Tag: writing achievement

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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