30 Tuesday Apr 2013
Posted in News
Tags
Congratulations to Sarah, our writer of fiction for children and teenagers – her novel ‘So Perfect On The Surface’ has been selected for the longlist in Cornerstones’ WowFactor 2013 competition. The shortlist is to be announced on 30th May.
We are ever so proud of her, and the book is brilliant!
Credit: vanhookc at flickr
28 Sunday Apr 2013
Posted in Christine, Observations, Poetry
On one of those sites selling lifestyle homewares
I notice a print for sale
A Hearing Gull.
I’ve heard of hearing dogs that bark for doorbells
But a hearing gull?
How?
At once, I see my own gull – cold-eyed,
A cruel mouth, but loyal
His name – Gabril.
He alights crisply on the garden table and speaks.
“I hear the cracking of the eggs
Soon, beware the swans.”
“The noise beyond the houses is a helicopter
Hovering above a crash…
There is blood.”
“I hear a roar of angry air above the clouds.
The geese will not fly tomorrow;
Pinion the barbeque.”
And then I see another featured print…’Black-headed Gull’
And realise that a human finger
Has typed ‘a’ instead of ‘r’.
In a single instant, gone is the hearing Gabril
Brushed from existence
By a typo.
Christine
28 Sunday Apr 2013
Posted in Ed, Seen lately
If you’re an aficionado of murder mysteries and have an hour to spare in London, you might like to pop into the British Library in St Pancras. Their exhibition ‘Murder in the Library: An A-Z of Crime Fiction’ takes you alphabetically through some of the greats of the genre. First editions galore, snippets of info possibly new to you (did you know Martina Navratilova wrote in the genre?), Fr Ronald Knox’s Ten Rules of Detective Fiction, and much more. There’s a Conan Doyle manuscript of a Sherlock Holmes story that’s as easy to read as print (and he was a doctor …). Enjoy. It’s free, and is on until 12 May. Find out more at http://www.bl.uk/whatson/exhibitions/murder/index.html.
Ed
27 Saturday Apr 2013
Posted in Competitions, Maggie
Members of the WI are invited to submit a fictional short story of up to 1000 words on the theme of ‘Secrets’ to international publisher Simon & Schuster. The winner will be chosen by novelist and creative writing tutor Rachel Hore and will have their story published by Simon & Schuster as an ebook, with a designed jacket. It will be sold through all the usual book channels.
Send your story in the body of an email (no attachments) to WIShortStory@simon &schuster.co.uk by 30 June 2013. Include word count, name, address and full contact details. Original material only.
Maggie Davies
26 Friday Apr 2013
The Master of the Small Point – the pedantic mother in Sarah Frances’ novel So Perfect on the Surface – shares one of her favourite small points …
Once you’ve discovered there are quite a few words in British English with alternative spellings (e.g. focused/focussed, adviser/advisor, judgement/judgment) you may think words like ‘practice’ and ‘licence’ – which you often see written as ‘practise’ and ‘license’ – also have interchangeable spellings. But that would be wrong (unless the pleasure of belonging to a large, like-minded crowd outweighs this kind of worry). There’s a simple underlying rule that governs the different spellings. If these words are used as nouns, e.g. ‘he has a licence to kill’ or ‘he has a GP practice’, the second ‘c’ remains a ‘c’. If they are used as verbs, the second ‘c’ becomes an ‘s’, e.g. ‘you must license your car’; ‘I must practise the piano’. If you can’t remember which way round the difference is, just think of ‘advice’ (noun) and ‘advise’ (verb) where you can hear the difference. (Or you could move to the US where both noun and verb of ‘practice’ are spelt ‘practice’, and both noun and verb of ‘licence’ are spelt ‘license’ – but then you’d have to remember which way round these work and you won’t get any help from ‘advise’ and ‘advice’!)
Sarah
25 Thursday Apr 2013
Tags
A shock to see it, sleeves creased and sagged to his shape
as if he would return to wear it.
Forgotten in the downstairs cupboard I suppose
When I sorted his stuff for the charity shop.
I took to wearing it out of doors; it smelled of him and the
pockets were deep.
Thrusting fingers into their depths, I probed in corners
picking up flecks of fluff and dust from the past
that clung to my nails for dear life.
It was weeks before I found the inside pocket and the letter
– he wouldn’t think I’d poke in there –
saying “dearest”, “beloved” and
“you are my life”.
No one to care now that what cannot
be borne is fingering these
fragments of a life
torn apart.
On the corner of the page her kisses shrivel
strands of scorched yarn sizzle and
in the flames of the pyre
my rage burns.
Lost to us both now
the letter
the coat
him.
– Jane Dobson
Published in The Times, February 2010
18 Thursday Apr 2013
Posted in Books, Read Lately
“[Orlando] soon perceived, however, that the battles which Sir Miles and the rest [his ancestors] had waged against armed knights to win a kingdom, were not half so arduous as this which he now undertook to win immortality against the English language. Anyone moderately familiar with the rigours of composition will not need to be told the story in detail|; how he wrote and it seemed good; read and it seemed vile; corrected and tore up; cut out; put in; was in ecstasy; in despair; had his good nights and bad mornings; snatched at ideas and lost them; saw his book plain before him and it vanished; acted his people’s parts as he ate; mouthed them as he walked; now cried; now laughed; vacillated between this style and that; now preferred the heroic and pompous; next the plain and simple; now the vales of Tempe; then the fields of Kent or Cornwall; and could not decide whether he was the divinest genius or the greatest fool in the world.” Virginia Woolf, Orlando
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