head.  But unless you have something down on the page you haven’t got anything to deliver – so write – And then when you’ve have enough -  be it ten minutes or two minutes or two hours, go back and start the process of shaping what you’ve written into what it is you really want to say. (Some people at this stage like to leave what they’re written to stew for a while, but the typing in my first drafts can sometimes be so bad that if I don’t go back there and then, while the idea is fresh, I can’t always decipher what it is I’ve written, but the time frame is you choice.)

From that great rich mass of thought and words you now have something to work with and cut into shape.  You can go back and construct a killer opening and line and delete the sentence that was the bridge onto your idea, take a few goes at it – see which one you like best. You may find cutting the first paragraph,  the one that let you get settled and get on track is the answer, just pruning it away, meaning you start with the second one. Maybe you need to reorder the way the paragraphs run or maybe on a second reading you decide you want to spend more time expanding the great idea in the fourth paragraph.

But you wouldn’t have known any of those things until it was down the on the page.

So, don’t get it right, get it written!

Thank you Sue!

Sue Welfare lives and works in West Norfolk in the town where she grew up. She began writing professionally in 1993, selling magazine and newspaper articles, before moving on to full length fiction.

Sue has four sons and shares her life with a very understanding husband and a large custard-coloured mongrel. When not writing Sue can be found making rag rags or handbags, gardening, cooking, reading, taking endless photographs or singing in her local community choir.

Sue’s website is www.Katelawson.co.uk and her latest novel, One Night Only, is available on 1st March 2012.

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 Bridget Straub – the two hundred and eighty-ninth 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. You can also read / download my eBooks and free eShorts at Smashwords, Sony Reader Store, Barnes & Noble, iTunes Bookstore and Kobo (Amazon to follow)

Morgen: Hello Dennis. Please tell us something about yourself, where you’re based, and how you came to be an editor.

Dennis:  My family and I live in Middletown New York. I’m a counselor in a New York state prison and I’m looking to retire this year. I became an editor just by being the type of person I am. I began by reviewing books for a wonderful lady in Kentucky. She liked my reviews so much that she asked me to edit every review submitted on her website; I agreed. While reading a book for review, I have a habit of recording events and errors that I find. I asked her to submit the errors I found to the writer. I did the same thing to his next book; he was so impressed that he asked me to edit his next manuscript. And I did and so it began and has continued for over two years, nonstop.

Morgen: They say it’s not what you know, it’s who you know but certainly having both helps. What do you generally edit?

Dennis: I prefer to edit fiction because that’s what I like to read. I have edited a few nonfiction to date, but it’s not my preference.

Morgen: It wouldn’t be mine either. Are there common mistakes an author can make?

Dennis: I don’t think authors communicate enough with their editors; that could be fatal. I’m thinking that often writers might not know how to accept changes in Word and they blame their editor for errors they make when doing so. I have no evidence to back that up, only suspicion based on comments from a few of my writers.

Another mistake is that I often feel they are in a rush to have their books edited, hence they may have a problem with the bill when they get it. They may feel it’s too much money. This has happened to me once before.

Morgen: I have a great editor who comes up with some wonderful suggestions as well as finding errors (fortunately not many) but it makes sense for me to be as thorough as I can before it goes to her because my time doesn’t cost me anything. Do editors generally charge by the word or the hour?

Dennis: That’s up to the editor but I feel that hourly rates are fairer to good writers.

Morgen: That’s interesting. Rachel and I agreed on a £x per 1,000 words so we both knew the cost from the outset. How much notice do you get for editing a project?

Dennis: Sometimes I only have two or three weeks; that’s not enough time. Knowing that, I inform writers not to hold me responsible for a few mistakes they may find later. Rushing never gets the job done right. I let them know that up front.

Morgen: Very wise. If a job’s worth doing… Do you have much dealing with publishers?

Dennis: The only time I deal with publishers is when they want me to edit a book they are publishing for a writer.

Morgen: I’ve heard numerous authors say they can self-publish without an editor – what would you say to that?

Dennis: It’s often a question of money; they may not have it. Or they may feel that they have gone over their writing so many times that there couldn’t possibly be any mistakes.

Morgen: But be too close to it, so there probably are. How do you edit – on screen or on paper?

Dennis: Electronically only, it would take much longer to edit longhand. I use voice recognition software to save my writers money.

Morgen: That’s a good idea. Do you write?

Dennis: I am not a writer but I have written one poem about a college friend and that will be published this year. I have also edited one book of poetry.

Morgen: Have you had any rejections? If so, how do you deal with them?

Dennis: I have had two writers back out of editing agreements; things happen. Dealing with it, that’s life. I know I did my best.

Morgen: Have you been involved in any competitions?

Dennis: So far three writers that I have edited for have won golden awards for excellent writing in the fiction category.

Morgen: Oh wow, that must feel so rewarding (pardon the pun). These days an editor and agent are the key people in a writer’s life, do you think agents are vital to an author’s success?

Dennis: An agent may be vital to a writer’s success unless he or she is willing to do all the work themselves and they have some connections where it counts. I make it a habit to email all my writers and writing friends important information that I feel might help them promote their books. I think it’s important; after all, one hand does wash the other.

Morgen: What do you think of eBooks? Do you read them or is it paper all the way?

Dennis: I encourage all my writers to publish an e-book first because I know how popular they are becoming. Presently, I prefer to read paper over e-book. That may change in the future.

Morgen: I bought a Kindle recently but I still prefer paperbacks, certainly for home. Having dozens of books in my handbag though is much lighter than it used to be. How much marketing do you do?

Dennis: I do try to help writers market their books wherever possible. Why not? We should help each other. I feel that we, myself and the writer, are part of a team.

Morgen: Do you have a favourite of all the books or characters you’ve edited?

Dennis: I have edited over 20 books but I really can’t say that I have a favorite one. I think all of my writers have done a super job and I hope that I have helped them, in some small way, to make their books better than they were before.

Morgen: How important do you think title / covers are?

Dennis: When given the opportunity, I am more than happy to express my opinion over one cover or another. I appreciate that my writers value my opinion.

Morgen: What are you working on at the moment / next?

Dennis: Right now I am editing a book for a local writer. I have writers lined up waiting for me to finish this one.

Morgen: That’s great, having that security. Do you work every day? If there is such a thing, do you ever suffer from editor’s block?

Dennis: I try to edit every day. Sometimes things get in the way.

Morgen: How about characters, what do you think makes them believable?

Dennis: When I edit a book, I try very hard to think like the reader. So that when I edit I often will offer suggestions to the writer to make their characters more real and bring more life to them.

Morgen: At least, like a reader, you’re coming to it with fresh eyes. What are your latest projects?

Dennis: To date, I have edited two nonfiction, one book of poetry, 17 novels and a few short stories. As stated, I am currently editing a romance for a local writer,along with an anthology of poetry and short stories. I have another short story to edit for a young writer (he`s 12). Will edit that no charge.

Morgen: A nice mixture so you don’t get bored. Do you have to do much research for your job?

Dennis: I research when necessary, if I feel that something is out of place or incorrect. I try to be as accurate as possible.

Morgen: What’s your favourite / least favourite aspect of your editing life? Has anything surprised you?

Dennis: My least favorite is when I know a writer could have done a better job but, for some reason, just hasn’t done so and I have to try to pick up the pieces. That becomes difficult and costly to the writer.

Morgen: Ouch. Yes, I would imagine so. What advice would you give aspiring writers?

Dennis: Take your time; do not rush sending your manuscript to the editor. It’s your book so make it the best you can before you submit it for editing.

Morgen: Absolutely, because it will only cost more money (and time going backwards and forwards). If you could invite three people from any era to dinner, who would you choose and what would you cook (or hide the takeaway containers)?

Dennis: Jesus, Capt. Kangaroo, and Red Skelton. I would just like to thank them for the joy that they brought to my life. While I’m at it, I’d like to invite my relatives that have passed on so that I could hug them one last time. I miss them all very much. Dinner? That`s not important to me.

Morgen: I’m with you on the hugging. I’d like to have got to know my father better – on reflection, 34 years wasn’t enough. Is there a word, phrase or quote you like?

Dennis: Do the right thing. I like to think that I made that up.

Morgen: Are you involved in anything else writing-related?

Dennis: I do blog about things that are important to me.

Morgen: What do you do when you’re not working?

Dennis: We like to go camping; I like to read and I go hunting and fishing when I have time.

Morgen: Are there any writing-related websites and/or books that you find useful?

Dennis: “Poets and Writers” magazine.

Morgen: Ah yes. That’s been recommended here before. Sadly I don’t think we have it in the UK although we could probably order it (note to self: have a look on the internet ). Are you on any forums or networking sites? If so, how valuable do you find them?

Dennis: Authorsden, it’s free to join. I’m also able to do reviews about my writers’ books there. That’s where I do my blogging also. You can also sell your books there as long as you autograph them for buyers.

Morgen: That sounds great. What do you think the future holds for editors?

Dennis: I would like to think that there will always be editors as long as there are writers who want to write well and will accept nothing less.

Morgen: Let’s hope so. Where can we find out about you and your work?

Dennis: I’m in LinkedIn under Moneysaver Editing and Dennis De Rose. Also look in Readersfavorite.com. Readers favorite will review books for FREE. My primary website is located in Authorsden under… http://www.authorsden.com/visit/author.asp?id=150139

Morgen: Thank you, Dennis. It’s been great chatting with you.

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 questions. You complete them, I tweak them where appropriate (if necessary to reflect the blog ‘clean and light’ rating) 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. You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything… and follow me on Twitter where each new posting is automatically announced. You can also read / download my eBooks and free eShorts at Smashwords.

Unfortunately, as I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t review books but 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 reading it / talking about and critiquing it (I send you the transcription afterwards so you can use the comments or ignore them) on my ‘Bailey’s Writing Tips’ podcast, then do email me. They are weekly episodes, usually released Monday mornings UK time, interweaving the recordings between the red pen sessions with the hints & tips episodes. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.

Debra R. Borys is the author of the suspense novel ‘Painted Black’, recently released by New Libri Press in e-book on Kindle and Barnes & Nobel, and soon to be available as a trade paperback as well.

The book is the first in her series starring Jo Sullivan, a Chicago reporter who gets involved in the lives of the homeless kids she writes about in her weekly column.  Borys calls upon her eight years of volunteering with the homeless in Chicago and Seattle to bring a sense of real life to her stories.  Her hope is that while her readers are wrapped up in the suspense of the plot they will also subtly have their eyes opened up a little to see street people as being fellow human beings, no more scary or untrustworthy than any other human.

She is donating 10% of her author profits to The Night Ministry in Chicago and Teen Feed in Seattle, both groups she knows well from her work as a volunteer.  She encourages others to give of their time and money to these or similar organizations.

Ms. Borys is also a freelance writer who does ghostwriting and editing for clients, and has published several short stories in print and online magazines.  Examples of her essays can be found on her HubPages profile at http://debraborys.hubpages.com.

And now from the author herself:

After spending my whole life in small town Illinois, I moved to big, gritty Chicago.  From country roads to “L” trestles, from swallow’s nests and cornfields to pigeon shit and stinking alleys.  Something drew me there and kept me there for four years–a need to look the not so pretty in the face.  Maybe that’s why I developed such an appreciation for those who live there, especially the people of the streets.  They’ve been kicked in the face, cursed and, worst of all, ignored and yet they continue to fight to survive, to thrive.

I spent twice a week volunteering with Chicago’s homeless, youth in particular, and got to know a few on a personal level which made me want to become a voice for them. My novel ‘Painted Black’ is an attempt to do that.  If there is one unifying theme to my written work, it is an attempt to look the real world in the face, the good and the bad, and keep going no matter what.  Like the character in one of my short stories says, “It’s how you deal with the darkness that counts.”

Though I live in Seattle now, I am still channeling the lessons I learned on the streets of Chicago.  I am surrounded here by mountains and ocean and emerald green trees.  Solitude and peace can be found a short drive from home.  But until the human element can find a way to treat themselves and each other with respect and understanding, there is ugliness out there as well.

The characters in Painted Black know how true that is.  The victim in the novel, Lexie Green, was kicked out of her home when she was 12 because her mother caught her boyfriend molesting her and blamed the little girl instead of the drunk man.  One of my main characters, Chris, ran away from home because they lived in such poverty he felt he was just a burden to his single-parent mother who was working two jobs and had two small children to care for.  He calls his mother every once in a while to tell her he’s okay, but because she never asks him to come home she validates that she doesn’t care about him.

The street kids I write about are examples of what you call “throw away youth’” kids who were either kicked out or ran away because life at home was so terrible anything seems better than what they left behind.  When there is no one who cares where you are or what happens to you, you end up treated like garbage someone just tossed out on the curb.

I’ve been raised to believe that most people are good, homeless or not.  If you treat them with respect, they’ll treat you with respect.  Not everyone, not always–because people are flawed and some people, quite frankly, are assholes.  Unless we plan to live in a cave and eschew human contact, we can’t escape having to deal with the bad apples of the human race, but neither should we assume the apple is rotten until we’ve taken a closer look at the fruit.

You can find more about Deb and her writing via… her website http://debraborys.hubpages.com.

The blog interviews will return as normal tomorrow with editor Dennis DeRose – the two hundred and eighty-eighth of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers 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. You can read / download my eBooks from Smashwords (Amazon to follow). And I have a new forum at http://morgenbailey.freeforums.org.

Morgen: Hello Colleen.

Colleen: Hi and thanks so much for having me on your blog.

Morgen: Oh you’re very welcome – pleasure to have you here. Please tell us something about yourself, where you’re based, and how you came to be a writer.

Colleen: I was born and spent most of my childhood in Trinidad, West Indies with my grandparents and moved to Brooklyn, New York at age twelve to live with my parents.  I currently reside in Connecticut. When my youngest son Alex was 4 years old he complained about not being able to do everything his older brother Stephen did.  He wanted to go to school, play baseball and get his own library card.  One day I decided to write down everything he complained about and that’s how my first book, “I Can’t Wait Till I’m Five” was self published.

Morgen: Ah, sweet. What genre do you generally write and have you considered other genres?

Colleen:  I currently write non-fiction children’s picture books which are real life events of my two boys Stephen and Alex.  Sometimes I do consider writing other genres.

Morgen: Writing different things is great when you get stuck although I’m sure you have plenty to keep you going for now. What have you had published to-date?

Colleen:  To date I have three books published, I Can’t Wait Till I’m Five (process of re-writing); Mom, I Fired The Babysitter! and Living With Mom Spending Time With Dad.  My next book, Don’t You Wish Your Momma Could Cook Like Mine? is currently available for pre-order.

Morgen: Wow, I’ve seen so many cookery-related books coming out (although not children’s) – I put a comment on Facebook the other day wondering whether having a recession was just a coincidence. Have you had any rejections? If so, how do you deal with them?

Colleen:  Yes, I have had many rejections.  In the beginning I took rejection really hard but now I just say, “Ok” and keep it moving.  Not everyone is going to like my books.  The ones that do enjoy my books more than make up for the people that don’t.

Morgen: Absolutely. It’s just the right thing for the wrong person – one person’s opinion. Have you won or been shortlisted in any competitions?

Colleen: I Can’t Wait Till I’m Five was a finalist in the USA Best Book Awards competition.

Morgen: Well done. Do you have an agent? Do you think they’re vital to an author’s success?

Colleen:  No I don’t have an agent.  Times have changed and I don’t believe that an agent is vital to an author’s success.

Morgen: Are your books available as eBooks? Were you involved in that process at all? Do you read eBooks or is it paper all the way?

Colleen: Mom, I Fired The Babysitter! is available as an e-book and yes I was involved in that process.  I currently don’t have time to do a lot of reading.

Morgen: Oh me neither although having a new Short Story Saturday (review page) means that I have to at least read one short story a week… no hardship. How much of the marketing do you do for your published works or indeed for yourself as a ‘brand’?

Colleen:  I do 100% of the marketing for all my works.

Morgen: Did you have any say in the title / covers of your book(s)? How important do you think they are?

Colleen:  I choose all the titles for my books which I believe are very important especially since they are children’s books.

Morgen: That’s very true, and they are very clear titles. What are you working on at the moment / next?

Colleen:  I am currently working on releasing my next book, Don’t You Wish Your Momma Could Cook Like Mine? and a CD titled, Respectfully, Alex.  I just released the first song on the CD, Don’t You Wish Your Momma Could Cook Like Mine? by Rapper-Man which is available on Itunes, Amazon, Jango Airplay and Reverbnation.

Morgen: Oh wow, that sounds like fun. Do you manage to write every day? Do you ever suffer from writer’s block?

Colleen:  I don’t write everyday and so far I have not suffered from writer’s block.

Morgen: Me neither – I have far more ideas than I have time to do something with… at the moment. Do you do a lot of editing or do you find that as time goes on your writing is more fully-formed?

Colleen:  I have someone that edits my books.

Morgen: Me too. I really don’t think that you can do it yourself. Plus my editor comes up with some wonderful suggestions. Do you have to do much research?

Colleen:  The only research I do is checking to see if there is a book with the same title.

Morgen: That’s a good idea. Yours do sound fairly unique but you never know. What point of view do you find most to your liking: first person or third person?

Colleen: My books are told from my kids (mainly my youngest son) perspective.

Morgen: Do you have pieces of work that you think will never see light of day?

Colleen:  As long as I am in control all my works will be published.

Morgen: What’s your favourite / least favourite aspect of your writing life? Has anything surprised you?

Colleen:  I love writing and my favourite part is seeing how much the kids enjoy my books when I do book readings.  My least favourite, hardest and most surprising part is marketing.

Morgen: Most of my interviewees have said that. I think in a way we’d all just rather write… or have a better ratio between one and the other. What advice would you give aspiring writers?

Colleen:  Keep doing what you enjoy.  Listen to all the advice that is given to you, but keep being you.  Keep writing about what interests you.  Don’t give up.

Morgen: Absolutely. If you could invite someone from any era to dinner, who would you choose and what would you cook (or hide the takeaway containers)?

Colleen: My books are written in a rhyming prose so the person that most comes to mind is Dr. Seuss.  My sister is a wonderful cook so she would be my chef for the day.

Morgen: Ah, handy. Is there a word, phrase or quote you like?

Colleen:  Yes.  How people treat you is their Karma… How you react is yours.

Morgen: I really like that. Are you involved in anything else writing-related other than actual writing or marketing of your writing?

Colleen:  Yes.  I’m in the process of completing the last song for my CD Respectfully, Alex.

Morgen: What do you do when you’re not writing?

Colleen:  When I’m not writing I’m marketing, marketing, marketing.  My other favourite hobby is shopping.

Morgen: Ah yes, retail therapy. Are you on any forums or networking sites? If so, how valuable do you find them?

Colleen:  I just really started utilizing facebook and twitter for my works so right now it’s hard to say.

Morgen: What do you think the future holds for a writer?

Colleen:  The world is ours as long as we keep putting out great works.

Morgen: Where can we find out about you and your work?

Colleen:  My books are available on my website www.robleyblake.com.  I’m currently working on getting all my books into the stores, but right now Mom, I Fired The Babysitter! is available at Barnes and Noble and Amazon.

Morgen: Is there anything else you’d like to mention?

Colleen:  Yes, I would like everyone to please listen to Don’t You Wish Your Momma Could Cook Like Mine? by Rapper-Man and tell me what you think of the song and become a fan.

Morgen: The title hooked me in. Is there anything you’d like to ask me?

Colleen:  Just thanks a bunch for allowing me to be on your blog.  Much appreciated!

Morgen: “Allowing”… I’m such a hard task master. Thank you, Colleen.

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 questions. You complete them, I tweak them where appropriate (if necessary to reflect the blog ‘clean and light’ rating) 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. You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything… and follow me on Twitter where each new posting is automatically announced. You can also read / download my eBooks and free eShorts at Smashwords.

Unfortunately, as I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t review books but 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 reading it / talking about and critiquing it (I send you the transcription afterwards so you can use the comments or ignore them) on my ‘Bailey’s Writing Tips’ podcast, then do email me. They are weekly episodes, usually released Monday mornings UK time, interweaving the recordings between the red pen sessions with the hints & tips episodes. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry. And I also have a new forum at http://morgenbailey.freeforums.org.

Germaine Shames, has written from six continents–soon to add the seventh–on topics ranging from Aboriginal land rights to Nazi art looting, from the struggle to save the Amazon to the plight of street children.

Shames is author of the critically acclaimed novel Between Two Deserts  (Macadam/Cage Publishing), two earlier nonfiction books, and three feature screenplays.

Her articles have appeared in such publications as National Geographic Traveler, More, Success, Hemispheres, Byline and many others.  Her essays and short fiction have been widely anthologized.

Shames holds a Masters degree in Intercultural Studies.  As a global executive, and later as a foreign correspondent, she has lived and worked in such diverse locations as the Australian outback, Swiss Alps, interior of Bulgaria, coast of Colombia, Fiji Islands, and Gaza Strip.  She brings a tender acuity to her journalism and has made a mission of covering under-reported stories of grassroots activism and everyday heroism.  Her fiction writing reflects the breadth of her worldview and fascination with the interplay of cultures, often drawing on events and settings from her sojourns abroad.

In her forthcoming novel, You, Fascinating You, Shames returns to her roots in the performing arts to reveal the hidden epic behind a timeless love song.

And now from the author herself:

My grandfather gave me my first library card when I was three years old. By the time I entered kindergarten, I had taught myself to read.

While most children read Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys, I was grappling with the erotic undercurrents of Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary, the mammalian allegory of The Metamorphosis, the literary nose-thumbing of Ulysses… These stories helped me situate myself in the world and planted inklings of things primal and infinitely mysterious.

Flash forward half a century…

Having traveled much of the world, having written from combat zones and tourist meccas, I am a magnet for stories. A select few have become novels or screenplays. None are wasted. They remind me of that inquisitive three year-old who couldn’t wait to read and who found in reading the gateway to limitless imaginings. My life has been vaster, deeper, and more audaciously lived both for the stories I’ve read and those I’ve told.

Morgen: I do remember going to the library as a child but it took me 30+ years to really discover how thrilling writing it is. Thank you Germaine.

You can find more about Germaine and her writing via her website http://germainewrites.com.

Reviews of Between Two Deserts:

“Shames, a former Middle East correspondent, handles the complexities of Eve’s visit to war-torn Jerusalem with a subtlety seldom seen in this genre. She is careful not to pass judgment on either side of the political equation as she skillfully intertwines the lives of this diverse cast of characters to produce a tightly executed, emotion-filled work.”   Publisher’s Weekly

“(The novelist) creates the intense atmosphere of an unstable world with grace and a sort of lyric power.”   National Public Radio

“One might expect the journalist and novelist to approach this story quite differently, but in Between Two Deserts, foreign correspondent Germaine Shames has realized a combination of these crafts, lucidly capturing those immutable qualities that speak to our souls.”   Rain Taxi

“In Jerusalem where rhetoric and revenge rule, Shames shows us humanity and insight.”   Bloomsbury Review

Advance Praise for You, Fascinating You:

“A love story reminiscent of that of my grandparents.  I could not put it down.” Kinga Nijinsky Gaspers

“Compelling, heart-wrenching, and heroic.”  Jim Bencivenga, Christian Science Monitor

“Germaine Shames’ beautiful depiction of the life of Margit Wolf and Pasquale Frustaci is told with such vivid and haunting detail, it’s as if the reader is propelled back in time to witness a devastating journey of shattered dreams, juxtaposed with the strength and courage of the human heart.” Susan Jaffe, ‘America’s quintessential ballerina’

“Germaine paints a vivid and accurate portrait of the world of ballet in pre and post-war Europe.  The epic drama expected on the ballet stage is dwarfed by the tragic real life events of her ballerina heroine, Margit Wolf.  Penetrating descriptions of political brutality and the prepossession of romantic love, an ever present theme in classical ballet, make for a page-turning, impelling read.” Janet Panetta, Ballet Master Pina Bausch

“Shames captures the essence of a ballerina with such expertise in her riveting story.  Dancers succeed by creating beauty from effort; this book, too, shows that exquisite art can be made from history’s hardships.”   Elana Altman, soloist dancer, San Francisco Ballet

“An epic story and a true story.  Margit Wolf’s life is the kind of character journey that makes for great movies.” Howard Allen, ‘the Script Doctor’

The blog interviews will return as normal tomorrow with children’s author Colleen Robley Blake – the two hundred and eighty-seventh of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers 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. You can read / download my eBooks from Smashwords (Amazon to follow).

Morgen: Hello Shelly. Please tell us something about yourself, where you’re based, and how you came to be a writer.

Shelly: I’m a professor emeritus of dramatic arts at the University of Connecticut and I live in Connecticut’s Litchfield Hills.  I suppose I went from being a starving actor in New York to teaching acting to writing plays. I then began to realize that playwriting was too limiting. In novel writing I could go anywhere and, most of all, found that all my characters were fully able to play their parts and weren’t hampered by lack of talent or an overabundance of ego or the response patterns of a given audience.

I should also mention that I started writing short stories at some time after college and even resorted to writing serial episodes in study hall in the eighth grade to the delight of some of my classmates who wanted to know what happens next. I also write movie reviews and articles on writing and the creative process.

Morgen: Wow, that some variety. I tried the first 100 pages (102 actually) of a script for ScriptFrenzy but didn’t warm to it. What genre do you generally write?

Shelly: In fiction, I write crime stories or at least stories that contain some threatening element that raises the stakes and makes the venture worth the candle.

Morgen: What have you had published to-date? Do you write under a pseudonym?

Shelly: My latest two offerings are The Twinning Murders, a trans-Atlantic “village” cozy that takes the reader from the Litchfield Hills to London, Devon and the Moors and back again. Most recently, my Twilight of the Drifter is set in the Deep South and, in effect, is a crime-and-blues odyssey haunted by both The Civil War and the civil rights movement. All my books, both fiction and non-fiction are listed under my name.

The non-fiction, appropriately, deals with the stage and screen—e.g., The Actors Studio, The Art and Craft of Screenwriting, etc.

Morgen: It’s great to have different projects, then you don’t get bored. Have you had any rejections? If so, how do you deal with them?

Shelly: Acceptance or rejection is so subjective I take it all with the proverbial grain of salt. For instance, recently an agent in New York thought Josh, my drifter and central character, was too passive at the outset and the publisher who accepted the novel loved the way Josh gradually found himself drawn to the pull of the past, a southern gothic haunting, if you will, and a calling to right a great wrong.

Morgen: Have you won or been shortlisted in any competitions?

Shelly: I have entered one or two contests, discovered the odds were at best 1,000 to one and decided I’d rather spend my energy on creation and a little marketing.

Morgen: I’ve sort of got to that stage. I’ve entered more competitions than submitted works but it does feel more of a gamble with the former – good to have on your CV though. Do you have an agent?

Shelly: I would love to get an agent but, as mentioned, am not happy with the same old response: “I really like your work but have to absolutely love it before I’d take it on.” Translation—Can I really market this one and earn a sizeable commission?

Morgen: Are your books available as eBooks? Do you read eBooks or is it paper all the way?

Shelly: My books are also available on Kindle. I read paper and hard copies. I just tried to read a family friend’s novella in an ebook format and, somehow, found it very trying.  Perhaps I’m too old-fashioned. Perhaps I simply need to have the book in my hands, let it drop by the bed-stand as I get sleepy followed by a reassuring clunk.

Morgen: As if often does with me. I have to make sure that I’m not reading my Kindle at the time. How much of the marketing do you do?

Shelly: I write for certain blogs, go on virtual book tours, have book signings and so forth in order to help the publisher promote the book.

Morgen: There certainly are plenty of opportunities – and authors doing the same thing. Do you have a favourite of your books or characters? If any of your books were made into films, who would you have as the leading actor/s?

Shelly: I love all my characters and am a bit leery of what would happen if my stories were made into films, were in the hands of the wrong director and miscast. On the other hand, this sounds a lot like J.D.Salinger and I would probably be happy if any of my works became a film.

Morgen: Me too. Did you have any say in the title / covers of your book(s)? How important do you think they are?

Shelly: I have a great deal to say about the title and covers and think they’re both vital in order to create just the right impression and promising resonance.

Morgen: What are you working on at the moment / next?

Shelly: I’m reworking my Hollywood novel Tinseltown Riff because so much has changed since the first publication, especially in terms of new technology, so-called reality shows and what’s available on the Internet.

Morgen: I love technology but that the trouble, it moves on so quickly. Do you manage to write every day? Do you ever suffer from writer’s block?

Shelly: I write every day and sometimes wish I could get writer’s block so that I could have a little time off.

Morgen: I’ll do you a swap. I don’t get writer’s block but then I don’t get as much spare time as I’d like to write. Do you plot your stories or do you just get an idea and run with it?

Shelly: Usually one of my basic assumptions has to be threatened or something provocative has to keep nagging at me, some unfinished business. At that point, I set up a dynamic leading, hopefully, to a compelling unfolding venture.

Morgen: “nagging” – I love that. Do you have a method for creating your characters, their names and what do you think makes them believable?

Shelly: Each of my characters is vital in terms of the dynamic and their names have to be fitting in terms of the given circumstances. They’re fully believable because, as a former actor and playwright, the whole process would stop if I tried to make them say or do anything out of character. In short, they are all motivated and have to act the way they do in terms of pressure and response from moment to moment.

Morgen: Do you do a lot of editing?

Shelly: After I put the work aside, I go back to it and polish it, looking for loose ends, inconsistencies, moments that weren’t fully experienced, extraneous details that should be cut or at least modified.

Morgen: How about research?

Shelly: I have to make certain that all details and settings are as authentic as possible in order for me to believe what I’m doing. Moreover, the setting to me affects everything that happens.

Morgen: What point of view do you find most to your liking: first person or third person? Have you ever tried second person?

Shelly: I seem only capable of writing in the third person subjective. Meaning, I see myself as the storyteller. In this way, I can zoom in on a character’s inner thoughts and pull back out again as the narrative carries on.

Morgen: Do you have pieces of work that you think will never see light of day?

Shelly: I started a novel that takes place back in the 1950s, wrote three or four chapters and put it aside. Until it catches fire again and begins to prod me, I may never go back to it.

Morgen: If you’re like me you have more than enough stories already / in your head to keep you busy. What’s your favourite / least favourite aspect of your writing life?

Shelly: My favourite aspect is the possibility I can set up a dialectic or dilemma that’s bothering me, see it through and discover something surprising that I never knew I knew.

Morgen: What advice would you give aspiring writers?

Shelly: Find your own voice and try not to get influenced by how-to books and magazines and trendy best-sellers that have nothing to do with why you need to write. Keep your sense of integrity even if you have to resort to some form of self-publishing. Of course, at the same time, you can’t be blind to constructive criticism provided you consider the motives and significance of the source.

Morgen: Absolutely. We’re too close to our writing and always need a second opinion, although we can always disagree with them. If you could invite three people from any era to dinner, who would you choose and what would you cook (or hide the takeaway containers)?

Morgen: I would love to sit down to dinner with Vanessa Redgrave, J.D. Salinger and the German actor Oscar Werner and, hopefully, have the dinner and drinks catered. I generally hate to cook and / or worry about how the meal is going, which would ruin the ease and flow of the conversation. There are well over a dozen more people I would love to sit down with but those are the first three who immediately came to mind.

Morgen: Is there a word, phrase or quote you like?

Shelly: I’m fond of Rilke’s dictum that all art is the result of being in danger, of going as far as one can go and beyond.

Morgen: That’s intriguing. Are you involved in anything else writing-related other than actual writing or marketing of your writing?

Shelly: Just the movie reviews and interviews and blog pieces for fellow members of Mystery Writers of America

Morgen: What do you do when you’re not writing?

Shelly: At the moment, my eldest son dropped off a goldendoodle puppy from the shores of Lake Ontario. Baxter (the puppy), seems to need a great deal of attention and care or at least insists that he trains me as I begin to train him.

Morgen: Oh cute. Are there any writing-related websites and/or books that you find useful? (please include links where you can)

Shelly: Just the discussion forums for members of Mystery Writers of America. Some of the discussion groups or topics at, say, Linkedin are, at times, helpful or interesting. Some of the topics and queries are so benign or amateurish, they’re not even worth any consideration. The good thing is that they can be glanced at or deleted.

Morgen: And I do. What do you think the future holds for a writer?

Shelly: It’s going to be hard if the book stores keep closing and writers have to become experts at marketing.

Morgen: We do. Where can we find out about you and your work?

Shelly: You can look on Google, Facebook, Amazon and author central.

Morgen: Is there anything else you’d like to mention?

Shelly: It’s always difficult to bridge the gap between what you think you’ve brought to life for some compelling reason and the somewhat loopy demands of the commercial world.

Morgen: Is there anything you’d like to ask me?

Shelly: If you find or know of a viable venue for promoting fiction, would you please let me know?

Morgen: In my experience really the top three would be (in no particular order) Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. They have their different uses but it’s where social networking seems to gather. Then I guess the most popular sales outlet would have to be Amazon followed by Smashwords. Real success stories are far and few between but they do say that a successful author is one who didn’t give up but to be successful – definitely the $64,000 question. Thank you, Shelly.

I then invited Shelly to include an excerpt of his writing…

Wolf Creek was silent again, shrouded and hidden away in the fading early December light.   

Then the cracking sound of wood as the old hunter’s blind gave way somewhere in the near distance, a sudden scream and a muffled thud. The cracking sound was not nearly as sharp as the first gunshot or the second, the scream not at all as piercing as the first cry or as grating as the moans that followed and faded.

The coonhound took off immediately, ignoring the touch of frost in the creek water, the obstacle course of fallen tree limbs and bare forked branches, the muddy slope and the snare and tangle of vines and whip-like saplings. Within seconds, the hound was bounding higher until he came upon a prone scrawny figure totally unlike the one that had just fallen on the opposite bank.     

Sniffing around, barking and howling, the hound snapped at the flimsy jacket and bit into it.  As the scrawny little figure began to stir, he tore into the sleeve, ripping it to shreds and barked and howled again, turning back for instructions. The sight of the skinny flailing arms sent the coonhound back on its haunches—half guarding, half confused as it turned around yet again, looking down the slope to the creek bed, still waiting for a signal. 

Presently, a tall, rangy man made his way across the same obstacle course, long-handled shovel in hand. But he was only in time to catch sight of a girl clutching her head, staggering away from the scene through the tangles and deepening shadows.

Shelly Frome is a professor of dramatic arts emeritus at the University of Connecticut, a former professional actor, a writer of mysteries, books on theater and film, and articles on the performing arts that have appeared in periodicals in the U.S. and the U.K. He is also a movie critic and has written a number of articles on aspects of novel writing for various web sites and blogs. A member of Mystery Writers of America, his fiction includes the recently released Twilight of the Drifter, The Twinning Murders, Tinseltown Riff, Lilac Moon and Sun Dance for Andy Horn. Among his works of non-fiction are the acclaimed The Actors Studio, and texts on the art and craft of screenwriting and writing for the stage. He lives in Litchfield, Connecticut.

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 questions. You complete them, I tweak them where appropriate (if necessary to reflect the blog ‘clean and light’ rating) 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. You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything… and follow me on Twitter where each new posting is automatically announced. You can also read / download my eBooks and free eShorts at Smashwords.

Unfortunately, as I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t review books but 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 reading it / talking about and critiquing it (I send you the transcription afterwards so you can use the comments or ignore them) on my ‘Bailey’s Writing Tips’ podcast, then do email me. They are weekly episodes, usually released Monday mornings UK time, interweaving the recordings between the red pen sessions with the hints & tips episodes. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.  And I have a new forum at http://morgenbailey.freeforums.org.

When Time Is an Ocean: an Experiment

When time is an ocean, its tide will flow
and ebb in the ways that the tides have done
since time was a sea, and the lands were close,
but continents part, and they grind away,
and grow as estranged, and the ocean floors
are young and are growing, and seem to stretch
like dreamers on waking, in morning time.

Yet time is a continent, worn as gneiss,
or karst by its rivers that wend their way
to oceans and seas, and the lower state
as entropy calls them to rest at last,
and down in the water it sinks, it sinks,
and down in the water it sinks, to fall
forever a memory lost and gone.

I asked Phillip what prompted this piece and he said…
“Time Is an Ocean” is an experiment in meter, since, this year, I am concentrating on metrical poetry sans rhyme for the most part, and since I feel it is (in terms of technique) a signature poetry style that I enjoy writing. It is also a familiar topic. With familiar motifs: time, oceans, entropy. I have heard it said that the title of one’s first publication gives a clue to the trajectory of one’s writing career. In this case, the first poem I wrote, about the ruin of civilisation, has perhaps marked my most common idea: entropy, or the reduction of order to disorder.

Thank you, again, Phillip – look forward to seeing you next month with your poetry review.

Phillip A. Ellis is a freelance critic, poet and scholar, and his poetry collection, The Flayed Man, has been published by Gothic Press; Gothic Press will also edit a collection of essays on Ramsey Campbell, that he is editing with Gary William Crawford. He is working on another collection, to appear through Diminuendo Press. Another collection has been accepted by Hippocampus Press, which has also published his concordance to the poetry of Donald Wandrei. He is the editor of Melaleuca. He has recently had Symptoms Positive and Negative, a chapbook of poetry about his experiences with schizophrenia, published by Picaro Press.

He can be found at…
The Cruellest Month: http://the-cruellest-month.blogspot.com
Symptoms Positive and Negative: https://sites.google.com/site/symptomspositiveandnegative.

If you’d like to submit your poem (40 lines max) for consideration for Post-weekend Poetry take a look here.

The blog interviews will return as normal tomorrow with crime author Shelly Frome – the two hundred and eighty-sixth of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, bloggers, biographers, agents, publishers 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. You can also read / download my eBooks and free eShorts at Smashwords.  And, very exciting, I have a new forum at http://morgenbailey.freeforums.org.

Tuesday Tales provides a new prompt each week, the members write a story inspired by it and post it on our blogs / websites. Then we email the link and first two or three sentences to Jean Joachim. She then posts them on the Tuesday Tales blog (on a Tuesday ), gives us the link then we go out and shout about it. So, without further ado, here is my 393-worder.

‘Trust me’

You’ve cheated your way here and you know you have to be careful. You suspect one or two of your colleagues know and it’s only a matter of time before someone asks you to do something simple. Something a junior doctor would know. Something a man of your standing could do in his sleep – a man who would worry in his sleep if he were you, but you don’t.

You’ve done this dozens of times. Not be a doctor – a first time is always thrilling – but pretend to be something you’re not… someone. It’s now second nature. You don’t have to remember lies anymore because the boundaries have blurred. You were a high court judge, a barrister, lawyer, until legal got boring so you switched to medicine, Googled your way through the basics – terminology for your fake CV, enough of those to paper your flat, more fake passports than MI5… or is MI6, you’ll Google that too for when you tire of medicine. Probably not long, you’ve never really been comfortable with hospitals but this one’s warm and spacious unlike your tiny flat – a hovel that only a legal or medical student would inhabit, but your scams get you by – make up for the pittance you earn when you’re ‘inside’. It’s been a while and you’re almost missing it. The familiar faces.

These faces have become familiar, especially the student nurses who hang on your every word so you make sure they’re good ones. Make some up, knowing that the girls would be too early on in their studies to know them, make sure they don’t write them down to look up later – keep their attention with every syllable. That’s how you get away with it: cover model looks, physique to match, thanks to Her Majesty’s gyms, and a photographic memory, thanks to Great Uncle Albert.

There’s one girl you’re concerned about; doesn’t write things down but doesn’t look at you in the same way; attentive but aloof. The first to put up her hand. The first to get the questions right. Sometimes the only one.

You’re looking at her now and realise she’s the prettiest. Behind the nerdy glasses the greenest of eyes, sexiest body beneath the too-baggy uniform and when you hear your boss’ voice, asking you to follow him to his office, you’re sure you catch her smiling.

Please do go and read the stories from the other authors from this week’s posting.

The links to the earlier prompts, and resulting stories, and the forthcoming prompts can be found on this blog’s Tuesday Tales page. Do go and check out the Tuesday Tales blog – it’s a wonderful idea supported by talented writers. So, not only can you read these stories but you could also write your own using the prompts given each week. There’s no word count limit. Single-word prompts are something I regularly give my Monday night workshop and it’s amazing how different our stories can be. You can read some of mine (free and otherwise) at Smashwords. And I have a new forum at http://morgenbailey.freeforums.org.

Morgen: Hello Andrew. Please tell us something about yourself, where you’re based, and how you came to be a writer.

Andrew: Hi there Morgen, hi there everybody. I’m really pleased to be here, thanks for inviting me.

Morgen: You are so welcome.

Andrew: Allow me to introduce myself. I’m AJ Kirby, the author of the novels Perfect World, Bully and The Magpie Trap, as well as numerous short stories and non-fiction articles on sports, food, cinema and theatre. I’m also a reviewer for The Short Review and The New York Journal of Books.

I live in Leeds, not far from Roundhay Park, in a house which may well be eaten at some point soon by the massive hedge in the front garden.

Morgen: Now there’s a plot.

Andrew: Our house is right next door to some woods which once joined with the fabled Meanwood of Leeds, which is the wood a certain J.R.R. Tolkien looked out on when he worked at the University of Leeds and was starting to write about the myths and legends of a place called Middle Earth. Looking out onto those woods every day I suppose I couldn’t help but be a writer. But there’s another reason too. I’m originally from the ’burbs in Manchester; a small town which was dubbed the most criminal town in the country way back in the 1950s, and it’s not changed much since. It’s at once a sleepy backwater and a madhouse, beautiful and ugly. When it rains the houses all turn black and frown at you, especially if you’re not from round ’ere. I’m glad to be away from it, but I miss it every day. It’s a place which is full of stories and not particularly well-kept secrets, and an ideal breeding ground for a writer.

Morgen: It sounds wonderful in a Edgar Allen Poesque fashion.

Andrew: Finally, I write stories because stories have always been important to my family. My grandparents were all brilliant storytellers, and my mum and dad too. I remember my dad writing me a story when we were on holiday once of a young footballer called AJ Kirby who took the sports world by storm. I was about six at the time and it was the best thing I’ve ever read! On that same holiday I wrote my own first story, The Temple of Jerosca, which was pretty much a word for word copy of Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom, only it featured an alien called Bibby instead of Harrison Ford, for some reason. I’ve been writing ever since (with a rather large gap between the ages of 16 and 24 when I thought I was going to be a rock and roll star instead!)

Morgen: But you went for a more stable career instead. What genre do you generally write and have you considered other genres?

Andrew: In the main, I’m a horror writer, though I also write science fiction and crime thrillers. As an author of dark fiction, I’ve had one novel published with another on the way in Spring. My first published novel, however, was in the crime fiction genre, and its sequel is due for publication in late 2012, early 2013 too. I’ve also recently completed a comic / literary fiction novel, provisionally entitled Things that a nice cup of tea and a four cheese pizza from Milano’s won’t fix  (of which more later) and have won and been short-listed for numerous literary festival competitions for this style of writing, as well as being published in a number of relatively high-profile anthologies. As well as my existing projects, I have a number of new projects which I am working on at the moment, including a biography, which I’ve certainly never tried before. I’ve been asked to pen the life-story of a woman who ran a nightclub in Marbella which was frequented by all the A-list stars in the late seventies, early eighties (Diana Dors, Bernie Eccleston, Larry Hagman etc) and I’m quite excited, though daunted too, by this.

Morgen: Apart from the biography (and sci-fi) you’re a bit like me; dark and light. You’ve mentioned a couple of things there but what have you had published to-date? Do you write under a pseudonym?

Andrew: To date, three novels, one short story collection, two novellas and a novelette, as well as numerous short stories which can be found variously in anthologies, magazines and journals, across the internet, in webzines, e-books, as audio dramas and even as iPhone / iPad applications. Coming soon, I’ve got a new collection of shorts out, this time focusing on my crime fictions. It’s called The Art of Ventriloquism and it’ll be published by Solstice. Then there’s my novel, Paint this town Red, which is slated for a Spring 2012 release through Wild Wolf Publishing. Here’s what early reviews of the book have said about it: “Like Jaws on land…” (Cassandra Parkin, author of the 2011 Scott-Prize winning New World Fairy Tales); “Reading this book is like trying to get to sleep after drinking too many vodka red bulls…” (Leeds Student Newspaper); “Reminds me of the film Cul De Sac; shaken up with a healthy dose of thrills, chills and bellyaches.” (Manor House Book Reviews.)

I write as AJ Kirby rather than Andy, which is what all my friends know me as. I’m not sure I can even remember why this is now, though I do believe that at the time I started writing, I thought it would lend my work more gravitas if I used my initials (a la JK Rowling).

Morgen: It does make you genderless (a la Morgen) which can come in really handy. Have you had any rejections? If so, how do you deal with them?

Andrew: Hundreds. And I don’t deal with them at all well.

Morgen: Oh dear.

Andrew: I’m a bit fragile, self-confidence-wise, at the best of times, and though I tell myself the rejection is not necessarily a rejection of me and my writing style – it may well be that I’ve simply submitted at the wrong time, or in the wrong genre, or the publisher’s just published another story which features all hell breaking loose in a small town in the last issue – I can’t help but feel down about it. But, over the years, I have built my own coping mechanism. This involves, firstly, going for a long walk through Roundhay Park. As soon as I get to the middle of the park, and after checking there’s no kids about, I shout, very loudly. A barbaric yawp. Then I walk home and boot up the old laptop, and I search for a different publisher or a different magazine, and I send the story right back out there. (Sometimes I polish the story before I do this.)

Morgen: Good plan. You probably just have the right thing for the wrong person. Have you won or been shortlisted in any competitions?

Andrew:  I’ve been lucky enough to have won, been runner-up, or shortlisted in a number of writing competitions over the years. Perhaps the most important of these was back in 2008 when I won third prize – £400 – in the Luke Bitmead Memorial Bursary run by Legend Press in 2008 for my novel When Elephants walk through the Gorbals. Luke Bitmead was the talented author of two published novels who tragically ended his own life in 2006 when he was only 21. The Bursary was established by Luke’s family and his publishers in order to help new authors. I was absolutely overwhelmed to win third prize, and to be awarded the prize fund, as it seemed like much needed affirmation at a time when it seemed my writing was going nowhere fast. Having won it, I felt able to renew my efforts and write with a new sense of freedom. I’ll be eternally grateful to Luke’s family and Legend Press for that. Though Elephants wasn’t picked up by Legend for publication, it has now been accepted, four years later, for publication by the US publishers, Whiskey Creek Press.

Morgen: Oh yay, well done. I’ve spotted Luke’s bursary a couple of times in the writing magazines so it’s great to meet someone who’s benefitted from it. It obviously sounds like a great boost to you after taking the rejections so hard.

Andrew: Other than this success, I won the Big Issue in the North’s genre fiction award in 2011 for my short story ‘The Siege’, and was awarded runner-up in the Dog Horn Publishing Fiction Prize (for which I’m in the forthcoming prize anthology, Bite Me, Robot Boy. I’ve been runner-up in the Huddersfield Literature Festival short fiction competition, and have been short-listed in competitions run by the Ilkley Literature Festival, Mere Literary Festival, the H.E Bates Short Story Competition, Cinnamon Press and People in Action. In 2011, I was also shortlisted for the Paperbooks ‘Tale of Two Halves’ competition and I’ve received an honourable mention in the worldwide Best Horror of the Year, judged by the esteemed editor, Ellen Datlow.

Morgen: Wow wee. Do you have an agent? Do you think they’re vital to an author’s success?

Andrew: I don’t have an agent. When I first started writing, I subscribed to quite a lot of writing magazines and attended a few So You Wanna Be A Writer classes, and at the time, the feeling was that you absolutely had to have an agent in order to succeed. So for a month or so, I blitzed the agencies with my cover letter and the mss of my first novel The Magpie Trap. And for three months after that – three years my postie might say – I received those letters and manuscript samples back on a daily basis, without much more than a standard cover letter from the agents in response to my submission. It got so I didn’t even want to open my mailbox in case there was another rejection lying inside, waiting to bite at my new-day optimism. So instead, I started to write, furiously. I wanted to write the book which proved them all wrong. And somewhere along the way, I discovered there were other routes to publication other than agents. Suddenly, friends who attended those same Wanna Be A Writer classes and subscribed to those same magazines said the feeling was that having an agent was no longer the be all and end all. I’ve attained publication through careful research of the independent and small presses, both in the UK and across the Atlantic. I’ve done this without an agent. And though these small presses may not have the marketing might of some of the larger houses, whose doors I could only seemingly enter with a nod from an agent, I do believe that if you find the right kind of independent press, young, hungry ones which are full of ideas, they can be just as good for you as a writer. I work with a number of different publishers, and all of them are just as keen for my book to be a success as I am, and they put in the time and effort to make it so. And I appreciate it. And the books are doing well, too. In particular the e-books, for which the royalty rates are very good (and aren’t shared with any agents). This is not, of course, to rule out the possibility of trying to find an agent in the future. I just feel that right now, with the type and genre of fiction I’m writing, I’m better off working more closely with the publishers themselves.

Morgen: Things have definitely changed over the past few years and I, for one, am pretty excited for what it means for authors… which leads me nicely on to the next question… you’ve mentioned them a couple of times but are  your books available as eBooks? If so, were you involved in that process at all? Do you read eBooks or is it paper all the way?

Andrew: Yes, 90% of them are e-books. The only ones that aren’t are Mix Tape and The Magpie Trap. I took a very conscious choice to go the ebook route. I’d read with great interest all the horror stories about the publishing industry being hit by recession, libraries being placed under threat of closure, and knew first-hand about high street stores such as Borders going into liquidation (I launched Bully at Borders in Leeds and toured five stores in Yorkshire the month they went bust. They owed me a decent chunk of money and I’ve still not seen a red cent. Nor will I. According to the liquidator’s report I receive on an annual basis, plotting the disappearance of my fortune… Ahem) And I was started to get worried that it might be a difficult time to be a fiction writer. But then, I’d also noticed the articles which were starting to appear in mags and on websites which trumpeted that sales of e-books would for the first time out-stripping those of traditional hardbacks (and even paperbacks in some cases) in the US, and then, a year or two later, that same dramatic shift in the UK to boot. So, this brave author took the daring step of publishing my third novel, Perfect World, in ebook format only.

The reasons for doing this weren’t only financial. The novel is set in the near future, when the influence of the internet over our lives has grown even stronger, dictating almost everything we do. So it seemed fitting to reflect the high-tech themes of the book in its actual publication.

At first I was a little worried about this decision, after all, I’d always subscribed to the theory that nothing can replace that feeling of holding a book in your hands or the smell of the pages. And after all, you can’t take a Kindle into the bath with you. But after receiving an ebook reader for my birthday last year, I was well and truly won over. I read my first book on the device without great expectations, but I was soon pulled in, and even found myself physically trying to turn the pages at one point. And now everyone in my family is won over because it means I don’t have to flood the house with new books all the time. We’re already fast running out of shelf space.

Perfect World has done well so far as an e-book, and it’s been a learning curve for me all the way. One of the difficult aspects of publishing an ebook is marketing and publicity. Many of the tried and tested traditional routes to market – in-store signings etc – aren’t open to the ebook author. However, it just means marketing-clever, and networking, networking, networking… What helped was the fact I wasn’t going it alone. Though I chose the ebook route, I went with a publisher, TWB Press of Colorado, US. This decision has been one of the best I’ve made in my writing life, as Terry Wright, the head honcho at TWB, has proved a simply amazing publisher whose insight into the marketplace, as well as his eye for craft and the nuts and bolts of story not only made the book more saleable, but more readable too.

Morgen: Not having experienced eReaders until fairly recently, I’d always preferred paper books (and I still do) but they are wonderful devices. I do still maintain that eBooks are for away and pBooks are for home (in my case certainly as I have so many of them) but it’s wonderful knowing I have a whole library in my bag. How much of the marketing do you do for your published works or indeed for yourself as a ‘brand’?

Andrew: If there is an AJ Kirby Brand it’s a schizophrenic one. Inside me are three authors screaming to get out – and now I’ve said that out loud, it sounds horrible. You’ve got the horror / dark fiction author, the crime-writer and the literary / comic fiction writer. Oh, and then there’s the reviewer-me and the journalist-me too. Oh dear. Too many voices! But also, I suppose, a few additional revenue streams.

In terms of self-promotion, something a lot of writers find difficult and awkward to do, I believe I have a bit of an edge as I’ve worked in a marketing environment for nine years now and have completed qualifications in digital and online marketing. I don’t have too much of a problem in shamelessly promoting myself – hell, if I did, I’d only ever sell to my parents and friends. Nor do I have a problem in appearing in person at festivals, book-signings, literary talks, the York Writers Festival, and as part of Legend Press’s New Horizons university tour in 2009. Though I am a quiet person, as comes from working on my own much of the time, I do believe that if you’ve got the opportunity to ‘sell yourself’ in front of an audience, you might as well enjoy it rather than hating every minute. One of the daftest things I’ve done in terms of self-promotion was at a bookstore in Yorkshire (I won’t name the town) where I’d been consistently ignored at my signing-table for two hours. I’d drunk too much coffee by this point, and decided to climb on my chair and shout ‘I’ve written a book!’ The staff asked me to get down as I was a health and safety risk. Nobody came up to the stand for a good five minutes, but then I sold a couple of copies…

Morgen: Do you have a favourite book or character? If any of your books were made into films, who would you have as the leading actor/s?

Andrew: What an excellent question!

Morgen: Why, thank you.

Andrew: I’d like to answer the second part first, if I may because that’s the part that intrigues me the most. Okay, here’s a brief role-call. I’d love to see any of my novels make it into film. I’ll take Paint this town Red first as it’s probably the most filmic (having already been compared to Jaws and Cul De Sac.) With the Jaws theme in mind, I’d like Richard Dreyfuss to take on the role of my bad guy Manny Combs. I know Dreyfuss is generally a genial good-guy actor, but consider the case of Robin Williams, whose best role by far was his portrayal of the psycho-killer in Photo Booth.

Morgen: Oh, I agree completely. I loved him in that. And I’d love to see Richard in a bad guy role. He may have done already but as you say he’s generally a good guy.

Andrew: I’d also have the guy who played Napoleon Dynamite as Yoghurt Rhodes, the reluctant hero of the piece, as Yoghurt’s first scene involves him hiding all the Napoleon Dynamite DVDs in his local shop as he’s being teased for looking like the eponymous hero. Julie Walters would be excellent as my Ruth Sharp (and a Brit too, I’m aware that I’m already including too many Americans in what is, at heart, a very north east English story). In terms of Bully I’d almost definitely opt for Thomas Turgoose (of This is England fame) as Gary Bull, and as the hero of Perfect World, I’ve got Andre Royo, Bubbles from The Wire, absolutely nailed-on.

As a point of interest, I do write radio drama. Here’s a link to one you can listen to online for free: http://listenupnorth.com/drama-page/387.

Morgen: Oh yes, Rachel’s been here already.

Andrew: As to the first part of the question, my favourite books, films and TV shows change all the time, but at the moment, they’d be the following. Books – The Dark Half by Stephen King; Animal Farm by George Orwell; Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien; Atonement by Ian McEwan; One Good Turn and Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson; The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson; New World Fairytales by Cassandra Parkin; Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell; Life of Pi by Yann Martel to name but a few…  Films – The Shining, Se7en, Groundhog Day, La Haine, Lord of the Rings, Uncle Buck. TV – The Wire. Just brilliant. The portrait it paints of a city in full, is simply astonishing. Dialogue and characters better than any other show I’ve ever seen.

Morgen: Kate Atkinson is one of my favourite actresses and she kindly released ‘Started Early, Took My Dog’ on my birthday in 2010. I’ve not read it yet but I have everything she’s had published (pretty much actually including a play script and anthology stories) and would love to have an Atkinson weekend (including watching the rest of Case Histories which I still have stored on my Sky+ box from last year!). Did you have any say in the title / covers of your book(s)? How important do you think they are?

Andrew: Titles and covers have arguably never been more important in this new world of on-line bookstores and libraries. Your book’s cover has to be able to stand out; its title must be able to set it apart. I thought of the title of my first book, The Magpie Trap, even before I’d thought of the plot. It came from a dream I’d had in which two caged birds were fighting over a precious stone. The dream probably stemmed from the fact I’d been talking to a friend who’d just moved to the countryside earlier. I’d asked him if he’d moved there because he wanted to get back to nature, and he, giving a typical sweeping statement full of embroidery and exaggeration, said that nature was all very well, but he thought a lot of people he’d met in the countryside hated animals, or, if not hated, they at least thought of all kinds of ingenious ways of killing them. He talked about the fox hunts which still went on, the badger baiting… And about his neighbour who boasted a magpie trap in his back garden. I don’t think much of what he said was true, but after the dream, I couldn’t shake the idea of a magpie trap. Magpies are often seen as greedy, and thieving, and I began to conceive of an idea for a story in which some sinister agency devised a deadly human magpie trap in order to lure in his avaricious prey. The rest, as they say, is history.

After The Magpie Trap I for some reason decided that my book titles had to consist of one word only. There were two reasons for this. The first was the fact I was reading a lot of thrillers at the time, with titles like Reaper, and Betrayed, and Testament and I just thought they sounded bold and uncompromising. The other was I’d come this close to having my second novel When Elephants walk through the Gorbals picked up by a major publisher. In the end, the novel was rejected, but the publisher’s words stayed with me. They’d loved the story but wanted me to make some changes, the first of which was to the title. But even under the revised title of Big Game, the story wasn’t actually picked up (though it did win third prize in the Luke Bitmead Memorial Bursary, run by Legend Press.) I’d been toying with the idea of writing a novel based in a small town in England which is haunted by a disturbing past for a while, and straight away, I knew the novel was going to have a one word title (it ended up as Bully.)

When Bully was first released, it was issued with a cover which was a lot different than the one you see today, and part of the reason it was changed was because of the advent of e-books. The original cover, though good, was not striking, and both Wild Wolf Publishing and I wanted to be able to make real in-roads into this new marketplace. At the time, one of my shorts was being published in an anthology called Dark Hoard, which was compiled by a Harrogate-based writer-stroke-artist-stroke-graphic-designer extraordinaire named Nick Button (www.nickbutton.com). And Dark Hoard was by far the most beautiful book I’ve ever been involved with. Nick’s designs and imagery were absolutely stunning. As such, I floated the idea to him that he have a go at designing a new cover for Bully. I had great expectations for the new designs, and Nick managed to better them. I loved his new design and I’m sure it’s had a lot to do with the continuing good sales figures for the book. Nick Button has also designed the cover for my second release through Wild Wolf Publishing, Paint this town Red, which is also attached.

You might notice that Paint this town Red is not an uncompromising one-word title. Nor is Perfect World, but both seemed the right titles for the books, from the text, which, ultimately, is the most important thing.

I’d like to finish with a note about one title which has caused me no end of trouble. That’s Things that a nice cup of tea and a four cheese pizza from Milano’s won’t fix… Or, at least, that’s what I’m calling it at the moment, though not for much longer. This novel will be coming out as an ebook later on this year, however it’ll be coming out under a very different title. The publishers have already told me that. I already know that. Problem is, no title jumped out of the text, or arrived fully formed in my mind as they did with all of my other books. And it’s way, waaaaayyyy too long. Longer even than When Elephants walk through the Gorbals. It’s nearly too long to save as a file name. And it’s definitely too long to sell on Amazon, for example. The novel’s a comedy, a bit of a departure from my usual genre fiction, and I think I was trying to be too clever with the title. Or maybe – whisper it – give it a title which was so weird it might generate publicity of its own, like A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian… I might have a rethink. I might open the floor to suggestions from my readers. I don’t know yet…

Morgen: Oh do. I love titles, especially quirky ones and there are awards for the quirkiest. What are you working on at the moment / next?

Andrew: Phew… Well next is the publicity and marketing merry-go-round for Paint this town Red. As well as guesting on a number of blogs, setting up Facebook pages and Twitter feeds, organising reviews etc, I’m also planning a smaller, friendlier kind of book tour. For this book, I’m looking to do something different from the norm and I’m actively looking to try and do a number of events, signings or readings in independent shops, libraries, local arts hubs and book groups. (And if anyone’s interested in my putting in an appearance to read, handle Q and A sessions etc, then please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me.) I’ve already signed up with a number of small shops to host events there and I’m always looking for more.

Other than that, I’ve got some seedling ideas in my head for two new novels. One of which is a sequel to Perfect World, in which Eva, the heroine, comes much more to the fore. (Actually this idea was planted by one of the reviewers of Perfect World, so thank you for that! You know who you are.) The second idea is for a murder mystery set on a remote farmhouse. I had a vision – man that sounds a bit weird – okay, I got an image in my head, complete and whole and ready to write as I walked through Roundhay Park last weekend. Now all I have to do is work out how my characters get to that point. Oh, and write a hundred-odd thousand words. I don’t worry I’m putting too much pressure on myself though. I simply love writing.

Morgen: I have met my match. So do I. So much so that the day job’s going in a couple of weeks (5 working days) then there’ll be no stopping me (other than temping when my savings run out). Do you manage to write every day? Do you ever suffer from writer’s block?

Andrew: I try to, and I know I should, but sometimes it’s just not feasible, especially when I’m weighed down with marketing etc. But I’ll be taking along notebooks this time around for any of the quiet periods.

For a while, after Bully, I really struggled to finish a book or a story. That was my writer’s block. I had what I thought were excellent ideas, and I’d start writing at break-neck pace, but then I’d run out of steam after a week or two and simply abandon the story. Now I carefully plan what’s going to happen in the story before I get to that point. Of course, sometimes the characters take me off in completely different directions, but I always like to know the end point I’m aiming for.

Morgen: I love that; that they just do their own thing. Have you always plotted?

Andrew: I’ve completely changed the way I write. I can’t believe how much time and effort (and blood, sweat and tears) I spent, trying desperately to follow-up Bully immediately. I think I taxed my brain to come up with something whole and fully formed and sometimes writing ideas don’t work like that. Now I plan meticulously and have voluminous ideas and cuttings file. Before I sit down to write, I’ll go on a number of good, long walks to clear my head and make sure the central idea behind a book is worth a hundred-odd thousand words…

Morgen: Do you have a method for creating your characters, their names and what do you think makes them believable?

Andrew: Steal! Shamelessly! And I don’t mean copy them from other writers or write down exactly what a friend (or enemy) says or does all the time because they might be funny down the pub or because you have a grudge against them from work. I mean go out. Listen to how people talk. See how they act around other people. What’s the first thing you notice about a stranger standing in front of you in the queue at the post office? Do they look like an Adrian or a Carl, or a Beyonce or a Heidi? What would their nickname be? Are they trying to cover up a crime? Do they have secrets? I don’t think you can write believable characters unless you spend a lot of time with people. Unless you’re a psychologist, like my friend Guy Mankowski, who manages to get inside his characters’ heads better than any other writer I know (and I’m not just saying that.)

Take your characters from your observations, sprinkle in some gold dust from your imagination. And then exaggerate. Not too much, but enough. Your characters need to jump off the page. Your readers need to be able to hear their voices when they close the book and shut their eyes and get ready to drift off to sleep. Your characters need to shake your readers awake! Read one more chapter. Go on. See if you can guess what’ll happen to me. Creating characters is my number one most favourite thing about being a writer. Birthing them, raising them, teaching them language and giving them jobs and then killing them off. Absolute joy!

Morgen: If you’re friends with a writer you have to be prepared for being stolen. And yes, I love the fact that we can kill legally. Do you write any non-fiction, poetry or short stories?

Andrew: I write a lot of short stories and non-fiction, but no poetry, I’m afraid. I have no idea why. Maybe it’s because my style is more conversational or something…

Anyway, here’s some links to my on-line short fiction and some for my non-fiction stuff:

- ‘A Question of Trust’, published online in the Wordland 1 zine from The Exaggerated Press. January 2012. URL: http://wordlnd.weebly.com/a-question-of-trust.html

- ‘The Pacemaker‘, published online by Five Stop Story, November/ December 2011: URL: http://www.fivestopstory.com/read/story.php?storyId=679

- ‘The Dancing Queen’s Last Dance’ (URL: http://thenightlight.co.uk/2011/05/the-dancing-queens-last-dance), and ‘Mistletoe Pompoms’ – Parental warning, explicit lyrics (URL: http://thenightlight.co.uk/2011/09/mistletoe-pompoms), published online by The Night Light, 2011

- ‘Psychopompery’ published on-line in the Sein und Werden ‘Monsters’ issue, 2011: http://www.kissthewitch.co.uk/seinundwerden/april11/page12.html

- ‘Court Out‘ in A Fly in Amber online magazine: http://www.aflyinamber.net/?p=688

And my online reviews: http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/reviewer/j-kirby

Morgen: Wow. And by the way, I don’t do poetry either – I have two brilliant poets in my writing group so I’m more than happy to leave it to them but then they don’t really write prose so I guess we’re even. Do you do a lot of editing or do you find that as time goes on your writing is more fully-formed?

Andrew: Editing is a fact of writing life, I’m afraid (see my spotlight article on this site). Though the more creative right side of my brain absolutely detests it and just wants to get straight back on with making stuff up, the left side likes to clear stuff up and make sense of it. Without editing, you wouldn’t be able to go make and notice the hidden underlying themes in your writing and then develop them. You wouldn’t be able to improve your story and add flesh to your characters. You wouldn’t be able to hone dialogue and weed out those mistakes you’ve read over about six times and missed. Editing’s not the best thing about writing, but it’s not the worst, either. The worst is having a reader, a reviewer, or a publisher contact you in order to point out that very obvious mistake on page six which for the life of you, you can’t see how you missed. The mistake which makes you look a fool, or an amateur, or a chancer. Train yourself to enjoy it, and to see the benefits. Nothing is ever fully formed when it comes out, just as no book is ever finished (we just get sick of the sight of them!) But when you look back on that same mistake five years later and it’s now become the first thing you turn to in your story, you’ll know you should have worked harder at your editing. And I know I’ve used the word ‘you’ a lot in my answer to this question, but really it’s a buffer. The author responsible for the terrible mistake I’m talking about was actually me. And no, I’m not going to tell you what it was. My cheeks have glowed scarlet even in writing this…

Morgen: Oh dear. It does happen though – I quite often spot mistakes in published works. We’re only human. Do you have to do much research?

Andrew: I do. Sometimes too much! I love research and I’m probably a bit of a closet geek. Maybe I use research sometimes as a stalling device… Up until recently a lot of this research was web-based, but for the last book I wrote – the forthcoming Paint this town Red – I did quite a lot of ‘on the ground’ stuff, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I’ve set this novel on a tidal island which is very much like Lindisfarne, just off the north east coast of England, and I visited the island on a number of occasions in order to get that sense of place just right. I spent a lot of time up at the monastery, and on the beaches, and talking to locals too. The book’s about myths and legends and how they can come to life, and I got some great ideas simply by ‘networking.’ The drive up to Lindisfarne from Leeds became a bit of a chore, but once I left the A1 and joined the tiny road leading down to the causeway, I always felt that lurch of excitement in my stomach. The causeway’s under the sea when the tide’s in and Lindisfarne is inaccessible over land during those hours. And there’s something about driving across that causeway, feeling the crunch of sand and seaweed under your tyres rather than gravel and tarmac, which never failed to make me feel as though I really was making a journey. As though I was crossing some kind of invisible boundary, or as though I was going back in time. I wanted to recreate those feelings in the book.

I also watched quite a lot of films, because I wanted to get the pacing right on this one. There’s quite a large cast list for the book and it was a fine line I trod between having too many characters or too much plot. Early reviews seem to think I’ve got it just about right – somehow – with one critic calling the work ‘like Jaws on land’ and another comparing it to the movie Cul de Sac (with teeth). Cul de Sac was set on Lindisfarne.

Morgen: I’m not a fan of research but that really doesn’t sound like a chore. Some writers like quiet, others the noise of a coffee shop etc., do you listen to music or have noise around you when you write or do you need silence?

Andrew: I write in my small office (the second bedroom) at home. I don’t listen to music, or have the telly on, and I’ve even got my back to the window, because I’m quite easily distracted. I do, however, have a noisy co-worker, who tends to interrupt me like some furry Person from Porlock even as I have the idea for the greatest story ever written… And then lose it.

I’m talking about my cat, Eric, who is the real boss in our house, and very demanding with it. He’s a hard task-master who’s always after strokes and food, and particularly a game of ‘mousie’. Mousie involves me throwing a very realistic toy mouse around the house, up and down the stairs and into all kinds of nooks and crannies, and then Eric haring after it and fetching it back like a dog, meowing all the way to alert me to the fact I’m due another pitch. Eric doesn’t seem to like my being slumped over a laptop, typing, and is definitely not the literary type – he bites the corners of books – but I suppose that without his noise, I might go a little mad. Eric’s also starred in quite a few of my stories, in one form or another, and in Paint this town Red he grows to about ten times his normal size and becomes the black panther which is on the loose, stalking the town in question. That Eric doesn’t go chasing toy mice.

Morgen: I have a dog who’s sort of similar (except for the growing part); he lets me know when he’s bored and somehow (digs into my subconscious) ends up on my lap – just as well I have long arms. What point of view do you find most to your liking: first person or third person? Have you ever tried second person?

Andrew: You know, I haven’t, though sometimes I do find I can slip into that type of writing for a particular phrase. I do like having a quite cosy relationship with my readers, and my style could be described as more conversational than literary in some cases, but I’ve never gone the whole hog and brought the reader into the story. My writing to date has been split fifty-fifty between first and third person narration. I generally choose the style to suit the subject matter, with Bully being very much a first-person story as it’s about the mental unravelling of the protagonist in the aftermath of war (and I needed to get in to extreme close-up here) and Paint this town Red being told very much in the third-person because it’s as much about the town as the individuals within it, and I think this style lent more to the collective spirit of the novel.

This may change though. You’ve already got me thinking here. I suppose that kind of writing would be especially effective in terms of live storytelling, that kind of thing, and as I seem to be doing more and more of that type of event, you never know, the next AJ Kirby story could use that exact narrative mode.

Morgen: Ooh great. Do you have pieces of work that you think will never see light of day?

Andrew: I’ve got a few actually. I mentioned my many novel false starts and cul de sacs in the spell after my novel Bully was released. These all now sit in a folder which sits on my desktop. It’s called ‘Unfinished Docs’, but maybe it should read ‘Failures’, because I never see that yellow folder without thinking about those aborted stories within and what I could have done with them. Some of them are great… Or maybe they’re not. I do clench my jaw, steel my nerves and open that folder every once in a while, hoping to pillage some scene or character from them which might be worth recycling or transforming in some way, and I have, on a couple of occasions actively tried to pick up the threads where I left off. But I’ve never managed to regain that same hot-blooded intensity I wrote them in and now, when I read them, I can barely imagine what I was thinking in some cases.

The only one I think I might be able to resurrect might be a story called Leap Year, which I got farther into than I did with many of the other false starts. When I wrote it, I thought the story was too big for me at the time, but that it might be worth saving. Stephen King did the same with both 11/22/63 and Under the Dome. Twenty years after the fact, he dug those old, dusty boxes out from an attic and re-started them with an older, wiser head on his shoulders, and completed both and presented them to the world. You never know, Leap Year might be my version of those novels. As for the rest? Well, every time I have a clear out on my laptop, I get closer and closer to pressing the delete button on them for good. That old Writing 101 phrase keeps echoing through my head: be ruthless, kill your darlings!

Morgen: Please don’t! I keep everything (good and bad) because you never know. As you say you have an older, wiser head and even seeing the terrible stuff (certainly in my case) it’s made me realise how far I’ve come. What’s your favourite aspect of your writing life?

Andrew: There’s so much I’ve enjoyed about writing and being a writer, not least of which is the friendship and fellowship of other writers. Writers are a good bunch, by and large, and over the years I’ve been overwhelmed by the various offers of support, tips, friendly reviews, and general pointers in the right direction which I’ve received. It’s surprised me how even the highest profile of writers, those whom you wouldn’t imagine had a spare minute, will bend over backwards to help, or at least will offer a kind word. Amongst the goodies I’ve met? Will Self, Yann Martel, Martin Amis, Cassandra Parkin, Guy Mankowski, Rod Glenn, Ramsey Campbell, Conor Bowman, Alison Littlewood, and a certain Morgen Bailey.

Morgen: You smoothie. I’ve been amazed actually how generous the writing industry is. Maybe it’s like learner drivers; we’ve all been at the bottom rung of the ladder and we remember our journey (some of us haven’t got very far but hey ). What about least favourite aspect of your writing life? Has anything surprised you?

Andrew: Least favourite? Would it be too mercenary to say the hourly recompense? One of my favourite quotes about writing is this one, from Jules Renard: “Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.” But to be honest, much as I would like writing to make me a millionaire, I’ve not come into this with my eyes closed. I could reel off the stats about how little the average published author earns, and how rare someone like a J.K. Rowling or a Stieg Larsson is. I’m not expecting to be rolling in money from my next novel, or to suddenly sell the rights to one of my past publications to Hollywood. And so I’m okay with it. No: what really hacks me off is people who come up to me at a stand when I’m selling books in a bookshop, and talk to me for ages, and then, when I ask them whether they’d like me to sign a book for them, they tell me they don’t read. Well what are you doing in a bookshop then?

Morgen: Which leads me nicely on to my next question (as authors usually say to read)… what advice would you give aspiring writers?

Andrew: I’d have to follow the master here. Stephen Kings says that you can call yourself a writer when you finish something. When you demonstrate you have the perseverance and the craft to keep going through all the aches and pains and writer’s blocks and collapse over that finish line. It doesn’t matter how many copies you sell, or even whether you’re published or not; if you finish you’re stories, you’re a storyteller, a writer. And what makes you even better is editing that book ’til it’s spick and span and the best you can make it and then, without hardly taking a breath, going again. Writing something else, and finishing that one. And editing it. And with each one, you’ll find yourself becoming a better writer, more practiced, your craft better honed. You’ll know how to write yourself out of traps like writer’s block. Indeed, you’ll know writer’s block as something of a myth, because when you’re a writer, you write. It’s what you do, your passion, and your obsession.

Morgen: Yep, and I have both. My mum said to me recently that I shouldn’t let writing take over my life – I didn’t like to tell her she was a few months too late. If you could invite three people from any era to dinner, who would you choose and what would you cook (or invite three people, hiding the takeaway containers)?

Andrew: Ah! It used to be I could get by on beans on toast for a week when I was a student. Now, being in my thirties, I seem to have lurched into becoming a budding amateur chef (who judging by my rapidly increasing waist size enjoys my own food a bit too much). So you’d think I’d enjoy hosting a dinner party, but nothing could be further from the truth. I’m almost as nervous in having people try my food as I am read my writing… Anyway, my dinner party would have very strict entry criteria. In order to attend, you’d have to be called Eric. And here are my three favourite Eric’s:

- Eric (the King) Cantona – my all time hero in terms of football and artistic temperament.

- Eric (George Orwell) Blair – author of one of my favourite books, Animal Farm.

- Eric Idle – to sing ‘Always look on the Bright Side of Life’ in case the food’s no good.

Morgen: Not being a football fan (well, I am female) I’m certainly with your choice of the other two Erics. Is there a word, phrase or quote you like?

Andrew: Okay, this is another one which changes from week to week. As I’m reading A Dance with Dragons, the latest of the George R.R. Martin Game of Thrones series, I’ll go with this one:

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. (…) The man who never reads lives only one!

Morgen: I do like that. Are you involved in anything else writing-related other than actual writing or marketing of your writing?

Andrew: I write regular book reviews of both novels (for The New York Journal of Books) and short story collections and anthologies (for The Short Review). I also cover football in the north west of England for the Professional Footballer’s Association, and write food and nightlife criticism for a number of mags and webzines. I’m also a regular blog and feature writer, having previously written for Essential Writers, BBC Sport, Sense Magazine (Natwest Bank), Writers’ News, Risk-UK magazine, IP Focus Magazine, and Itchy Leeds Magazine.

Finally, I’ve also written a script for a spoof documentary about a boy-band along with three friends. Here’s the write-up: They were a genuine boy-band sensation, thrust upon the nation in the late 1990s; women swooned, men wanted to be them. They lived fast, but clean. Who could forget their string of Top 40 hits which included ‘Let’s Get Together’, ‘Save me Tonight’, and ‘Shake yo’ Ass’? The writer A.J Kirby joins musical gurus Micky P Kerr, Davoc ‘Ladyman’ Brady and Matt ‘The Echo’ Knee as they chart the reunion of Love Triangle in this amusing rocumentary. Here’s a sneak preview of all the thrills, spills and bellyaches which will be coming soon.

Morgen: I’ve probably read some of you actually. Ooh, I do remember that you were featured on the front page(!) of Writers’ News… not that long ago… well, I’m way behind with my reading but there’s nothing new there. And I think I have a couple of Short Reviews. I’ll have to have a look. What do you do when you’re not writing? Any hobbies or party tricks?

Andrew: When I’m not writing, or reading for review, or planning my writing, or marketing my writing… erm, I sleep! Or watch films or pretty much any series screened by Sky Atlantic. I recently finished watching the fifth and final series of The Wire though, which leaves a bit of room in my busy schedule however. Out of the house, I enjoy sport, though not so much playing it any more. I’m a season ticket holder at Old Trafford, and until the recession bit, I followed United across Europe. Now I only go to the home matches. I make a point of getting a bit of culture every month or so, going to the theatre or opera or art galleries, and then go and spoil it all by watching too many soap operas and episodes of Family Guy. I also love travel, and have a burgeoning list of places I have to see before I die.

Morgen: I love Family Guy; Brian and Stewie make it for me. Are there any writing-related websites and/or books that you find useful?

A: Stephen King On Writing has been my Bible, but I’ve also been helped by a number of books (including The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes and The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing, as well as David Lodge’s excellent The Art of Fiction) and websites (including peer-review sites like Youwriteon.com, general writing sites such as Writers Online and also networking sites and forums such as Pen and Palette and Writing Calendar) Increasingly though, I’ve done my networking over Twitter and Facebook.

Morgen: That’s pretty much where it’s at, isn’t it? And I really like LinkedIn. ‘On Writing’ has been the most popular suggestion here. Stephen King will be proud. What do you think the future holds for a writer?

Andrew:  Whilst it is indisputable that difficult times lie ahead for writers at all levels, I’d say there are also some great opportunities for writers. Writers can carve out new niches for themselves in terms of new platforms like e-books, for example. And writers have never had a better advertising medium than the internet. Many of the barriers to publication have shifted and self-publishing is now not as frowned upon as it has been. But I’d add a caveat. Because the barriers have been lowered, there is an awful lot of dross out there, and this is only going to increase. The slush pile which used to land on a publisher’s desk is not found on the Amazon (for example) site, ready to purchase. The old criteria still remains: marking yourself out as a writer of quality, becoming a trusted brand, and penning excellent stories, will be the only way writers will be sure-fire successes in the difficult financial climate.

Morgen: I think reviews will have the last word. A writer can only have so many friends. Where can we find out about you and your work?

Andrew:  Here’s a list of useful website links: Author website, Goodreads Author Page, Amazon Author Page, New York Journal of Books and Facebook Novel Home Page.

Morgen: Is there anything else you’d like to mention?

Andrew: Ah, that killer question, the open one. In job interviews, this is usually the moment I’d go ummm and ahhh and then try desperately to think of something to say which won’t make me sound like an idiot. And then I’ll go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like ‘where’s the toilet?’ Or, ‘do you think wearing a tie that colour, dear interviewer, might suggest you are a closet serial killer?’ So I suppose I’ll try and be succinct here, for once in my life. (Keep to the facts, AJ, that way they can’t come back and challenge you!) What I’d like to mention here is my own blog – http://andykirbythewriter.20m.com/cgi-bin/blog – which features all my latest reviews of other people’s writing (from The Short Review and The New York Journal of Books), as well as general chit-chat about upcoming events, signings and readings. It also features extracts and links to free stories which have been released online (and, on the homepage, Paypal links if you want to buy the novels / collections). It’s updated fairly regularly, and is probably the best way of keeping up with what I’m doing in terms of writing, globally.

Morgen: You certainly have variety… to stop you getting bored. Is there anything you’d like to ask me?

Andrew: There’s lots. Here’s a couple – I’ve been looking over your bibliography and a couple of things stood out for me. The first being The Dark Side which I’d love to read, the second being your long list of stories ‘to follow’. I was wondering, what with all the ‘other’ writing related stuff you do – including taking time out to do interviews such as this – how the hell you manage to get anything done? Do you set yourself deadlines etc?

Morgen: (thank you) Fortunately I have the likes of Tuesday Tales, Indies Unlimited, NaNoWriMo and Story A Day to keep me on the clichéd straight and narrow… oh, and not enough sleep.

Andrew: And, I’ve read in one of your spotlights that you love reading Stephen King (as do I) and that you usually buy new offerings from the master of dark fiction on their days of release. Two things. One, I was wondering if you’re such a fan that you queue up or camp out?!? And two, what did you think of 11/22/63? Personally, I liked it… No, loved it as I do everything he writes, but there were some worryingly long sections about lindyhopping etc. which read like an episode of Glee…

Morgen: Actually I stopped after the book after Misery. I don’t even remember what I was so disappointed by it that I didn’t want to read any more. Shame. I did read a short story that accompanied The Cell (I think) and really enjoyed it (the name escapes me)… terrible memory haven’t I? Thank you, Andrew, I’ve enjoyed chatting with you.

I then invited Andrew to include an extract of his writing and this is taken from Paint this town Red, Wild Wolf Publishing, 2012.

Lewis Dowsing knew better than to linger by the Old Mason house. The words of his mother rang in his ears, not too subtly underscored by the voices of Mr. Buckby, the newsagent, Jabba Johnson, the headmaster of his school, his friends; the concerned of Limm Island.

‘Don’t get close to the Mason place,’ they dawn-chorused.

‘Avoid it like the plague.’

‘Run when you pass it, or pedal fast, because if you don’t then whatever’s in there is liable to come out and get for you.’

And usually, Lewis listened to the voices like a good boy. Using the momentum gained from the steep slope of Dye Lane, he bombed past the Old Mason house every morning, barely even pausing to take a proper look at the place. But today was different.

The chain had come loose, and now that he was leaning in to inspect the damage, Lewis saw the clean break in the greasy chinks of metal. He’d been so rigorous in his checks, and his maintenance programme. For it to snap like that, so out of the blue, seemed a very bad thing. Like an omen. And now his ginger hair – definitely ginger, not strawberry blond as his mother so often contended – was shining out like a beacon for all to see. The only thing that his father had ever given him – thanks dad – was now going to be the thing that got him into a whole world of trouble. And his mother had always warned him that trouble wouldn’t be far away if he turned out anything like him, hadn’t she?”

AJ Kirby is the award-winning author of five novels (Paint this town Red, 2012; Perfect World, 2011; Bully, 2009; The Magpie Trap, 2008; When Elephants Walk through the Gorbals, 2007), two novellas (The Black Book, 2011; and Call of the Sea, 2010), one novelette (Bed Peace, 2011) and over forty published short stories. He is also a sportswriter for the Professional Footballers’ Association and a reviewer for The Short Review and The New York Journal of Books.

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 questions. You complete them, I tweak them where appropriate (if necessary to reflect the blog ‘clean and light’ rating) 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. You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything… and follow me on Twitter where each new posting is automatically announced. You can also read / download my eBooks and free eShorts at Smashwords.

Unfortunately, as I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t review books but I have a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 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 reading it / talking about and critiquing it (I send you the transcription afterwards so you can use the comments or ignore them) on my ‘Bailey’s Writing Tips’ podcast, then do email me. They are weekly episodes, usually released Monday mornings UK time, interweaving the recordings between the red pen sessions with the hints & tips episodes. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry. And I have a new forum at http://morgenbailey.freeforums.org.