A 'THANK YOU' FREE OFFER

FREE FOR FIVE DAYS, STARTING TODAY, 8TH JUNE!


As promised, I've arranged a free Kindle download of one of my books, starting today, Monday 8th June.

The offer ends on Friday, 12th June, so don't delay.

CABBAGE BOY, part funny, part tragic, is about misfits and mutations, and is suitable for adults and older children. If you ever felt the odd one out, the one on the fringes of the gang, you may relate to teenager Nick and his problems. (And if you enjoy line dancing, or cultivate an allotment, you'll warm to Nick's parents! I hope you enjoy it!
Click on Amazon to download it.

A REMINDER - AND A FREE OFFER

Just a reminder that WRITING Magazine will be on sale from 4th June, with my winning short story ALL OF US HERE. If you don't subscribe to WRITING Magazine or buy the issue from a stationers, I will be reprinting my short story on this blog, although not until end July or early August.

And another reminder - a free download of my book 'CABBAGE BOY' will be available on Amazon for 5 days from 8th June - a Thank You to all who sent their congratulations.

CABBAGE BOY is a sort of 'WONDER' story, part funny, part tragic, about misfits and mutations, and is suitable for adults and older children.

I hope you’ll enjoy it. The inspiration for any author’s books can come from a multitude of sources. In the case of CABBAGE BOY, the idea was sparked by the large field behind my home.

Living in the country you get used to the various noises and smells. The chugging of the tractors as they work with spotlights through the night; the clamour of pigeons as they gobble their ten per cent of the newly sewn seeds and then return to the giant tree fronting my house (leaving deposits on the drive en route); the rotting cabbage smell of rape stalks after the crop’s been harvested; the aromas of manure and weed killer.

But three years ago a new manure was sprayed on the land. This, we learned, was processed from human waste. Its smell was the most potent yet. Garden parties were cancelled. Washing was dried indoors. If we’d had masks at that time, we would have worn them.

But this new manure set me thinking. Although it had been processed, what if it still contained some microscopic elements of DNA? Human DNA.

And so the idea for CABBAGE BOY was born. Read the book to find out more!

SIX PLOT IDEAS. WHICH SHALL I CHOOSE?

HELP! I NEED TO MAKE A CHOICE!

Many of you know I’ve already written and published 13 books for adults and children.

I’d love to write another 13 but I’m well aware that time is against me. I hope I’ll have time to write at least one more, but the difficulty right now is that I need to choose between six plot ideas (for all of which I’ve already written a few chapters). My books for children are the most popular but I love writing for adults too.

These are the six. Help me choose!

A) THE OTHER BOY (for 10 years up). Identical twin boys separated at birth, unaware of each other’s existence until 12 years later one sees a newspaper photo of the other and sets out to find him. (This is my latest idea and I’m slightly leaning towards it).

B) THE TRAVELLING SWEETSHOP (9 years up). A magical sweetshop, advertising all you can eat for 50p, suddenly appears on the route to school. My worry about this one is that it might suggest the sweetshop owner is selling drugs!

C) HIGH SCHOOL ROBOT (13 years up). Another story based in Swindon but 30 years in the future. A perfected robot, indistinguishable from a human teenager, is the forerunner for a spy operation.

D) THE SECRET OF COTTINGHAM HALL (Adults). A romance with a tragic secret.

E) BODY SHOP (Adults). A rape/murder victim finds herself at the North West Clearing Station, run jointly by representatives of Heaven and Hell who compete for dead souls. The dead are allowed to rent a body and return to Earth for two weeks, to seek revenge or forgiveness but must give up their souls to Satan when they return.

F) A SNAPSHOT IN TIME (13 years up). A teenage girl and a boy are separated by a century but linked by a photograph.

HELP!!!

OTHER WAYS TO WRITE - AND EVEN GET PAID FOR IT!

FICTION IS NOT THE ONLY PATH

Do you have an unfulfilled urge to write, but creating a short story or a novel is daunting?

Fear not. There are so many ways to get your words in print, from a paragraph to a page to a multi-page feature. The only criterion (apart from spelling, grammar and the ability to construct a sentence) is that it should interest/inform/intrigue/educate/amuse or even shock its readers.

If you’ve ever written a letter to a newspaper or magazine and had it printed, you’ve taken the first step. Now it’s time to consider what else you can do.

Take a trip to your local newsagent’s and check out the shelves of special interest and hobby magazines. If you have expertise in any of the activities or crafts or you’ve devised a new way to approach one of them, write about it.

If you’ve had an unusual, rewarding or frightening experience, write it down, polish it up and send it off to the editor of a newspaper or magazine.

If your pet has an extraordinary personality, send a short piece to one of the popular magazines for pet owners. Or perhaps you have an unusual pet? I saw something on YouTube recently about a woman whose pet was a bee that had no wings.

Having edited magazines myself, I know how useful it can be to have a stockpile of news items and articles for the months when nothing much is happening. You may be lucky. Who knows, you may even get paid!

NOTE: If you're writing something for a magazine, check the required page length and the number of words per quarter, half or full page. My story for WRITING MAGAZINE had to be between 1500 and 1700 words. This will fill a double page spread, with a heading, a fairly large picture or design at the top (supplied by the magazine) and a small photo and personal details (supplied by myself).

TRY SOMETHING DIFFERENT DURING LOCKDOWN

 SNAPSHOTS FROM THE PAST  

 The lockdown seemed an ideal moment to start this new Facebook group, and you don't have to be a brilliant writer to join in. We already have 154 members and the numbers are growing.

 Births, marriages, deaths, the basic facts – you can get all these from the genealogy web sites but the little
personal details and experiences that make up a person’s life are lost forever once that person is gone. No, I’m not for a moment suggesting any of us are going to die! Far from it, we’ve been protecting ourselves by self isolating. But this could be the perfect opportunity to record your memories on paper, providing a legacy for future generations of your family.

On paper, yes, not just online. The internet is too ephemeral. Your family two or three generations, even one generation, down the line, won’t be able to read your posts and get to know you.

And it's easy! You don't have to be a brilliant writer. Jottings can be far more interesting than a formal autobiography. Use an old diary, a notebook, drop scribbled scraps of paper into a memory box. Later there'll be all the fun of sorting and categorising.

I've been posting regular triggers to provide inspiration. Examples: scents and smells, and what they evoke; your first home, first day at school, your first job, your first date; your school and teachers; a loved relative or friend - and there'll be more to come. All of them should spark memories.

Sometimes, too, you may recall other catastrophes experienced by yourselves or our forefathers. Those were overcome, and so will the present catastrophe be too. 

NEW WRITERS - WHAT TO LEAVE OUT OF YOUR STORY

TOO MUCH? OR TOO LITTLE?

If you're new to writing, the danger is more often to write too much rather than too little. It makes no difference whether you're writing a 90,000 word novel or a 1000 word short story: unnecesssary detail, information or dialogue will slow down, irritate, distract or bore the reader. So here are some points to keep in mind.

DIALOGUE: We all discuss the weather, or what we ate last night, or how our offspring is doing at school, but none of these things is relevant, UNLESS IT AFFECTS THE PLOT, eg the weather hints at a forthcoming hurricane which will then prevent our main character taking a ferry to Spain, or the prospective bridegroom ate a couple of dead mussels that night and therefore won't make the wedding, or our offspring will be arrested for burning down the school lab, which will explain why Dad goes on one drinking binge too many and Mum packs a suitcase, which therefore explains .. ..... It's all about consequences. So, cut out the small talk. Dialogue should sound natural, but every word should advance the story.

CHARACTER INFORMATION: Some creative writing books recommend you write a cv for each of your main characters so that you know them inside out. This isn't my way but lots of authors do it. But however you build and get to know your characters, do you need to download it all for your readers? Ration the details you pass on, you might be surprised how few you need to explain how someone behaves, reacts, emotes.

SETTINGS: A friend of mine happened to spend a lot of time in an exotic setting. He decided to make it the setting for his first novel, and while there he amassed notebooks full of information - about the place, the people, the economics, the history, etc, etc. Sadly he put so much of it in his novel that it became virtually unreadable. It's tempting to include all that you've learned, but you have to resist. From all those notebooks try to extract the essence of a place. A few well-chosen snippets slipped in here and there will usually do the trick.

I could go on and on - but then, I don't want to bore you!

LET'S GET TO KNOW EACH OTHER