My World Book Night preparations

I gifted a copy of Sleepyhead to Liverpool City Talk 105.9 breakfast show presenter Mick Coyle this morning as part of World Book Night...

World Book Night was something that passed me by last year, but speaking to so many people who were givers in 2011 and reading about their experiences on Twitter I was determined to get involved this April.

I was really pleased to be accepted as a giver a couple of months ago, and chosen to distribute Mark Billingham’s thriller Sleepyhead (the first Thorne novel)  around my local community.

So far I have given copies out at a training organisation for unemployed people in Liverpool, to  some  parents and carers of young people with special needs and learning difficulties, and also at a local hairdresser’s, as the aim is to stimulate interest in reading amongst those who don’t necessarily pick up a book very often.

...and he became very quickly engrossed...

Over the next days I will be distributing more books, so if you get approached in a street on Merseyside and get a copy of Sleepyhead thrust at you then don’t be too concerned!

For more information on World Book Night check out the website here.

Thanks to Sarah and all at Waterstones on Bold Street, Liverpool for being the pick up point for my World Book Night books and those of other givers.

Liverpool has Giants of all sizes

That cucumber...

Scousers are proud of Liverpool and think it’s full of giants anyway but this weekend it’s been literally the case – Liverpool has hosted the Giant Spectacular featuring three giant marionettes walking around the city centre and surrounding areas for three days, showcasing the best of us on the world stage.

Liverpool has showed it can stage massive world class events like this with ease, what’s been so ace about this weekend is that local people are loving it alongside tourists who’ve come from everywhere – walking through town yesterday I heard excited thrilled voices and laughter in a myriad of different accents.

But while we should celebrate such impressive bonanzas like Giant Spectacular, we should also big up smaller more grassroots happenings which take place every week in Liverpool, often without any fanfare or press attention.

Grin Productions is a local community theatre group which has quietly but boldly been encouraging and supporting writing talent across Liverpool and beyond, putting on plays and performances for a about a year and building serious credibility in that short time.

Last night I went to a preview performance of Grin’s latest production called 3 Women, a trio of monologues from the perspective of three very different women. The monologues are starkly individual – a witty comedy (The Game), a heart breaking drama exploring a disturbed start in life (Perfect) and a politically aware fairy tale of sorts (Weave).

The Little Girl Giant - part of the Giant Spectacular - takes a stroll past Liverpool FC's football ground this weekend

I’ve seen the poster for 3 Women around for some time and puzzled why a large cucumber was displayed so prominently. Now I’ve seen the monologues I know why (oh my word), and you will too if you pop along to Studio 2 on Parr St, Liverpool at 7pm this evening or The Casa on Hope St, Liverpool at 8pm. Door tax is £7.50/£6 concessions.

Grin also run writing workshops as well, check out their website for more info here

News on my sitcom script

I’ve been working on the script for a sitcom The Adventures of Tommy Sex, for a couple of months. I really enjoy watching sitcoms and love comedy so it seemed the most natural thing in the world to write a situation comedy of my very own.

The good news is that my script has today been optioned by a Merseyside production company! An option, for the unacquainted, is when you sign a contract allowing a production company to offer to make it for a television company or channel.

Of course it’s early days as yet, my sitcom hasn’t been commissioned but it’s hopefully on the first step to it actually being made.

Keep your fingers crossed for me, PLEASE….

Broken, a collection of my short stories, is available on Amazon for Kindle now here

The Alliance of Independent Authors is go!

Orna Ross, Founder and Director of The Alliance of Independent Authors speaking at the not for profit organisation's launch at London Book Fair

At the London Book Fair this week it took me a while to find the Amazon exhibition; this was because it was in the digital publishing area, away from the hub of national and international publishers and not in the main thoroughfare.  To be fair to the organisers it is indeed a digital platform and what with me being a northern bumpkin I got lost a few times due to the Earls Court Exhibition Centre being so mahoosive, but you get my point; most of the authors I know these days are making most of their writing income via Amazon and not through the more traditional routes.

I was heartened though to hear The Alliance of Independent Authors were launching at LBF, and chuffed to attend myself. The brainchild of Orna Ross, a traditionally published author who chose to take back her work and self-publish, the panels featured authors who shared very inspiring stories indeed including John Logan who spoke of a great number of ‘rave rejections’ he received from publishers before finding self-published success via Amazon.

At an event run by a (certain unnamed) writing festival last year I got very annoyed when one of the organisers spoke of being published through gatekeepers as a type of ‘validation’, the inference being self-published authors aren’t equal to those releasing work through more conventional methods. That on its own is, for me, reason enough for The Alliance of Independent Authors to exist and fight for the status and standing of the self-published.

I myself have only dipped my toes into the water of self-publishing via Amazon with Broken a collection of small stories, and as yet I don’t know what the future will hold with my almost completed crime novel The Missing Link. What I do know however that it WILL be published, whether via Amazon or traditionally, and that excites me very much indeed.

More about The Alliance of Independent Authors is on the website here; you can find them on Twitter via  @IndieAuthorsSoc

Broken, a collection of my short stories, is available on Amazon for Kindle now here

The real north-south divide

I seem to be spending quite a lot of time on trains at the moment. I don’t find the journeys themselves that much of a bind to tell you the truth, as long as I don’t have someone with BO sweating away next to me or if there’s no annoying toddler in the seat behind kicking me up my backside, un-reprimanded.

I can make good of the hours as the countryside and towns whistle past, by either reading or writing.  As I’ve said on this blog before, earwigging is a major thing for me as a writer and wherever I go in t’north I pick up lots of tasty snippets of conversation in all sorts of places.

On the trip down to the London Book Fair on Tuesday morning this week, I had to change at Crewe of all places. I was there for a grand total of twelve short minutes, made delicious because of two lovely women I ‘overheard’.

The two ladies met up by the loos – as you do – one exclaiming to the other (who had a full ‘face’ on) ‘You look glam!’ to which her friend nodded and replied thus, ‘Yes, I rinsed out these trousers this morning and dried them on the radiator’.
I found this hilariously funny and moved on quickly lest they spy me sniggering and whipping out my notebook to write the exchange down.

I had to stuff my knuckles in my mouth when I sat in my back garden a couple of week ago listening to my (admittedly unsophisticated) neighbour talking to his mates.

‘Spiders can’t jump, you know.’
‘What d’you mean, they can’t jump?’
‘I’m telling you, they can’t because they’ve got no knees.’
‘How do they get around, then?’
(THINKS) ‘Well they’ve got loads of legs so it makes them go faster.’
‘Right.’
‘Mind you our Lee used to have a tarantula. I used to get it stoned by putting a spliff in its tank.’
‘Did you?’
‘Yeah. It f**king well jumped then all right. Off its t*ts it was (LAUGHS – A LOT WHILE FRIEND LISTENS, INCREDULOUS) .  I frigging love animals, me. I prefer them to people.’

You couldn’t make it up and although I do not condone cruelty to spiders in any way I found this highly comical too.

I’m not suggesting that us northerners are a joke cracking lot with little else to occupy our time, but when I’m in London I just don’t get the same quality material I’m used to back home.
At the London Book Fair for example, I mainly heard ‘I’ll have 3,00 of those’, ‘Portugese rights’ (a very popular one this year) or, my own personal favourite, ‘stupendous!’
Oh, and much air kissing.

I can’t help but feel a little bit disappointed that the south isn’t holding up its end in the unintentional comedy stakes…or am I wrong and simply noseying into the wrong conversations?

Broken, a collection of my short stories, is available on Amazon for Kindle now here

Itchy feet

Clare forced her feet flat on the pavement with every muscle, tendon and bone tensed and taut. Each of her ten toes tried to dance inside her shoes but she pushed down hard to stop them. This time she had to be organised. Going on foot simply wouldn’t suit, not this time, not today.

Clare stretched her neck to glimpse any sign of the taxi, but there was no sign yet.

Her brain was distracted by the click of the Adams’ front door and Clare’s itchy feet started up again.

Run. They wanted to run, but she stopped them.

Clare saw Mrs Adams look at the packed suitcases stacked about her. She pulled her fringe down over her eyes and concentrated on the pavement, struggling to keep her feet still.

Wait for the taxi, she implored them. Stay where you are.

Don’t ask me where I’m going, she willed Mrs Adams.

‘Goodbye, love,’ says her neighbour.

Clare nodded, relieved.

Her taxi arrived. The driver’s eyes flickered at her bruised face, her black eye and she heard him breathe in sharply. But he stayed silent.

The taxi pulled away with Clare and her possessions inside. Her feet calmed, and relaxed. She shivered.

Back on the pavement in the street outside Clare’s house, Mrs Adams feet started to itch.

Broken, a collection of my short stories, is available on Amazon for Kindle now here

Outside

On the bus, the spinster sits by the window minding her own business but is not enjoying her journey. It smells of stale cigarettes in here and even she knows that people aren’t permitted to smoke on board public transport these days.

A young man gets on and is about to plonk himself right on top of her.
The spinster gasps in disgust but shuffles out of the way into the aisle seat just in time.
The man’s Bermuda shorts scrape against the leatherette surface as he spreads his legs wide open, forcing the spinster to balance right on the seat edge just to accommodate him. Flicking back his golden surfer boy hair, he smiles through the spinster at a pretty girl across the aisle and winks, placing his hand on his bare thigh.

The spinster looks around for someone to please voice some disapproval.
Nothing.
She tuts to herself, and glances out of the window.

‘Stop the bus!’ she shouts, panicking.

But it rattles past her house anyway.
An old man pings the bell for the driver to pull up, but that is two stops on. She waits for him to creak off the vehicle and wobbles after him before the doors hiss shut and trap her overcoat in their jaws.

As the spinster gets to her house, her neighbour reaches over the privet between their properties and plonks a bin bag of pruned branches into her and Mother’s wheelie bin.
‘It’s not like they’re going to mind, is it?’ he barks to a frowning passer-by, cocking his head towards the spinster’s garden.
The woman has a go at him as the spinster pushes past the battle axe weeds and dried out brown branches in the front of the house and walks through her front door.
She sits on the cobwebbed sofa next to a small figure, cold and still.
‘You were right, Mum. It’s no good out there. No good at all.’

Broken, a collection of my short stories, is available on Amazon for Kindle now here 

This applies to writers too…

Broken, a collection of my short stories, is available on Amazon for Kindle now here 

Germaine Greer vs Kindle!

Pheobe from Friends (pictured here with the delicious Chris Isaac) sang about fir trees not achieving their Christmas destiny - but what about women writers whose manuscripts don't achieve their publishing potential?

I went to see Germaine Greer speak at the Floral Pavillion in New Brighton on Wirral last night, a venue which I must admit to my shame I haven’t been before.  (It was very nice, in case you’re not familiar with the place).

I saw Greer talk about 18 months ago in Liverpool. I didn’t agree with everything she said on that night although she provided much food for thought which had me discussing issues she raised with friends for a while afterwards, so I didn’t expect to stand shoulder to shoulder with her on each and every subject yesterday evening either.

Nevertheless, one thing she did raise which surprised me rather was her vehement opposition to the Kindle*.  (*aka my best friend)

She explained that if one knew anything about publishing then one would appreciate how awful the Kindle layout was, it didn’t guide the eye across the page and that the iPad – if you HAD to have a digital option – was far superior.

Always buy paper books, she said to nods of approval to the rows of women of a paper and hardback age in (very) sensible shoes. They’re far better, not like those nasty Kindles.
Now, I hate to be negative on this blog but I can’t help think Germaine is missing the point here. Women writers for one benefit extraordinarily well from epublishing on Kindle.

Given that it is more difficult than ever before to get a conventional publishing deal, epublishing can be very liberating – amazingly so. Women with children are often unable to get ‘out there’ to writing festivals, conventions, meet ups  and so find it difficult to network and meet people because they’re too busy changing nappies, getting their children’s school uniforms ready for the next day etc etc – the never ending graft that is motherhood!

That puts another barrier up to conventional publishing success.

Why should these women’s manuscripts lie on computers and lap tops, unread (and, taking a line from Pheobe from Friends) never achieving their (publishing) destiny?
Germaine Greer also has the perfect right to have a personal preference for the iPad and she may indeed be correct its ebook layout is better than my trusty Kindle but an iPad costs how much – £350? You can get your hands on a Kindle for little over eighty quid.

A bargain I’d say.

No one’s saying the Kindle is perfect but I love mine (a close friend told me recently the day she bought hers was the happiest day of her life – okay that might be a bit much but I empathise, totally) and I’m sure many people reading this have a similar emotional attachment to theirs!

So once again Germaine Greer has got me thinking and talking and analysing (and moaning – sorry) – making it a well worth a trip to New Brighton.
Many thanks to Elaine Owen from Designated Associates on Wirral for allowing me to be her guest on the night.

Broken, a collection of my short stories, is out on Amazon for Kindle now. It can be downloaded here

Broken – an explanation

In the first year of my MA in creative writing at Liverpool’s John Moores University, my mother passed away.
It wasn’t unexpected as she’d been ill for quite some time with Alzheimer’s, but nonetheless it still knocked us all for six quite a bit – understandable enough, I suppose. When I started on the MA just months earlier I was working on a not-that-brilliant chick lit novel; my mother’s death left me unable to concentrate on such a large project so I ditched it (that was for the best really) and embarked on some short stories not only to fulfil my writing assignments for university but also for me personally – if I don’t write then to be frank I go barking mad. I’m sure many writers reading this can relate to that!

Anyway, the stories I wrote during the period have just been sitting all lonely on my laptop so I spruced them up last year. One of them, ‘Killing For Company’, was shortlisted for the Winchester Writer’s Conference last summer and was included in ‘Off The Record Charity Anthology’ (Guilty Conscience Publishing) in December 2011; and another ‘The Picture Frame’ was published in the Lancashire Evening News in 2010. I put them together with another story ‘Say It With Flowers’ to make up this short collection released on Amazon for Kindle today, called ‘Broken : 3 Short Stories’.

Each story is approximately 1,500 words long.

The title comes from an unintentional theme in all the stories – we have broken relationships, people and of course hearts – although not the romantic kind!

I hope you enjoy them if you choose to download them and of course I would love to hear your feedback!

Thanks to my hubby Andy who designed the Ebook cover for me, if he hadn’t done his magic then I’d just have a blank page! Also a big hug and kiss goes out to the Chesty Girls Writing Group who helped with their wonderful critiques and feedback.

Broken is available here. If you haven’t got a Kindle then you can download Kindle for PC here (for free) and read it on your computer or laptop.