SCRIBE Short Story Competition 2015 #ScribeFest

In June 2015, Middlewich residents and visitors from across the UK joined in a weekend long celebration of the town’s renowned FAB (Folk and Boat) festival.

Up to 15 venues played host to music and dance throughout the weekend on the Middlewich canalside and in the town centre. Artists from around the world entertained thousands of visitors each day.

Together with hundreds of canal boats and the town centre setting, the Middlewich FAB festival has continued to provide a fabulous showcase of live entertainment every June since 1990, and has attracted renowned performers including Bob Geldof, Lindisfarne, Ade Edmonson, Neville Staples and many more.

In recognition of this amazing and unique event, the SCRIBE festival has based the 2015 under 16s and over 16s short story competitions on FAB.

For details on how to enter, please see our Short Story Competition page on the website http://www.scribefest.org/ You can win cash prizes, and you will be invited to our Short Story Awards Evening presentation, taking place during the SCRIBE festival, 12th - 17th October. The deadline for story submissions is 25th September, so get those pencils scribbling!

For more information, and to keep updated with news on events and workshops, follow @ScribeFestival on Twitter, and search #ScribeFest, or you can like our page on Facebook.

Halloween Horror Event at Stoke-on-Trent Library

I am very pleased to announce that I will be a guest author at the Dose of Dark Fiction event with "Father Darkness" Dan Weatherer on Saturday 31st October. Come and join us, if you dare! 

#ScribeFest - A Write Good Experience! Middlewich Literary Festival

I am back from a very busy, and very enjoyable, weekend at the Middlewich Boat Pull event, and now I am very happy to announce the official launch of our brand new local festival, Scribe (Middlewich Literary Festival). Scribe takes place from 12th - 17th October 2015, and it is set to be a very lively festival, with visiting speakers and authors from all over the UK, lots of local venues opening their doors, and a chance to meet our local artists, writers and performers.

Some of our guests include Elizabeth Williams from the Gaskell Society, talking about Jane Austen, Money and Marriage; Miles Hunt with the Wonder Stuff diaries; poet John Lindley and film maker Alex Bell; journalist Joanna Collie, and various authors including yours truly (of course!), historian Gill Hoffs (who you may have seen recently on the television show Coast), author Paula Manley, and author and playwright Dan Weatherer (responsible for the award winning Legend of the Chained Oak short film).

#ScribeFest is a brand new festival concept that aims to bring together local artists with those visiting from further afield, to offer a creative and invigorating atmosphere in our canal town. We even have something for the children, in the form of a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party hosted by professional storyteller John Kirk, and a Children’s Literature and Illustration event run by local artists Ian Hill-Smith and Philip Latham. More events will be announced as we continue our preparations, but I am very excited about this one, as you can probably tell! Oh, and you might be interested to enter our short story competitions, one for adults and one for children, all with cash prizes and an invitation to our very special short story award ceremony during the festival.

So, here is my call-out to book lovers old and young. And to all of my artist and creative friends, we offer an open invitation to come and visit Middlewich in Cheshire during the October festival. Our pubs are welcoming and very cosy, we have events planned in various venues including my favourite café Drinks and Bites, and in Boatyard Artspace at Middlewich Narrowboats, which is a fabulous place, and very pretty with views over the canal and lots of colourful boats bobbing around. In fact, if you own a narrowboat, why not travel in style when you come to our events? Now, there’s an idea…

Made in Middlewich: Boats, Beer, Books and Crafts

Hey folks, what are you doing this weekend? Do you fancy meeting your favourite paranormal author in Middlewich? Then come on up!

I will be exhibiting the Redcliffe novels, and The Darkness of Love, as part of The Middlewich Creative weekend of crafts, beer, boats and books. You can visit us at Middlewich Narrowboats, Canal Terrace, Middlewich, CW10 9BD from 10am on Saturday 22nd August, until 4pm on Sunday, 23rd August. See you there!

This Writer is Getting On It!

This year is shaping up to be rather productive for me on the work front. Outwardly, nothing has really changed. I am still officially the mother and housewife, running around after my children, preparing for 'big school,' and observing various monumental developments in their young lives. But aside from all of that, I have managed, and am managing, to actually do some writing! I currently have 4 novels in progress, one of which is close to being polished enough to publish. I am shopping another novel to various publishers, and I am certain it will find a home very soon. I even have enough short stories in my archive to consider publishing an anthology, although that is a seed of an idea at present.

So, what about the other side of writing? That murky, uninspiring, necessary task of marketing and selling books? At present I am the only one spreading the word about my, uh, words. I have no team of professionals on hand to assist. I  have no marketing budget to speak of. It is just little old me, emerging from the shell, and actually talking about my books, in public, after rather a long absence. I will kickstart this new phase of authorhood with my involvement in the upcoming Scribe literary festival in October. More details will follow, as we are currently awaiting the official media launch, but the event is shaping up to be a good one, and I am very excited to be sharing the stage with some impressive local authors. If you are located near Middlewich, Cheshire, check back here for an official press release later in August... I will follow up the literary festival with events in 2016, all to be confirmed. See you soon!

I’m a #CampNaNoWriMo Winner!

I am so happy! My Muse has returned, and I have reached my target and won #CampNaNoWriMo for the first time. I attempted it in previous years and was unsuccessful, so this feels like a real achievement. #CampNaNoWriMo differs from #NaNoWriMo because you choose the word count, and everything is more relaxed. I decided to aim for 25,000 words on my new novel, and I got there in 23 days, hooray! And now I will continue writing, because the words are flowing again. Here is a synopsis of my new novel, Hunting the Hunted:

Frederick James Mitchell is a very old, very bored, vampire. He haunts the hidden tunnels beneath the city of Manchester, and hides out in his luxury penthouse apartment when he is playing human. One day he discovers a vampire hunter watching him. He lures her underground to fight, but his control is lost when she brings backup in the form of  battle hardened twins William and Samantha. By a curious twist of fate, Frederick is saved by the intervention of an enchanting young female vampire. His lust for life awakened, he sets about seeking revenge from his attackers, taking pleasure wherever and whenever he chooses.

Why #NaNoWriMo and #CampNaNoWriMo are Perfect for Me

This month I am a very happy writer. After what feels like a ridiculously long absence, my Muse has returned, and she is raring to go. I signed up for #CampNaNoWriMo last year and my enthusiasm fizzled out very quickly. There were a lot of distractions within the family due to babies and accident-induced illness. I had to reluctantly accept that my writing would not flow while my mind and heart were consumed with other affairs. And it put me into something of a depression, I will admit.

Anyway, that was last year. This year, I am back on track. I never gave up with my writing, and it was always there, ticking over in the background, buzzing like a machine on standby just waiting to be switched on. Perhaps I needed the time to recharge my batteries. Maybe I was simply focusing my attention on my young children, conscious that they are growing fast and that my writing will still be there when they leave home as adults. Whatever the reason, I feel like I didn’t achieve very much on the writing front in 2014. I did, however, keep both of my blogs updated regularly, so I was still writing something, even it was largely what I call ‘disposable babble.’

Now, back to the present. When I began #CampNaNoWriMo this year, I wasn’t entirely certain that I could achieve my goal. I set a word count target of 25,000. That way it is not as much as the full 50,000 required for #NaNoWriMo, but it is still a good enough chunk of words to constitute a fairly decent novel. I had to start somewhere. I need new material to publish. My last novel was published in 2013, and now I am itching to get something else out there, although my methods and plans are a whole other story. And I am happy to report that my novel is growing steadily, and I am well on my way to achieving the word count goal.

I find that #NaNoWriMo and #CampNaNoWriMo are perfect writing challenges for me. I am one of those people that works better to deadlines, and I believe that the reason I have not necessarily reaped the benefits of being a freelance writer so far, is that I have not been putting myself in positions where I have tight deadlines and people to answer to. It was quite nerve-wracking, I suppose, taking on such a responsibility, and what with the distractions of preschool children, I didn’t trust myself to do the work. Doing #NaNoWriMo is a fantastic compromise. I get to write my novels, in the way that I choose, and there is nobody to criticize. Indeed, I receive a whole lot of praise, encouragement and support from my virtual cabin mates on #CampNaNoWriMo, and there is always someone to talk to online when you need a pick-me-up. You get a whole month of writing abandon, and afterwards you have a solid piece of work that you can mould into a finished novel. Perfect!