Caroline’s Blog – Caroline Ashley

Lost in the world of novel writing

I realised that it’s been a while since I posted on my personal blog. Things have been relatively quiet here. I haven’t entered many contests and there’s not been any new publications to update about. However, I did get the good news last week that I had received an honourable mention in the L Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future contest for the second quarter of 2024. This is a well-known international contest, so being recognised for my work is a big confidence boost!

Otherwise, I have mostly been working away at completing my novel.

Tentatively titled “Battle Scars”, it’s the story of a woman named Rebecca Mason. She nearly died five years ago when a man named Rafe McKendrick brutally attacked her. His twin brother, Erik, saved her by turning her into a werewolf and Rafe was exiled from his pack. Rebecca struggles every day to reconcile her human life with the supernatural world. And then one day, Rafe comes back, and he’s threatening not just her but her new found pack and all of werewolf society. Does she have the strength to stand against the man who nearly killed her?

The novel is now written and one of my lovely fellow writers is reading it to give me feedback. There’s bound to still be plenty of editing to do but having a finished novel feels almost within reach!

On top of that, I’m also working on the sequel, which has a different point of view character. A gamble maybe, because I know people like having a single protagonist to follow, but it feels the right thing for the series I want to tell, so hopefully it works once it’s written! My aim for this book in terms of writing skills is to improve my efficiency, getting it written within a faster timescale by doing more planning at the beginning instead of just pantsing my way through it 🙈 If I can write faster, I’ll be able to get more books written in the long run so it’s definitely worth making myself more organised!

Look out for another Storytelling blog post, which I will try to get completed this week if I can pull my focus away from the novel writing 😊

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‘They Do Not Know The Earth’ and other things

If you follow me on social media, you’ll have already seen that the Hooghly Review have published one of my stories in their 3rd issue, which was released today. ‘They Do Not Know The Earth‘ is a flash fiction piece about a witch grieving for her lost family and trying to use magic to fill the hole they’ve left.

I’m aware I’ve been pretty quiet of late and I’m planning to attempt to get back on track this month. My writing has still been a priority but I was taking part in a free five day challenge with Writer’s Ink, as well as attending workshops organised as part of ProWritingAid’s Fantasy Writers Week. Both have provided some useful insights into writing longer fiction as well as the publishing and marketing side of the journey, which I’ll hopefully be able to use to my advantage with time!

It can be a bit overwhelming how many things are out there to help you with your writing – writing groups that you can subscribe to; apps for editing; apps for world-building; apps for structuring and planning. Not to mention the people you can pay for various kinds of editing and support in getting your book ready to go to agents. At the moment, I’ve resolved to try and do as much as I can without all that, just plugging away at my writing and editing, while attempting to get better at the whole social media thing and build some followers. Let’s see how it goes!

The next post after this will be for my Storytelling blog, on the topic of Third Person Omniscient Point of View, which I’m hoping to get out to you in the next couple of weeks. After that, we should be back on the usual monthly schedule. Any suggestions for topics to cover in Storytelling are more than welcome, so leave me a message with what you’d like to hear about.

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The Kelpie

My short story the Kelpie has recently been published by Elixir Verse Press in their inaugural issue – Elixir Verse Equinox: Terra Verses.

This issue has a great selection of stories all celebrating the magic of the earth and those who live on it. It includes a poem called Who Haunts Lonely Roads by Charlotte Amelia Poe, British author of How To Be Autistic. And a short story called All True Love Is Sacrifice by Maggie Nerz Iribarne, about a woman and her non-verbal son finding hope when they visit the fairies in Ireland. I also enjoyed Christopher R. Muscato‘s story, The Seven Sages of Grief, which explores a woman coming to terms with the loss of her sister.

I’ve made my story available for free here on my website, to give you a taste of the work within Terra Verses. There are many more beautiful pieces in this issue, so do please consider buying it if the concept captures your interest. Anthologies such as these survive through people contributing by purchasing when they can and telling other people about the stories they’ve enjoyed.

In other news, another story of mine, called They Do Not Know The Earth, will soon be published in Issue 3 of the Hooghly Review. This will be freely available so watch this space for another great collection of stories.

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Take Me Home

My latest publication is out now! Take Me Home is a flash fiction piece about the moments we lose as time passes and that desire to recapture that feeling of being “home”.

It’s been published in the 4th issue of Raw Lit Mag, which has some great stories about some of the hard realities of life and how we deal with them. Big thanks to the editor, Delphine Gauthier-Georgakopoulos, for all her time spent pulling this issue together ❤️

On the related note of moments that we want to hold onto, my son turned five yesterday. We had a small party with friends and family and he seemed to have a wonderful time. He requested a cake themed around a Netflix TV show called Hilda that we’ve been watching together as a family. It’s a lovely show, based on a comic book by Luke Pearson, about a girl who goes off on adventures in a world where magical creatures like elves, trolls, nisse and fairies all exist. Exactly the kind of story I love! I would highly recommend it even if you don’t have children.

The result of evenings slaving away making clay figures for my son’s cake 🎂

Finalist for author of the year

After being Spillwords Author of the Month in October, I’m now a nominee for their Author of the Year award! 😊

There’s something about the possibility of being Author of the Year that sounds vastly more impressive than Author of the Month, like I’ve not just stumbled upon a good story but that I might actually be a consistently good writer 😮

If you enjoy my writing and you’re part of the Spillwords community, please do take the time to vote. Fiction writing can be a bit of a thankless hobby, with rejections appearing in your inbox far more frequently than anyone would like, so I’m sure that every single author nominated for Spillwords’s awards will be thankful for you taking the time to consider their work.

In addition to this, back in January, I was Author of the Month on Fifty Word Stories and they’re also about to announce their Author of the Year for 2023. There’s no option to vote because the decision rests with the editor, but if you would like to read the best of their microfiction in 2023, or if you missed my story the first time round, they’ve posted links to all the shortlisted stories in their news feed: 2023 Finalists Do give my story a wee like on the page if you enjoy it!

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Under The Skin

I seem to have lots to update all at once this month!

Wicked Shadow Press have published my horror flash fiction story Under the Skin in their latest anthology: Flash of the Dead: Requiem.

My story is now available for you to read for free on my website but if you enjoy it and would like to peruse the 87 other chilling horror works in their anthology, then you can follow the above link to purchase their anthology in epub format. Anthologies such as these survive through people contributing by purchasing when they can and telling other people about the stories they’ve enjoyed, so please do consider supporting them if you’re able to and are interested in the stories inside.

Under the Skin is about domestic abuse, so may not be for everyone. It’s about all the repressed emotions that come from spending your life trying to make yourself fit with someone else’s view of who you should be. These emotions can build beneath the surface and threaten to spill out in ways that we can’t control.

Let me know what you think!

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The Rise of Nilcaro Syndrome

My horror story The Rise of Nilcaro Syndrome has been published in Issue 94 of Blood Moon Rising Magazine. This issue is available to view for free until next month, after which you’ll need to purchase it in their store if you’d like to read it.

In case horror isn’t really your thing, but you’d still like to read my story in particular, I’ve also uploaded it to my website: The Rise of Nilcaro Syndrome

This story is about a pandemic of flesh eating humans, from the perspective of a teenage boy living in Glasgow. It is a bit gory in places, but it’s mostly a story about how Johnny and his family react to the pandemic as it spreads across their community.

I should be posting details of another published horror story later on this week, so be on the look out for the next update!

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The End of George Square

Writing George Square started as a way to get myself back into regularly writing fiction. It was intended to be a novella that I would finish before I went back to work after maternity leave with my daughter. Instead, it turned into a 69,000 word novel with characters that I would love to explore more. Though, rest assured, George Square is a standalone story, with no cliffhangers waiting at the end!

After I started writing George Square, I began to enter short story contests, paid for a story writing course and have had several pieces of short fiction published. My writing ability has hugely improved in the last two years, so I’m sure that there’s a lot of editing to be done with the earlier chapters and the story as a whole. The editing will begin later this year after I finish editing the adult fantasy novel that I wrote a decade ago and hope to start querying with agents this year. Wish me luck!

So, it is with sadness that I say goodbye to Matthias, Esther, Griff and the others in this last chapter, but I look forward to going back and making their story even better! ☺️

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Merry Christmas!

Spillwords have published a Christmas story of mine called Fireside Memories. This was one of the first short stories I wrote after getting back into writing in early 2022, submitted to a Globe Soup contest to the theme of ‘an unlikely friendship’. I liked the idea of making the story about a man and ‘man’s best friend’, except in a world where that isn’t entirely the case any more. I’ve edited it a lot since the original draft and I also made it Christmassy for the submissions call with Spillwords, so it is a bit different from the first version. I’ve had some lovely feedback from other writers since it’s been published, which is a great little gift right before Christmas.

Finally, today I’ve uploaded another blog post, this time about using Aristotle’s rhetorical appeals (logos, ethos and pathos) in writing fiction. This is an example of The Rule of Three in action – Aristotle separates quite a few of his concepts into three parts, likely because he knew the rhetorical power of things that come in threes. His writing was clearly effective, given that we’re still talking about him more than two thousand years later!

This is my last post of 2023 so all that’s left is to thank you for following my blog this year and I hope you continue to enjoy my work next year. See you in 2024! 🥳

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Spillwords interview

Spillwords have published an interview with me that you are welcome to read on their website. They also published a shorter interview that I had completed before becoming author of the month, but which actually came out a week or so afterwards. I’m not really one for chatting much about myself, but I guess if I want to eventually sell my writing, part of that will involve sharing some of myself with my audience. Thank you to Spillwords for pushing me out of my comfort zone! 🙈

Globe Soup also announced the winners and finalists for their 2023 open contest at the beginning of the month. My story made it into a finalist place, which was amazing and another huge boost to my confidence as a writer, but also makes me feel a bit of a bridesmaid – when do I get to be the one who takes home the prize? 🤣 That said, the winners were very well written and their prizes well-deserved, so if you’re looking for something short to read, you can’t go wrong with checking them out 😊

In terms of my plan for the next few weeks, I should be posting my next Storytelling blog post within the week. Wish me luck!