The Lit Den Book of New Fiction is here at last!

The LitDen book of new fiction, on which I was one of four editors, as well as having one of my short stories in there, is out at last. A bit later in the year than anticipated, but it's here! It's for a good cause, The Laura Crane Trust, a charity which helps young people suffering from cancer, so it's well worth a look.

Here is the Link:

http://www.lulu.com/content/2619890

Thanks!

So, I survived another half term and here comes yet another galloping up on us for Easter, before I’ve had chance to draw breath, clean behind the fridge or paint my toenails!

I wrote next to nothing last half term and instead went shopping with my girls, had girlie hair appointments, sleepovers (my daughters, not me!) and bizarrely a trip to the local science museum, as my eldest daughter has a brain shaped like her dad’s and loves science! Personally I couldn’t understand a bit of it, but there you go!

Although I wrote nothing I still felt connected to the writing side of me all that week - I came second in The Pages short story competition again.

But since then it’s been back to school and back to writing. I’m working on my second novel, and it’s starting to come together a bit now. After my first book was published people kept asking me how long it takes to write a novel. I was thinking about that this morning and the answer is – a long time!

I was remembering the moment the spark of an idea first came to me, which has since become the novel I’m writing now, and that moment was a weekend away for my tenth wedding anniversary. I’ve now been married nearly thirteen years and the book is only in its first draft, so if you want to take the book from first being born to finish I’d say it takes about 5 years. Of course that’s not five years of sitting there everyday writing, but it is five years of thinking about the story.

People gasp when I say my first book took about 2 years to write, as if they think I knocked it up one spare afternoon, but actually it took a lot longer than that. It began way back in the nineties, before I had children, and considering my eldest daughter is now ten, that’s quite a long time! I just don’t think they’d believe me if I told them the truth!

But, if my first book took ten years, and my second will have taken about five years, then there’s hope, I suppose, that my next one will take two and a half years etc etc, until I will finally reach the stage where I’m knocking a book out in a spare afternoon…..

…..let’s hope not, eh?

Something that has happened since I had my book published, that I didn’t expect and never really thought about, is that I’ve been asked to judge a couple of writing competitions.

The first one is at creativewritingcomp.com. I don’t know much about these people yet, but they’ve just held their first writing competition, so I suppose now they’ve done it once they know what they’re doing and will be professional and brilliant at it (as usual I will be the one who doesn’t know what they are doing, but is good at pretending she does). As far as I’m aware the next competition will be launched this Spring. I’m nervous, as I always am when I do something new. They will send the entries to me in the post and it will be up to me to sift through them and pick the winners. Pressure! I just hope they don’t want me to talk with any intelligence about why I’ve picked the ones I’ve picked, as it will probably be a simple case of me liking one more than all the others! Very complicated, I know.

I was once a runner up in the Mike Hayward short story competition in good old Rotherham about three years ago. I’ll never forget talking to the judge that night. After I’d tried flirting with him at the bar in a sad attempt to get myself in first place, he told me that he’d had mine and the other two winning entries spread out on his kitchen table at home for weeks while he daily changed the order – 1st, 2nd, 3rd – not being able to make up his mind which he liked best. It felt wonderful to me to think of my entry on his kitchen table while he deliberated and tried to decide. Of course, he’d already made up his mind by the time I was propping the bar up with him, but I still liked the idea of my story receiving such attention from the judge.

I now picture myself in weeks to come with chaotic wads of paper on my kitchen table, kids eating their coco pops around them, cats leaving scruffy paw prints on them, while I try to decide. Maybe not quite the same as the Rotherham judge then!

The other one I’ll be doing is at beboauthor.com. Run by the lovely Claire Connolly, cyber friend of mine and all round top girl! I don’t have too many details on this either, except to say it started on Thursday 7th Feb and will end March 21st! What? I can feel the pressure mounting already. Better clear the kitchen table…

This is just an announcement really. Unfortunately you can't read any of the stories online, but the new Edit Red short story collection has one of mine in it. Have a look at www.editred.com/books/latenight/latenight.php

thanks

The opening of my book, Despite Losing it on Finkle Street, can be viewed at www.pioneer-readers.org/finkleextract.htm

it's available to order on amazon, waterstones.com, www.bookshop.blackwell.co.uk, thebookplace, booksunlimited and, strangely enough, tesco.com!