Teaser

Great teaser for my genealogy book Trace your Roots, courtesy of Author Shout.

Writelinkers Christmas Magazine 2012

Full of seasonal goodies, the fourth Writelinkers Christmas Magazine is available to download free of charge.

The festive stories, puzzles, poems, nostalgia, photos and recipes are the work of Writelink members, a very friendly community of writers.




My co-eds, as usual, were David Robinson and Laurie Clayton. David is the author of the popular Sanford 3rd Age Mysteries and Laurie is a talented poet and published short story writer. 

Many thanks to all the Writelink members who submitted their work and allowed us to publish it.

Open publication - Free publishing - More christmas
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Fifteen Shades for Grey

Fifteen Shades for Grey...

Less of the hot and steamy, more of the warm and furry. Fifteen heart-warming stories and poems to make the reader smile and to help a dog called Grey. JJ Marsh explains what happened.

Who’s Grey?

Grey is a mastiff cross Rhodesian Ridgeback. He and his two brothers arrived at Wooffles Animal Shelter in February. While the others quickly found homes, Grey wasn’t wanted. He has an ear condition which will require an expensive operation and considerable aftercare.

Volunteers held car boot sales, raffles and created a dedicated Facebook page; the local hairdresser raised donations from her clients and friends of the shelter gave what they could. Still, the fund was short. My sister Julie – one of the frustrated volunteers – called and asked for ideas.

How did a phone call result in a book?

I live in Switzerland; Grey is in Wales. What could I do? Here are a few things I am good at: shouting, drinking wine, fire-eating, writing and organising. The latter two gave me an idea.

I know some extremely talented writers, one of whom is allowing me house room today. (Thank you, Maureen.) I also observe, in blinking, stunned disbelief, the extraordinary success of a certain trilogy of ‘Mommy Porn’. And thirdly, I’ve learned a little about independent publishing.

As Hannibal of The A-Team says, “I love it when a plan comes together”.

What next?

Saturday evening, June 23: I post to all my writerly contacts. Send me a story. Nothing kinky, just heart-warming and related to creatures, charity or kindness. It’s to help Grey.

Sunday 24: Stories and poems arrive from France, Australia, Scotland, Whitby and the Isle of Wight. Julie and I write a foreword about Grey and chew over titles: Fifteen Tails for Grey (too naff). Fifteen Shades too Grey (meaningless). Fifteen Tales for Grey (better).

Monday 25: Superwoman Jane Dixon-Smith offers to typeset the book and design a cover. We decide on an e-book purely for speed. Grey’s ears aren’t getting any better while we research print-on-demand.

Tuesday 26: We realise the volunteers help all kinds of animals, not for profit, but because no one else will. Rewrite foreword to encompass all the rescued and vulnerable creatures at the shelter.

Wednesday 27: Wonderwoman Gillian Hamer, who has a high-pressure day job and is currently promoting her first novel, The Charter, manages to create an entire short story from scratch, exclusively for Grey.

Thursday 28: Conversation with an old/odd friend results in a discovery. A certain person has been hiding his writing talents under a bushel. Two more tales! Julie takes a grey tie to the shelter and gets some gorgeous shots of the boy himself.

Friday 29: One more story makes fifteen. Work begins on compilation via pink and blue Post-its with Swan Lake in the background (thematically appropriate). Jane astutely suggests we change the title to Fifteen Shades for Grey. The casual browser, stumbling over our book, may choose to warm the cockles rather than warming ... anything else.

Saturday 30: Jane sends designs. Julie and I love them all but the cutest wins. My idea for a grey and black version makes it look like a misery memoir and it’s the absolute opposite. So scrap that. Check bios with writers and proof one more time. Curse those en-dashes!

Sunday 1 July: Ready! And my computer goes down with a virus. Much stamping, gnashing and whining later, Fifteen Shades for Grey is published on Amazon.

And now?

People are buying the book, not just in Britain, but Germany, France, the US and Spain. One week. That’s all it took for eleven writers, one designer and an army of supporters to make Fifteen Shades for Grey a success. Tails are wagging, cats are purring, chickens are clucking, ponies are whinnying and Grey is getting papped so often, he’s considering a different pair of shades.

Thanks to JD Lewis, JD Smith, Edward Marnier, JW Hicks, Barbara Scott Emmett, Perry Iles, Liza Perrat, Lorraine Mace, Chris Curran, Lee Williams and Gillian Hamer for their generous donations; and Maureen Vincent-Northam for giving me a chance to spread the word.

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WRITELINKERS Christmas Magazine 2011

Packed with Yuletide fun and frolics, this will be the third year running I've been involved as a co-editor of this publication.

The content - stories, poems, nostalgia, recipes - is the work of Writelink members, a community of writers at every stage along the writers' path. And it's free for everyone to read!

My co-eds this year were David Robinson and Laurie Clayton - talented writers, both. At times it was hard work getting it all together, but, as always, it was huge fun. Thanks guys. And many thanks to all the Writelink members who entrusted us with their work.

Open publication - Free publishing - More articles

Or if you prefer, you can download it as a pdf by clicking HERE.

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Foreign Flavours: A New Anthology from Writers Abroad

Online writing group Writers Abroad are proud to announce the publication of a new anthology of short stories and non-fiction articles, entitled Foreign Flavours.

The anthology takes as its theme food, drink and recipes from around the world. It is a tantalizing collection of fiction and non-fiction, full of spice and flavour and sprinkled with mouth-watering recipes. The wide-ranging, sometimes bittersweet contributions show how adaptable an ex-pat has to be to leave familiar dishes behind and venture into the culinary unknown.


This is the second anthology published by Writers Abroad. All the contributors are, or have been, ex-pats living in places around the globe. Alexander McCall Smith*, acclaimed author of The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Series who himself was born abroad, has written the foreword.

Following a call for submissions, 64 contributions were selected for the anthology. Since Writers Abroad is a virtual writers’ group, all the work to produce Foreign Flavours was done online.

All proceeds from the sale of this book will go to The Book Bus, a charity whose aim is to bring literacy and the joy of reading to children in the developing world. 

Writers Abroad is an online writing group, founded in 2009. It provides a forum for ex-pat writers to exchange ideas, views and news on writing and to offer support and constructive feedback on each other’s work. Membership numbers are limited but ex-pat writers can apply to join if they are able to support the group’s initiatives and aims. 

Foreign Flavours contains 64 contributions. Thirty-four are non-fiction articles and 30 are short stories. The anthology also includes 33 delicious and appetising recipes. Writers Abroad members supplied 24 of the contributions; the remaining 40 were selected from 96 external contributions.

Contributors live in and have written about the following places: Albania, Australia, Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Corsica, Cyprus, England, Fiji, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Korea, Malawi, Mallorca, Morocco, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, Uruguay, USA, Wales.

*Alexander McCall Smith is one of the world’s most popular and prolific authors. He was born in the former Rhodesia and was a Professor of Medical Law for many years. His No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series has sold over 20 million copies. His various bestselling series of books are available in more than 40 languages. He has received numerous awards for his writing and now lives in Edinburgh. 

The Book Bus is a registered charity that aims to improve child literacy rates in Africa and South America by providing children with books and the inspiration to read them. Find out more on their website.
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Charity Anthology: 'Yesterday'

The wonderful stories and poems in this charity anthology were selected from the entries to the first Annual Short Story and Poetry Competition (2010). The contest was run by The Pages Magazine and the theme was 'Yesterday'.

I'm over the moon that my short story Frozen in Time is included.

All proceeds will be going to Ty Hafan Children's Hospice, Wales so a fantastic cause.

The anthology - a perfect-bound paperback - costs just £2.50 and is available HERE
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Free Kindle for PC

 

UPDATE

Since writing this, I have a 'real' Kindle and, although I still love paper books, it's packed with e-books I've downloaded! But, for anyone yet to buy one (or have one bought for you as in my case) the Kindle for PC is still worth having.




I don’t own a Kindle. A ‘proper’ Kindle, that is. You know, the one that would have set me back around 100 quid. I’m not a gadget person. I’ve never felt the urge to buy the latest gismo that does everything bar make toast.

And I admit that given the choice I would much prefer a traditional book – a paper one. I write and I edit on a computer so for me screen-based text is work. But just recently I’ve felt I was missing out on some terrific reads simply because authors had published their work in the e-book format. Because of this, I decided to download the Kindle for PC and was very pleasantly surprised.

Probably my biggest, and most pleasant surprise, was the fact that it was FREE. It took moments to download and now sits happily on my desktop. It even came with three free classics.

I’m sure the info below will be familiar to anyone who has a ‘proper’ Kindle. It would be interesting to hear how the free version compares to the real thing (portability aside!)

Some of the free Kindle for PC features:

• The home page or ‘Library’ displays your book collection and this can be sorted by title, author, book length, and most recently viewed.

• When reading, the font size is adjustable and there’s an option which allows you to choose the amount of words you want displayed per line.

• Something else I particularly like is the facility to read two pages side by side so that it resembles a ‘real’ book. If you prefer, you can choose to view a single page at a time and maximise to fill your entire screen.

• There’s a choice of background colours – white, sepia and black (with white text) and the screen brightness option allows you to take it down through various shades of grey which also makes for less eye strain.

• A neat feature this: double-click on any word in the text and you’re presented with an ‘info window’ giving you the definition of that word. How cool is that?

• The bookmark is useful; click on this so that when you return there’s no need to go through the whole thing to find where you left off.

• If you want to make notes click ‘Highlight and Notes’ and they can be added at any point in the text. This could be especially handy when reading a non-fiction reference book.

• Use the ‘Go To’ feature to find a previously marked spot within the book – this is done by entering a location number.

• And lastly, you can download a reasonable sample of a book before you buy it.

So all-in-all I found the Kindle for PC to be a tidy bit of kit and very easy to use. And it’ll certainly encourage me to buy more books.

Downloadable from any Kindle book page.
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Tracy's Hot Mail by T. A. Belshaw

Tracy has a new office job, but she’s not about to allow that minor annoyance to interfere with important stuff like emailing her best friend, Emma. And there’s plenty to gossip about. For a start there’re her three bosses: Mr Tugger – who’s forever playing with something in his pocket, Mr Winkle – a happy soul with a lisp and a funny walk, and the serial backside-slapper, Mr Blunt.

Others at the sharp end of Tracy’s keyboard are Olivia – the office tart, Ms Broadbeam, Spotty Irene and Tommy Tightpecs the IT man. People outside the work environment aren’t safe from the Tracy treatment either as she keeps Emma up-to-date on the scandal involving Petrol Pauline from the garage and Mike the Mechanic.

And Tracy’s personal life fairs no better. Through her emails we hear all about the boyfriend – more preoccupied with girls online than with her, her benefit-cheat father, and the extremely creepy driving instructor, Mr Pranger.

Written by T. A. Belshaw, who’s found the perfect voice for this character, there was something to make me laugh out loud in every chapter of Tracy’s Hot Mail. This is a recommended read for any time you need cheering up or for when you’re in the mood for a right good goss.

Available in e-book form from:

Amazon UK

Amazon US

Smashwords

Don't have a Kindle? Try a free one for your PC - read this
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COLDMOOR

Coldmoor by David Robinson is the exciting first book in a series that sees the beginnings of the battle with the evil Flix. Flix is a zombiemaster who has chosen to remain on the Spirit Plane for 900 years during which time he's been planning his return to life to fulfill his greatest ambition: immortality defended by a massed army of the undead.

It's February 1st, 2540, and in the remote research laboratory at Coldmoor Castle, Dr Anders Magnusson and his team have tapped into stasis energy, the very essence of space and time. But amidst the celebrations, something evil takes place. Flix has been waiting for the breakthrough and now that it's here, he takes the opportunity.

After killing a young soldier, Flix takes over his body and wreaks havoc on this isolated community of scientists and security personnel. Nothing can stop him ... nothing, that is, but Stasis Center Special Agents Mia Nellis and Nick Holt.

Sent back through time from the year 3010, Agents Nellis and Holt must meet Flix head on, stop him killing and controlling the bodies of others, and then imprison him in a specially designed energy cell that will seal him away for eternity.

But in doing so, Mia and Nick must exercise due caution and ensure that they do not change history ... or they may cease to exist.


What I really enjoyed about Coldmoor was the flashbacks to the 17th century where Flix originally encounters Mia and Nick (called Maria and Nicholas back then) and how this effected their current stance. The plot is complex without being confusing so top marks to David Robinson for that.

Coldmoor is sold in ebook form:

Smashwords currently at $1.14

If you have a Kindle:

Amazon.uk at just 70p so has to be the bargain of the year!

Amazon.com

Don't have a Kindle? Get a free one for your PC - read this

The Stasis Center now has community page on Facebook too - do join up!
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The 50 Best Short Stories of All Time

A wonderful resource, OnlineClassics.org has just published The 50 Best Short Stories of All Time.

Each of the 50 shorts is categorised: Sad and Shocking Tales, Collections, Pop Culture Classics, Well-Known Authors, Modern Writers, and Twist Endings. Links take you to the stories, which are free to read online, or to more information about them and their authors.

Authors whose stories you can access include the likes of: D.H. Lawrence, Mark Twain, Washington Irving, Ray Bradbury, Leo Tolstoy, Edgar Allan Poe, Anton Chekhov, Oscar Wilde, Roald Dahl and W. W. Jacobs (the author of The Monkey's Paw, one of my all-time favourite short stories).

Definitely worth spending some time on this site.
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Diamonds and Pearls

A wonderful collection of short stories, Diamonds and Pearls features many of the UK's best known magazine writers. We've all read them.

These popular women writers, including Sophie King, Jane Wenham-Jones, Teresa Ashby, Sue Moorcroft and Della Galton, have joined together to support the awareness and treatment of breast cancer in the way they know best – the short story.

Diamonds and Pearls has been compiled by author Elaine Everest as a way of celebrating the 30th anniversary of her survival from breast cancer.

Published by Accent Press, this book is part of a 3 for 2 deal - what a bargain!

A donation from the sale of each book will go to the Against Breast Cancer charity.
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100 Stories for Queensland

100 Stories for Queensland is a charity anthology looking for short stories of 500 – 1,000 words. All profits raised will be donated to the Queensland Premier’s Flood Relief Appeal to aid victims of the recent devastating flooding in Queensland, Australia.

And just like with 100 Stories for Haiti and 50 Stories for Pakistan, the organisers, readers, editors and designers working behind the scenes on this anthology are all volunteers.

The 100 Stories for Queensland project is headed by Brisbane resident, writer and co-owner of eMergent Publishing, Jodi Cleghorn, and UK author, Trevor Belshaw. The management team is made up of David W Robinson, Nick Daws and myself – each of us having worked on the Haiti and Pakistan anthologies. We are joined by around thirty wonderful readers and editors, all willing to give their time to this great cause.

But we still NEED your stories! Any genre and for any age group will be considered and can be submitted electronically at Submishmash.

The deadline for submissions is Friday, 28 January 2011. The book is due for release late February/early March.

Be part of it - and join us on Facebook too!
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Winners and Losers!

I’ve just made my annual manifestation in the February addition of Writing Magazine. It’s kind of ironic that the yearly claim to fame this time around should concern my lack of it.

Lorraine Mace, my writing buddy and co-author of The Writer’s ABC Checklist, writes a fab humour column for WM, Notes from the Margin. This month it’s all about writers who’ve been on the receiving end of put-downs from their peers – which is where I came in.



The good news is, if you’re a writer and have a funny, cruel or daft put-down story, Lorraine asks that you email it to her. Her favourites will make an appearance in a future Notes from the Margin column and the author of the best one will receive a copy of The Writer’s ABC Checklist.

Being a loser isn’t all bad!
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Voices

The latest ebook by David Robinson is a terrific read.

College lecturer Chris Deacon survives an attack, only to find his life plagued by demons and voices muttering in his head. To rid himself of them he follows a trail into the frightening world of a top secret military experiment from the Cold War, its malign progeny, a new breed of beings, still working for their freedom and their desire to dominate the world.

A truly gripping story that stayed with me long after I reached the end.

Available from Smashwords.

For Kindle

Don't own a Kindle? Try a free one for your PC - read this

Read a 24-page sample here.
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50 Stories hits Writers' News

Something that brightened my morning - my story about the anthology, 50 Stories for Pakistan is in the January issue of Writers' News (page 28).

The people of Pakistan still need our support. Please buy a copy, you'll not only be helping them, but you get a rollicking good read too (including a story by moi).



Buy the print version from Blurb.

Or the ebook version from Smashwords.
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Writelinkers is here!

Have had such fun editing this year's Christmas magazine with fellow eds, David Robinson and Trevor Belshaw. Writelinkers is the free-to-read e-zine with content written by members of Writelink, a great community of writers.

Jam-packed with festive delights, the 2010 issue includes flash fiction, nostalgic articles, humorous poetry, interviews and jokes.

Read it for free HERE
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Shambelurkling and Other Stories

Comprising of work written by freelance writers, including a poem and story written by yours truly, Shambelurkling and Other Stories is a great read for everyone (but especially for 8-12 years olds!) and aims to raise funds for the National Autistic Society. Each book sold, whether download or paperback, earns £1.06 in royalties for the National Autism Society.



Only £3.99 for the paperback or £1.99 for download.
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Fringe Mag reviews ABC

Another good review for The Writer's ABC Checklist, this time from The Fringe, an online and pdf magazine, publishing flash fiction, short stories, artwork, movie, music, game and book reviews.

Among the reviewer's comments: 'The authors give many handy examples of the topics outlined, such as Cover Letters, Manuscript presentation and Title Pages. The extensive range of topics are also invaluable to the new writer, with such information as, Agents, eBooks, Editors and Layout.'

Read the full review here.
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Special delivery

There are few better moments than when you actually hold a book that you've contributed to. My copies of 50 Stories for Pakistan arrived this morning and they look fab.

Naturally, I checked my own story, A Little Sparkly Something, just to make sure it hadn't been axed pre-publication. It hadn't. :)

Please buy a copy, or three, of this book. Proceeds go to the Red Cross Pakistan Flood Appeal.
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50 Stories for Pakistan

Greg McQueen, the man behind the anthology, 100 Stories for Haiti, has done it again. On 5th September, after seeing pictures of flood victims displaced from their homes, Greg wrote a message on his Facebook wall.

‘Getting that, "Do something!" feeling again. Thinking of doing a book for Pakistan. I'll need some awesome short stories though... With me?’

The call was for 50 flash fiction stories of no more than 500 words. Any subject or genre was permitted with the proviso that it didn’t contain any death, violence or destruction.

The deadline for stories was 19th September and in less than two days Greg had received over 50 stories with dozens arriving daily from all over the globe. Quality was high and a team of volunteer editors read and edited hundreds of submissions.

One of the pictures that moved Greg so much was that of a man wading through water with a young boy. This picture, with the kind permission of Getty Images, was later to become the book’s cover image.

Proceeds from the sale of 50 Stories for Pakistan will be donated to the Red Cross Pakistan Flood Appeal.

I am very proud to have helped with editing this wonderful book and to have my story included in the Editors' Contributions.

The book is available from Blurb Books.
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