Playing with Murder – Publication News

Back in September, my short story, Playing with Murder was published in Unveiled Secrets, a Fantasia Divinity anthology, and I forgot to share the news…

Here’s the summary for Playing with Murder:

When Theo Reed returns to his room in Drake’s Lodging House after a short work trip out of town, it’s to a nasty surprise: a dead body lying on the floor.  He doesn’t know the victim, but the police believe they know the murderer.  Him.  That’s problem number one.

Problem number two: Theo Reed is no angel.  He’s no murderer either, but he’s going to have convince a lot of people of that.  What ensues is a chase across the city, the outcome of which has deadly consequences for him, should he fail.

Playing with Murder is an urban low fantasy mystery, set in another world not that dissimilar to Victorian England.

Here’s the summary from the anthology as a whole from Amazon:

Detective stories are popular the world over, fueling people’s desires to know “whodunit.” Combine that with the magic and myths of fantasy and you’ve entered a whole new world of mystery and intrigue! Join us on this adventure filled with 11 detective fantasy stories that will strike your imagination!

With stories by J.W. Grace, Gerry Griffiths, Sandy Underman, Sammi Cox, DM Burdett, Deeanna West, Zoey Xolton, Danielle Davis, Lionel Ray Green, Charlotte Platt, and Rebecca Buchanan

My thanks to Fantasia Divinity for selecting it for the anthology, and to M.E. Rodman for editing.

Find it on Amazon and Goodreads

A Samhain Summoning – Publication News

One of my stories, A Samhain Summoning, was published in an anthology on Halloween…very fitting for a collection of stories inspired by witches and magic.

The anthology is “Hexed”, from Iron Faerie Publishing.  My thanks to the Stacey Jaine McIntosh for including my story. Here’s the book description:

Magic, mayhem and mystery.

Cloaked in magic and surrounded by darkness witches have captured our imagination for millennia and fascinate us more than ever today.

From the wise old crone, witches can be healers and protectors, keepers of the old ways or possessed with supernatural abilities, used for good or evil.

Enter the world of witches – whatever the guise – and enjoy these wicked and wonderful short tales sure to delight!

You can find out more about the anthology, or get yourself a copy, by heading over to Amazon.

Outcast and Other Words – the complete anthology

The Weekend Writing Prompt anthology, Outcast and Other Words, is finally complete!  Woohoo!

My apologies to all those involved for it taking so long, but the anthology is now full and finished, and even comes with “previous chapter” and “next chapter” links for ease of reading, as well as an author and chapter index to help with navigation.

I have added an information page to this blog about the anthology, here.  On this page you will also find participation badges should those who contributed work wish to use them.

Should anyone wish to read the anthology – and I recommend you do as there is some amazing poetry and prose to be found there – you can do so by following this link:

https://outcastanthology.wordpress.com

Thank you to everyone who’s been involved with the anthology, either as a writer or a reader.  This has been an amazing project to oversee and I can’t say how proud I am of it and of you. (I’m trying not to gush here, honestly!)

Will we be doing another anthology next year?  It’s too early to tell, but I can say that if we do, I’ve learned a lot working on Outcast, so hopefully the process will be smoother and more efficient.  It also depends on you and whether there is still the demand for a Weekend Writing Prompt anthology volume 2.  Please let me know your thoughts, on both Outcast and the possible second anthology, at some point.

But for now, lets celebrate!

Outcast and Other Words

I’ve added the last of the submissions so far into our community web anthology (doesn’t that sound good!), and thought now would be a great time for an update.

The anthology, now titled, “Outcast and Other Words”, can be found here:

https://outcastanthology.wordpress.com/

As you can see, I designed a mock front cover, should anyone wish to use it.

If you follow the link to the anthology’s website, you will notice that it is still a work-in-progress, but please feel free to explore it 🙂  There is still plenty of beautiful content to peruse.

So far we have included the work of 11 amazing authors, hailing from all over the world, who’ve submitted 52 pieces of writing!  That’s just awesome!

However, if you head over to the chapter index, you will notice that some chapters are empty and awaiting submissions.

For those interested in submitting to the anthology, the deadline has been extended one final time to: 10 September 2018. This will be the final extension so if you want to be part of the anthology get your submissions in!

The number of submissions per author has been increased to ten, so if you’ve already joined in, but would like to submit some more work, please do so.  We especially require poetry or short fiction for the following Year 1 Prompts, though of course we will happily include work inspired by any of the prompts from the first year (index of Yr1 Prompts can be found here):

Click to be taken to the relevant week’s prompt

• #8 – Candour
• #10 – Mimic
• #11 – Guardian
• #12 – Indecision
• #19 – Abundance
• #21 – Day and Night
• #22 – Secret Doorways
• #23 – Taste
• #24 – Shadows
• #34 – Christmas
• #35 – End of Year
• #36 – Begin
• #40 – Afternoon Tea
• #44 – Fallen
• #45 – Spring
• #49 – Fortitude, Resolute & Epiphany

The submission guidelines can be found here.

My thanks to everyone who has joined in so far.  This is proving to be a fun and exciting project to work on, and I can’t wait for my inbox to fill up with more submissions – hint, hint 😉

Thanks for reading and enjoy the rest of your week 🙂

Weekend Writing Prompt Year 1 Anthology Update

First, let me apologise for disappearing off the face of the earth.  Things just seem to be so busy at the moment and finding the time to hang out on the blog is getting increasingly difficult.  Can someone tell me why there are only 24 hours in a day when I need at least 30?!

I’m about a month behind reading WWP responses, but I endeavour to catch up and read them all.  As I’ve said before, I might not get round to commenting on them all (though I’ll try), but know that if I like it, I read it and enjoyed it 🙂

So, let’s talk about the Weekend Writing Prompt Year 1 Anthology.

Thanks to everyone who has so far emailed over their contributions.  I will soon start going through the emails to see what we have and which prompts still have no responses.  I’ve extended the deadline over on the submission guidelines to 10 August 2018, though I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets one more final extension, probably the end of September but we will see how things go.  It might not be necessary.

All anthologies need titles, so I have come up with a name for this one.  “Outcast and Other Words” – What do you think? I also plan to design a few badges should anyone wish to use them on their blogs / social media.

I’ve secured the wordpress site, but done very little to it at the moment.  When there’s something to see over there I’ll post the link.  The aim is to have the site read like an online book, with each of the word prompts from Year 1 serving as the chapter titles…

Well, there it is.  I know things are moving slowly at the moment, for which I apologise, but, when it all comes together, I’ll know it will be great.

Thanks everyone for joining in.  Have a great weekend!

Weekend Writing Prompt Anthology – the submission guidelines!

 

A random photo…

Two weeks ago I asked via this post whether anyone would be interested in celebrating a whole year of Weekend Writing Prompts by putting together an anthology.  From the response I think we can say that there is plenty of interest! Yay!  Thanks to everyone who responded.  I think this is going to be really exciting! 🙂

I think we know enough from that original post to get the submissions rolling right away, but there are some details that will need to be worked out over the coming weeks.  Here’s what we need to know now: the submission guidelines…

Weekend Writing Prompt Year 1 Anthology Submission Guidelines

• All submissions must be inspired by any of the first 52 Weekend Writing Prompts. An index with clickable links to each prompt can be found here.
• If you’ve not participated in the Weekend Writing Prompt before it doesn’t matter.  You can join in now.  Check out the Index for links to each prompt and then get writing!
• It’s your choice whether you send over your original responses to the prompt or write new ones.
• All submissions should be within the body of an email.  No attachments please!
• Please submit up to five ten of your favourite responses (either poetry, fiction, non-fiction or a combination of all three), each one inspired by a different prompt. Alongside each, please state which week it is from.  For example, WWP #5.  The maximum word count for each piece is 1000 words.
• You can submit anything you like: either responses to poetry or prose challenges or something else inspired by the prompts as long as each piece is below the maximum word limit.
• If you want a biography alongside your work, please include one in your email.  All submissions should include a link to your blog or website and the name you want your writing attributed to (real name, pseudonym, name of website, etc).
• Format is simple: easy to read font and left justified, with that which you want in italic or bold, in italic or bold.
• Unfortunately I won’t be able to pay writers for their submissions because this will be a free-to-read project and no-one will be making any money from it.
• Provisional deadline for submissions is 1^st July 2018.  Note: this is not a hard and fast deadline; late submissions will be accepted after this date.  (This might be extended; it would be great if we could have at least one piece of writing for each prompt so we might need to open a second round of submissions).  UPDATE: deadline now extended to 10 September 2018.  This will be the final extension so if you want to be part of the anthology get your submissions in!  If you have any questions, please, please, please get in touch!
• Submissions to be emailed to: deardreamingspirit@gmail.com

If you have any questions about this anthology, please feel free to ask.  Post a comment below or send me an email at the address above and I will hopefully be able to answer it.

I’ll also post these guidelines over on the Dreaming Spirit site.

With the guidelines set out, the next question, is where to publish the anthology.  As many of you who have been following my blog for a while will now, I usually use Wattpad for this type of project.  However, another idea is to create a magazine-style wordpress site.  Both are great in terms of being interactive (like / vote buttons, comment sections, adding in of media – pictures / photos / videos) etc.  So my next question to you guys is this: do you have a preference?  If you could pick only the one, which one would you chose for the anthology: Wattpad or WordPress?  Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

Another random photo…

Weekend Writing Prompt – Year 1 Celebration and What’s New for Year 2

Just a random photo…

So, if you caught yesterday’s post or the most recent Weekend Writing Prompt, you will have seen that this little writing challenge has now been going for a full year!  Yay!  Before I get to explaining how Year 2 of the prompts are going to differ from Year 1, I wanted to spend a few minutes celebrating all the amazing responses to the first 52 word and picture prompts…

Year 1 Celebration

Then I had an idea…(It’s even possible someone else suggested it to me, but I can’t remember…) what if we put together an e-anthology of some of the pieces of flash fiction and poetry written for the prompts.  Currently, this is only in the brainstorming stage, but I think the process would work something like this:

• I set a deadline, probably 6-8 weeks from now for submissions to be emailed over to me
• submissions would consist of no more than 5 pieces of fiction, poetry, or combination of both
• submissions would only be considered for responses to any of the 52 weekend writing prompts from the first year, and only one response per prompt per submitter
• it would be up to you whether you send over your original responses to the prompt or write new ones
• if you haven’t participated in the Weekend Writing Prompt before, it wouldn’t matter.  You could pick up to five prompts (all Weekend Writing Prompts can be found here) and write a response.
• responses written to the weekly poetry and prose challenges as well as free write responses would be suitable for submission
• I would imagine most, if not all, submitted pieces would be accepted and included in the anthology, but of course, until all the submissions were in and I could see what we had, I wouldn’t be able to guarantee it.  Not only do we want to celebrate the first year of the Weekend Writing Prompt but also make the anthology a good read.  If we end up with a dozen responses to the same prompt and nothing else, we might need to rethink this project!
• And finally…Unfortunately I wouldn’t be able to offer payment for submissions as no-one would be making any money from it.

So there are my thoughts.  I thought it would be best to put the idea out there before declaring this a “thing” and then have to look on as nothing happens 😀  I know everyone is busy and many of you have just finished a very intense month of writing; I’m in the same boat.   The Weekend Writing Prompt feels like a community, and this would be a community project, so I really do need your input.  Please let me know in the comments below whether you would be interested in joining in with this e-anthology.  If we get enough interested writers and poets, I’ll then put together a set of submission guidelines etc.

Another random photo…

What’s New for Year 2

In Year 1 we had a word prompt and photo prompt, with the optional poetry and prose challenges all contained within each weekend’s prompt post.

In Year 2 there will be a single word prompt, with the optional challenge of writing a poem or piece of short fiction in an exact number words (the number will change each week).  Though the format and style of response you write will be your choice, I hope having an exact number of words to stick to will stretch your creativity and fire up your imagination.

There it is.  I hope to see you all over the weekend, checking out the first of the new style prompts.  And don’t forget to comment below if you have any thoughts / suggestions for the e-anthology idea.

Thanks for reading and take care 🙂

The Magical Items that the Postman Brings…and a few updates

Wow…I can’t believe it’s February already.  Where has the start of 2018 gone?  It has been ages since I posted anything on here that wasn’t the Weekend Writing Prompt, and there were a few weekends where I thought even that might not happen 😯 .

So what have I been up to? – A Few Updates

Well, my birthday’s been and gone, making me a year older since I last posted a non-prompt related post. For presents, I got a number of beautiful things any scribbler would treasure: notebooks, pens and journal materials, as well as a few other things, including a copy of Francis Pryor’s Britain AD and the DVD box set of The Bridge season one.

In what little free time I’ve managed to scrounge together so far this year, I’ve been writing: poetry, short stories, and even my novel WIP has had some time and energy spent on it.  It feels like it’s been a slow start to the year (I remember complaining about the same thing last year!), but some progress is being made.  I’ve set myself a little personal challenge this year, which seems to be helping me make the most of my available time.  I’ve called it the “1000 words a day challenge”, where the aim is to be able to say by the end of 2018 that I have written, redrafted and edited 365,000 words.  This way, even if I don’t have time to write everyday, I can work towards the overall goal. So far, I’m on target!  Yay!

I’ve also been trying to catch up on reading some of the responses to the Weekend Writing Prompt.  I spent half of yesterday enjoying some amazing poetry and prose, from old and new participants alike.  It’s wonderful to see so many takes and interpretations of the same prompts.  You are all so very talented 🙂

Now for the second part of the post…The Magical Items that the Postman Brings

Just before Christmas, my copies of One Turn of The Wheel arrived in the post.  I still can’t believe that there is a book out there with my name on it.  I have received some lovely comments about this collection of tiny tales, and I can’t tell you how much they warm my heart and make me smile!

If you would like to read The Goblin Dance in its entirety, you can do so by heading over to the publisher’s website.  If you would like to order a copy of One Turn of The Wheel, it is available to buy as a paperback through Lulu.

At the beginning of January, my contributor’s copy of Children of Zeus arrived, containing my short story, A Family Reunion (which you can read more about, here):

And lastly, some very surprising news…during the last half of 2017, I wanted to challenge myself to send out more of poetry for publication.  For some reason, I find it harder to submit poems than I do short stories.  And so I did just that.  One of the venues I chose was Paper Swans Press, who were holding open submissions for a pocket poetry pamphlet on the theme of love.  I didn’t have any expectations of being included in the pamphlet; they made it clear that it was going to be a very small publication.  You can imagine my surprise when months later I received an email that says my poem was one of twelve that was chosen out of a couple of hundred to be selected for publication.

You can learn more about The Pocket Poetry Book of Love, including how to order one, on the publishers website.

My contributor copy of the pamphlet arrived in the post this week, and it’s just lovely!

“A Family Reunion” and an update…

A Family Reunion:

My short story, A Family Reunion, has been included in the latest Zimbell House Publishing anthology, Children of Zeus: A Collection of Mythic Tales.  The story focuses on one of Zeus’ less famous children, Pandea, a moon goddess who (for the purposes of this story) decided to keep contact with her immortal family to a minimum, choosing instead to make her home alongside mortals.  However, Zeus doesn’t like to be ignored by his children…

I had fun writing this story.  I love Greek mythology and I enjoyed seeing how many Greek gods, goddesses and heroes I could mention.  Zimbell House has a few more Greek mythology-inspired anthologies coming up and it would be fun to try and write something for another one if I can.

You can learn more about this anthology by checking it out on the publisher’s website or heading over to Goodreads.

The update:

Having spent most of the week in bed with the flu, I was overwhelmed to see such lovely comments left for me regarding the publication of One Turn of The Wheel, when I did finally feel well enough to switch the computer on.  So, I just wanted to let everyone know, I’ve not been ignoring you!

“Softly, Softly” – poem publication

My poem, “Softly, Softly”, has been published in the Peeking Cat Anthology 2017!  My thanks go to the editor, Sam Rose, for including it.

You can learn more about the anthology over on the Peeking Cat Poetry website.

A note for poets and writers: Peeking Cat Poetry are open all year round to poetry and flash fiction submissions for the monthly, Peeking Cat Poetry Magazine.