Bailey’s Writing Tips podcast – short stories episode no.19

Bailey’s Writing Tips podcast ‘short stories’ episode number 19 went live today and contained three flash fiction pieces that have appeared on my blog as Flash Fiction Fridays. Do email me should you like to submit your own. This episode contained:

• The Moon (410 words) by comic fantasy (“and a little horror”) author Will Macmillan-Jones;
• Gabriele (831 words) by non-fiction author Marlene Caroselli; and
• Homespun Cryonics (133 words) by erotica and horror author Angie Sargenti.

See the links above to read the stories… or hear my dulcet tones on the podcast which is available via iTunes, Google’s Feedburner, Podbean (when it catches up), Podcasters (which takes even longer) or Podcast Alley (which doesn’t list the episodes but will let you subscribe).

Will is a fifty-something lover of blues, rock and jazz. He presently lives in South Wales, and has just fulfilled a lifetime ambition by extending his bookcases to fill one entire wall of his home office. Working as a professional tax consultant, he writes to escape the stultifying boredom of his job. He has an irregular blog, www.willmacmillanjones.wordpress.com where he “rambles incoherently about writing”. His publisher’s website is www.safkhetpublishing.com.

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Dr. Marlene Caroselli (www.saatchionline.com/LainaCelano), is an author, keynoter, and corporate trainer.

She has published over 60 books, including Jesus, Jonas, and Janus: The Leadership Triumvirate, and Principled Persuasion, named a Director’s Choice by Doubleday Book Club.

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Angela is the author of the zombie blog, After Old Joe, and is hard at work on her latest novel.

She has penned dozens of erotica stories for sites such as For The Girls, Oysters & Chocolate, and Every Night Erotica, and has recently served as guest-editor for a month-long issue of Leo DeGraunce.

Her main focus is on erotica, but she also admits to a fondness for horror—especially the zombie genre, as evidenced by her recent story, “Man Meat”, which was featured on Thrillers, Killers and Chillers.

Her story “My Special Day” appears in the recently-published anthology, My First Threesome. 

Her two sexy e-books, Working Out the Kinks and Start Me Up: A Collection of Erotic Love Stories are now available at Amazon.

Be sure to check out her zombie blog After Old Joe and her erotica blog Friday I’m In Love.

You can find out more about Angela and her writing at http://www.angiesargenti.blogspot.com, http://www.amazon.com/author/angelasargenti, http://pinterest.com/angiesargenti, and @angiesargenti on Twitter.

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Thank you for downloading / listening to this short story episode – I hope you enjoyed it. The next episode will be a hints & tips episode in a fortnight, then short stories return a fortnight thereafter.

All the details of these episodes are listed on this blog’s Podcast Short Stories page and my email address to submit a short story for critique (or review for the Short Story Saturdays) is morgen@morgenbailey.com.

The podcast is available via iTunes, Google’s Feedburner, Podbean (when it catches up), Podcasters (which takes even longer) or Podcast Alley (which doesn’t list the episodes but will let you subscribe).

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

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You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.

For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.

As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do, and a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words (and post stories of up to 3,000 words). Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me posting it online in my new Red Pen Critique Sunday night posts, then do email me. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.

 

Flash Fiction Friday 055: Homespun Cryonics by Angela Sargenti

Welcome to Flash Fiction Friday and the fifty-fifth piece in this series. This week’s is a 133-worder by erotica and horror author Angie Sargenti. This story will be podcasted in episode 19 (Sunday 30th December).

Homespun Cryonics

Good old auntie.

She always wanted to live in a snowy kind of place, so I did the best I could.  I gave her a nice, pretty scarf and a puffy down jacket and a new pair of skis, and she was on her way.

“Get what you can out of the bastards,” she told me, just before she left.  “How else can you afford a place like this?  The taxes alone’ll kill you.”

Hell, some people live past ninety and still get paid.

Why not auntie?

Besides, she’s happy as a clam now.  Every time I see her, she’s got a big smile on her face.

Homespun cryonics is what I call.

They’ll call it sticking my dead aunt in the freezer so I can cash her Social Security checks.

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I asked Angela what prompted this piece and she said…

One time I had writer’s block so I was goofing around on the web and found a site with one word prompts.  I pasted the ones I liked into a document in two columns, and homespun and cryonics just happened to be next to each other at the tops of the columns.  Seeing them together like that just sparked the story for me and I wrote it down right away.

I love it when that happens (every other Monday in my writing workshop ). Thank you, Angela.

Angela is the author of the zombie blog, After Old Joe, and is hard at work on her latest novel.

She has penned dozens of erotica stories for sites such as For The Girls, Oysters & Chocolate, and Every Night Erotica, and has recently served as guest-editor for a month-long issue of Leo DeGraunce.

Her main focus is on erotica, but she also admits to a fondness for horror—especially the zombie genre, as evidenced by her recent story, “Man Meat”, which was featured on Thrillers, Killers and Chillers.

Her story “My Special Day” appears in the recently-published anthology, My First Threesome. 

Her two sexy e-books, Working Out the Kinks and Start Me Up: A Collection of Erotic Love Stories are now available at Amazon.

Be sure to check out her zombie blog After Old Joe and her erotica blog Friday I’m In Love.

You can find out more about Angela and her writing at http://www.angiesargenti.blogspot.com, http://www.amazon.com/author/angelasargenti, http://pinterest.com/angiesargenti, and @angiesargenti on Twitter.

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If you’d like to submit your 1,000-word max. stories for consideration for Flash Fiction Friday take a look here.

The blog interviews will return as normal tomorrow with novelist, short story author, poet and illustrator Sophie E Tallis – the five hundred and twelfth 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 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, Sony Reader Store, Barnes & Noble, iTunes Bookstore, Kobo and Amazon, with more to follow. I have a new forum, friend me on Facebook, like me on Facebook, connect with me on LinkedIn, find me on Tumblr, complete my website’s Contact me page or plain and simple, email me. I also now have a new blog creation service especially for, but not limited to, writers.

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 fortnightly episodes, usually released on Sundays, 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.

 

Author Spotlight no.57 – Adele Cosgrove-Bray

Complementing my daily blog interviews, today’s Author Spotlight, the fifty-seventh, is of dark urban fantasy novelist Adele Cosgrove-Bray.

Adele Cosgrove-Bray is the author of Tamsin, the first in a series of dark urban fantasy novels about the lives of a community of artisan-sorcerers set in Liverpool.  The sequel, Rowan, will follow in the spring of 2012.

Adele’s short stories are featured in several paperback anthologies.  She also paints, draws and takes lots of photos, which she attributes to time ill-spent at art school.

Adele has been a member of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids since 1999. She has been the elected Chair for Riverside Writers since 2003. Adele became a member of the Cryonics Institute in 2008.

She shares life in England’s Wirral peninsula with one husband, two dogs, one cat, various chickens, an assortment of hedgehogs and bats, and a large black toad which lives under the patio step.

And now from the author herself:

My writing career began on my thirteenth birthday, when I merrily skipped downstairs and announced that now I was a teenager I could do whatever I wanted.  Mum said, “Oh, yeah?  And what exactly do you intend doing?”  Having not planned that far ahead, I said the first thing which came to mind.  I was going to be a rock singer.  Mum replied that singers need songs so after doing my chores I’d better write some.  So I did.

With two school pals, I formed a band.  Between us we owned a kazoo and two guitars, one of which had a broken neck.  This mercifully short-lived project morphed into a love of writing poetry.  I was seventeen when Pipes of Pan became the first magazine to publish one of my poems.

My first job after graduating from college was as an editor.  I also began doing freelance work for Exploring the Supernatural magazine, which later changed its name to Your Future, where I wrote and illustrated a dream analysis column.

Around ten years ago I began tinkering with writing fiction.  My first stories were flagrant impersonations of Anne Rice which will remain eternally veiled in darkness at the back of a cupboard.

I joined Riverside Writers, and in 2003 was elected to chair the meetings, which I still do.  After several woodland copses had perished in paper mills, my writer’s voice emerged.  Dark Moon Press and Hadley Rille Books included some of my fantasy stories in their paperback anthologies, and then Amazon published two ebook collections under their Amazon Shorts project.  7 Waves Radio invited me, and other members of Riverside Writers, to read some of our short fiction live on air.  Some of these recordings are now available as YouTube videos.

My dark urban fantasy novel, Tamsin, introduces a community of artisan-sorcerers.  Tamsin herself is a level-headed shop assistant whose young life was changed following the car crash which killed her family.  She is pulled between the spiritual philosophy of a guru, and the fascinating but dangerous life of her boyfriend Fabian who is a member of the community.

The story is set in a suburb of Liverpool, England, where I lived for around ten years.  My time at art school and my experiences working in a pottery contribute to the artistic backdrop.  Rowan, the second novel in the series, is due for publication this month, February 2012.

You can find more about Adele and her work via… website: http://adelecosgrove-bray.blogspot.com, Facebook, Twitter and Amazon.co.uk.

The blog interviews will return as normal tomorrow with novelist and poet Rose Mary Boehm – the two hundred and eighty-fourth 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).