amwritingfantasy – 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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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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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!

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The woodsman and the witch

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 🎃

I also published my latest blog post earlier this evening: Using simile and metaphor to write effective stories

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Defender of the forest

Just a short post to say that Roi Fai n é ant 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 😊

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Behold, a new web address!

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.

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The writing continues…

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.

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.

Happy summer!

(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).

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.

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!

Or why not check out my other published work while you’re visiting 😊