When I started trying to get my work published online, Spillwords was one of the first places to accept a short story of mine for their website. This month I’ve been nominated as their author of the month for October 2023!
I’m never usually someone who wins popularity contests, being the introverted nerd that I am, so I’m very proud that my work has inspired people to vote for me 😊 If you haven’t read my stories on Spillwords, you can find them on my Spillwords author page.
I’ve just finished a long month or so of writing short stories for the Globe Soup genre smash followed by pulling another story together for the Commonwealth Short Story prize. My brain now feels like mince 😅 But despite that, I’m about to start working on the final chapters of George Square – started when my 19 month old wasn’t even born yet, I’m excited to get to the finale. There are already things that I’m desperate to edit but overall I’m really happy with what I’ve managed to accomplish. ❤️
I’ve fallen a bit behind on my updates so this is a couple of days out of date!
Spillwords have published a micro fiction piece of mine called The Woodsman and the Witch – a dark little story to get people in the mood for Halloween 🎃
Just a short post to say that Roi Fainéant Press have published a flash fiction story that I wrote called Defender of the Forest. It’s a story about growing up and moving on from the games of our childhood but still holding on to the stories that we told.
I originally wrote ‘Defender of the Forest’ for a submission call by Space Cat Press on the theme of ‘Into the Forest’. It wasn’t accepted but I edited it afterwards and tried elsewhere. Many thanks to Roi Fainéant Press for publishing the new improved version 😊
Spillwords are showcasing my latest story, Granny Beatson, in the featured section of their website 😊 This is the third time they’ve published one of my stories and I’m very grateful to them for their support!
This story was originally written for Globe Soup’s Open short story competition last year and received an honourable mention. One of the reasons that I enjoy the Globe Soup community is that they do take the time to recognise the top 10% who enter their contests, as it gives you that little bit of feedback that you’re on the right track and your writing might be worth sharing. I did subsequently enter this story into another contest, where it didn’t place, but that’s the joy of writing! 🤣
Granny Beatson is the story of a girl and her grandmother and how their relationship changes as she grows up and her grandmother grows older. Because it’s me, there’s also a little dash of fantasy, with a ritual to the fae that binds them over time.
It was a difficult story to write because while it wasn’t autobiographical, it did bring up memories about my relationship with my nana and how it changed as I grew from a child to a teenager and she became less able. She passed away when I was still a teenager and I do look back and wish sometimes that we could have had a relationship when I was older, wiser, and less caught up in growing up and moving away from my roots. We certainly weren’t as close in my teenage years but I do fondly remember my childhood visits and sleepovers at her house.
I hope you enjoy reading my story and maybe that it inspires you to reflect on your own childhood and your relationship with your grandparents.
Over the next few weeks I’ll be working hard to finish my entries to Globe Soup’s Genre Smash and I’m also hoping to pull something together for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize.
After around eighteen months of updating this website, I’ve made the decision to commit some money to its maintenance and now have a shiny new web domain. Upgrading my WordPress account also means no more ads, which should make reading my posts a bit more of an enjoyable experience 🙂
This past month has mostly been taken up with working on my entry for Globe Soup’s Genre Smash contest – I bought tickets for both western/horror and urban/fairy tale and I’m now in the editing stage for the former. These genres both really appealed to me so fingers crossed I can pull together something good.
In other news, I received an email that one of my stories has been longlisted for publication by Northern Gravy. This is the second story they’ve longlisted, so we’ll need to see if I get a bit further this time! Another story, ‘Granny Beatson’ has been accepted by Spillwords and should be out soon, though they haven’t confirmed a date yet – I’ll be sure to let people know once it’s out!
I have a few different short story projects I want to complete and I think George Square might end up taking the back seat unless I find myself being amazingly productive. The last time this happened though, I made up for it the following month with two chapters in close succession so this is my aim for November!
My next Storytelling blog post should be out soon – the plan is for it to be finished over the weekend so watch this space for updates.
Once again I need to come up with something to say to you all 😂
My daughter wondering what I’ve achieved this week 😅
I’ve been taking a bit of a break from writing this week due to being on holiday in a wee cottage near Annan. This holiday included my 1 year old and 4 year old, so largely included play parks and food, but we did get the reward of hot tub time in the evening once the kids had been put to bed, with a lovely view over the fields.
View from our patio
From a writing point of view, I mostly spent my time this month preparing a short story for Globe Soup’s Open Contest, which you could enter if you had paid for their writing course. Admittedly, I probably haven’t read their lessons as thoroughly as I should have, but I think the story that I finished with was fairly decent – hopefully the judges agree! 🙂
Since then, I’ve been editing the latest chapter of George Square and coming up with ideas for my next Storytelling blog. I even managed to find some time to submit a few stories to online magazines – hopefully at least one will be accepted!
In good news for this month, one of my stories was a finalist in the 10th Globe Soup 7 day story writing challenge. The winning story, by Morgan McIntyre, was really good and definitely worth a read.
My story for this contest had to be historical fiction, which is not my favourite. Largely because my historical knowledge is rubbish – while I used to be good at remembering dates and names for exams in school, my brain refuses to store such details as part of my ongoing general knowledge. Thankfully, historical fiction can also include fantasy elements, so this story was basically a story about a kelpie that happened to be set during the Highland Clearances. As always, my next step is to spend months on end trying to find someone who wants to publish it, so wish me luck! 🙈
In less good but still positive news, I submitted a sci-fi story to F&SF (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction), who are a pretty big magazine if you’re into sci-fi and fantasy. They rejected my story but with a very positive email, saying that they didn’t think I would have trouble finding a home for it. A sign of further improvement in my work! Now I need to submit to other places until I find one that says yes 🙂
Feel free to check out my other published work or have a look at my Storytelling blog, about the psychology within storytelling.
(AKA my blog post is late because I was on holiday)
Due to having two young children, we decided to stick to the UK for our holiday this year, to save ourselves the joy of navigating an airport and a flight with our delightful, independently-minded monsters. So we spent a week in Dumfries and Galloway instead.
Looking at the weather forecast, we thought we were going to end up with it raining all week, but the weather gods were clearly in a good mood and granted us some lovely days (interspersed with rain of course, it is the West Coast of Scotland after all).
Sandhead Beach
I often went on holiday with my family to Dumfries and Galloway as a child, so it was a bit of a walk down memory lane too. I hadn’t visited this neck of the woods in years so it was interesting to see what had changed and what had stayed the same.
I wrote quite a lot when I was little and often went on holiday with a notepad and pencil, drafting stories while my dad fished off a pier or a beach. The idea for the world of George Square is one that I’ve been playing around with since the time of our holidays down there.
I would sit in the car, watching rows of evergreen trees fly past and imagine a castle hidden from view, where my characters all lived. I would scramble over jagged rocks, listening to the roar of the sea, and imagine some of their adventures to dangerous places, far from home.
Isle of Whithorn
But on this holiday, I mostly spent my time entertaining a 1 year old and a 4 year old, so not much actual writing was achieved. Once they were in bed, my husband and I spent our evenings relaxing in a hot tub with a glass of wine and revelling in the beauty of the countryside.
Normal activity should resume for now, though we’re taking another week away next month so we’ll see when I get the next post out!
As always, writing comes with highs and lows. At the beginning of May, Globe Soup announced the winner of their 9th 7 Day Challenge and my story didn’t place at all (the winning story is a chilling horror and well worth a read). Then a couple of weeks later both of the stories that I wrote for their sci-fi contest placed as finalists! I feel bad that I’m not going to share them but I’m currently in the process of trying to find someone to publish them – so watch this space 🙂
And don’t forget to watch out for my new Storytelling blog – next post will be coming out in the middle of the month, probably around the 17th – 18th June. First post can be found here
Three weeks back at work and totally knackered 😴 I thought about posting something about the experience, and even had a few paragraphs drafted, but writing a blog about being an NHS psychologist is a very different track from the one I had planned when I started this. Suffice it to say, there are too many patients, not enough staff and not enough time. I spend my days trying to prioritise as well as I can and always leave with a list of more things to do the next day, that would ideally have been done already 🤷♀️
In terms of writing, I’m working on a story about grief that was originally for a particular magazine but ended up longer than their word limit, so now will need to find a new home. My productivity won’t be what it was last year, but I have plans for a magazine in June; a contest in July and then another contest in September. Wish me luck keeping to those plans!
I also had some good news in that one of my flash fiction stories, called ‘The Unicorn in the Garden’, was accepted for Flash Flood 2023. The Flash Flood Journal will be posting a new flash fiction piece every 5-10 minutes for twenty-four hours on the 24th June in celebration of National Flash Fiction Day. My story will appear at 6.40am BST 🙂 This story was written for a contest where it didn’t even reach the longlist so it’s nice to know that someone out there liked it – hopefully readers will appreciate it too!
I also plan to start a blog called “Storytelling”, stylised with a psi symbol for the ‘i’, just to be all fancy like.
I have drafts for the first 3 posts and I plan to post on a monthly basis, a couple of weeks after each chapter of George Square. I’m not really one for blogging but my hope is that the more I say the more readers might find my work. The blog will be an attempt to combine my two interests of psychology and writing in various ways – hopefully I don’t run out of ideas too quickly! I’m still working out how to make it look all nice on the website but hopefully I’ll get that figured out in the next couple of weeks 🙂
Caroline Ashley 