Looking back with a heavy heart…

I was saddened to learn that last month Zimbell House Publishing closed.  I have fond memories of writing for their varied anthologies, and always will.  When I first started thinking about submitting my work back in 2015, Zimbell House was one of the first venues I tried. That first story was The Water Wytch, and was included in the anthology, Elemental Foundations. Between 2015 and 2017, I had stories in 11 of their beautiful anthologies:

• The Water Wytch in Elemental Foundations
• The Spirit Man in Pagan
• A Teller of Fortunes in Travelers
• The Wood-Shades of Winter in On A Dark and Snowy Night
• Returning Home in Where Cowboys Roam
• The Apothecary’s Tale in The Key
• The Sultan’s Daughter in Veil of Secrets
• Jousting for Murder in Tournament Games
• Fairy Magic in The Lost Door
• Night’s Magic in Nocturnal Natures
• A Family Reunion in Children of Zeus

They were generous with rewarding their writers with paperback copies of the books they had stories in – something which is quite rare. It was always a fantastic day when these beautiful books arrived in the post.

Having my stories included in these anthologies boosted my confidence as a writer, and for that I will always be grateful. I wish them all the best for the future.

Rowan and Oak – publication news

A couple of weeks ago, Iron Faerie Publishing released their latest anthology, Rowan and Oak, the second volume in their Hawthorn and Ash series, and I’ve a piece of flash fiction in it.  My thanks to Iron Faerie Publishing and Stacey Jaine McIntosh for including it.

My story, The Way Home, is a short fantasy tale of change and transition, between the seasons and circumstances, as one life is left behind in favour of a promise once given…

You can find the anthology, showcasing the writing of over 25 authors, on Amazon and Goodreads

Night Sky Full of Dreams – Publication News

I’m a little late in sharing this, but…Back in November I was honoured when the wonderful people at Fae Corps Inc included my short poem, Night Sky Full Of Dreams, in their anthology, Fae Dreams, along with so many other talented poets and writers. My thanks to Fae Corps Inc for their hard work on the anthology, and for the opportunity to have my poem appear in it.

The graphics they produced as part of the anthology marketing are stunning:

And the cover is so beautiful:

Here’s the list of talented creatives:

You can find Fae Dreams on Amazon 

Whispers and Dares – Publication News

Back at Halloween, Fantasia Divinity released a new seasonal-themed anthology, Halloween Frights and Autumn Delights. I have two drabbles (Whispers of Autumn and A Halloween Dare) in this collection, one in each chapter.

Here’s the summary for anthology from Amazon:

Halloween is here! It’s time to bring out the ghosts and goblins, the spooks and sweets. What can go wrong on the spookiest night of the year?

But among the frights of Halloween is the beauty of the autumn season. It’s time for the harvest, for giving thanks and blessings.

Celebrate the frights and delights of the season with this anthology filled with 131 drabbles, featuring over 40 authors!

My thanks to Madeline L. Stout for including both my drabbles.

You can find the anthology here.

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…