Debbie Young's Blog, page 51

My Latest Appearances on BBC Radio Gloucestershire

New post about my two most recent appearances on our local BBC radio station, BBC Radio Gloucestershire

Showing off, moi? Yes, that’s not one but two radio appearances that I’ve notched up since coming back from holiday, both on our fab local BBC Radio station, based in the county town of Gloucester, 20 miles north of my home.

With Chris Baxter in the BBC Radio Gloucestershire studio (with thanks to David James for snapping us on my phone)

The Chris Baxter Show (27th August)

The first was on Wednesday 27th August on the Chris Baxter Show. I’d been on his Mid-week Mix before, which involves bringing in three local people to discuss the issues of the day. Having booked you in for a specific day, the producer, Dominic Cotter, emails you the night before the show with a list of the topics likely to be on the agenda, in case you want to read up on them beforehand. He reserves the right to throw in last-minute topics on the morning of the show, and if that happens he provides a quick brief while you’re in the waiting room before going on air.

This time I was in the company of two lovely chaps – David James, a former BBC and ITN cameraman now running www.cotswoldproductions.com, his own film-making business in Tetbury, and the Reverend Canon Paul Williams, Vicar of Tewkesbury. The advance topic list for our trio was very mixed:

the age that sex education should begin in schools
the same-sex kiss on the latest episode of Dr Who
the ice-bucket challenge and no-make-up selfie social media campaigns
our tributes to Richard Attenborough
the right age to start preparing for old age
regulations re e-cigarette smoking in public
nominations for pop stars to come out of retirement to do concerts

Mentally prepared for all of these (though with more enthusiasm for some than for others), I had to think fast to respond to a new topic on the morning: a retiring female judge’s pronouncement that if women drank less alcohol, there’d be a higher rate of rape convictions.  As the only woman on the panel, I was the first to be invited to speak – yikes! I think all of us were much relieved when this was followed by discussion of ice-buckets, Attenborough and pop-stars. (We all had more ideas of which singers should go into retirement, rather than the other way around.)

Skilfully hosted by the always pleasant and fast-thinking Chris Baxter, the hour whizzed by, and before long I was outside on the pavement chatting to David James about common interests, including our enthusiasm for writing – he’s planning to write a book inspired by his experience filming in Afghanistan.

Unlikely Mediterranean sky over BBC Radio Gloucestershire’s Gloucester studio this morning

The Anna King Show (8th September)

The second invitation came via Twitter, where I’d recently followed Anna King, when she was doing an afternoon slot. She was intrigued by my current 160-character Twitter profile, which begins “Cheerful indie author with butterfly mind”.

Being of that persuasion herself, she asked me to come in for an interview about what it’s like to have a butterfly mind, and so we enjoyed a ten-minute chat in the studio this morning, in the first of her new morning shows. (They’ve just juggled the schedule: Chris Baxter’s moved to the 3-5pm slot.)

We agreed on the optimist’s definition of a butterfly mind: a healthy, wide-ranging interest in the world about us, and a tendency to flit from one exciting opportunity to another, gathering nourishment along the way. She did rumble me, however, on my bad habit of ending up with too many plates spinning in the air at one time, over-promising and under-delivering.

The show’s researcher Gemma kindly agreed to email me an .mp3 file of the interview, which I’ll post up here as soon as it’s available. In the meantime, if you’re in the UK, you can listen to the interview any time during the next seven days via this BBC iplayer link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p025gxxd.

Flitting away from the studio after Anna King’s interview about butterfly minds

Emerged from its cocoon on National Flash Fiction Day 2014

FURTHER READING

To read the earlier post about my appearance on the Midweek Mix broadcast from the Cheltenham Festival, please click Walking on Air.
To read about my BBC Radio Gloucestershire interview about my memoir, Coming to Terms With Type 1 Diabetes , please click here: Diabetes on Air.
To order an ebook of my short story collection Quick Change, which features a beautiful butterfly on its cover, visit its page on Amazon here.
To sign up for my author mailing list (free short story with every issue!), click here.

 

Filed under: flash fiction, Quick Change, writing Tagged: Anna King, BBC Radio Gloucestershire, butterfly brain, butterfly mind, Chris Baxter, Flash Fiction

An Autumnal Story for a Misty Morning, via Wattpad

A seasonal short story from my new flash fiction collection Quick Change, and an introduction to Wattpad, the free reading site. 

Received wisdom in my village is that autumn starts the day after the Village Show is over. The morning mists this week bear witness to that myth’s veracity. So, feeling all autumnal, I thought I’d post up a link to a short story on an autumn theme (or fall, to my friends the other side of the pond). It’s taken from my new flash fiction collection, Quick Change, which is currently available as an ebook and due for launch as a paperback in November this autumn.

Autumn Leaves 

Click on the story title to read the story on a site called Wattpad. You can also find other free samples of my work there, not just from this book but from others too, both published (my diabetes book) and as yet unpublished (my memoir of moving from the city to the country).

All about Wattpad

If you haven’t already encountered Wattpad, it’s a social media site which helps authors share free samples of their work with readers by posting up their books in short bursts, either all at once or eking them out over a longer period. (The old adage “always leave them wanting more” doesn’t only apply to the performing arts, you know.) Some authors also use it to test out new stories and gain feedback, effectively acquiring beta readers (the book world’s equivalent to test drivers) prior to publication. And of course, they all hope that lots of readers will enjoy the free samples sufficiently to pay real money to buy their actual books, whether as ebooks or in print.

I joined Wattpad only recently, but I’m hoping it’ll help me reach new readers that otherwise wouldn’t know about me. The site is particularly popular with teenagers and new adults reading scifi and fantasy (not my core audience), but it’s becoming increasingly popular across other genres and with other audiences too.

More about Quick Change

Emerged from its cocoon on National Flash Fiction Day 2014

The ebook edition of Quick Change is now available to buy exclusively on Amazon for £1.99 or the equivalent in your local currency. That’s just 10p a story, folks! Click the book cover image on the right to go straight to its page on Amazon. I’ll be adding the ebook to other distribution platforms such as Kobo and Smashwords shortly, but if you’d like to read it now and don’t have an ereader, simply download the free Kindle app to the electronic device of your choice (phone, tablet, PC, etc).

In the run-up to the launch of the paperback, if you’d like a free review copy of the ebook of Quick Change, in return for an honest review on Amazon or Goodreads, please let me know. 

Like to join my mailing list? There’s a free, new, previously unpublished short story with every issue of my enewsletter, despatched once a month. Click here to sign up now for free. You can unsubscribe at any time. 

Filed under: autumn, flash fiction, seasons, writing Tagged: autumn leaves, autumn mist, Flash Fiction, National Flash Fiction Day, Quick Change, short stories, Wattpad

Training My Dragon (Dragon Voice Recognition Software, That Is)

How I’m training my Dragon

A post about my new toy: voice recognition software

As a multi-tasking, overloaded author who still hasn’t mastered the art of saying “no”, I’m constantly looking for ways to improve my productivity and time management.

Recently I was introduced by my author friend Orna Ross, founder and director of the Alliance of Independent Authors, to a new way of squeezing more words out of each day: using voice recognition software.

To my amusement and delight, the software she recommended is known as “Dragon”, manufactured by Nuance, and to increase its (already impressive) accuracy, you are encouraged to “train” it. The training consists of reading specific extracts of text to help it get used to your voice.

I’m still at the early stages of using Dragon (and also a free speech recognition programme that was included with my other new toy – how spoiled am I? – my tablet). But I have to say it’s great fun, and much more reliable than whatever they use to produce the subtitles on news programmes, which are always full of amusing errors. To be fair, part of the problem there may be that the software has to respond to an ever-changing variety of voices and accents, rather than acclimatizing to one.

Not Just for Authors

Voice recognition software is useful not only to authors, but to anyone who types a lot of text on computers – business letters, blog posts, emails, even social media updates. If you’d like to find out more about it, you may like to read the blog post I’ve just written in my capacity as Commissioning Editor for the Alliance of Independent Authors on their blog of self-publishing advice here: http://www.selfpublishingadvice.org/voice-recognition/

Rather pleasingly, when I was first starting to use Dragon, it interpreted the name “Orna Ross” as “Order Rocks” – and I’m hoping that now that I’ve mastered it, order will indeed rock, in my study, if not throughout the house.

Filed under: creativity, self-publishing, writing Tagged: ALLi, Alliance of Independent Authors, Dragon, Nuance, productivity, software, speech recognition, voice recognition

It’s Show Time! (Hawkesbury Horticultural Show, that is…)

This post was written for this month’s edition of the Hawkesbury Parish News, in anticipation of the Village Show at the end of this month. Looking back at the photos of our float last year, I am wishing hard that we’ll have such blue skies for this year’s show!

Our float for last year’s Show (I was the Chinese Ambassador, Gordon was the Scottish zookeeper)

I hadn’t lived in Hawkesbury Upton very long before I realised the importance of the annual Horticultural Show in the village calendar. Since I moved here in 1991, I haven’t missed a single Show, and I always arrange my summer holidays to make sure I’m back in time to prepare for it.

I’ve put plenty of entries into the Show over the years and won a handful of prizes in categories as diverse as crochet, hen’s eggs, jam, wine and – my favourite prize of all – the oddly-shaped vegetable (sadly no longer in the schedule).

I’ve been on many floats, from Youth Club’s Global Warming in the 1990s (Arctic scene at one end, tropical island at the other) and St Trinian’s, to more recently The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe with After-School Club, and Edinburgh Zoo’s Giant Pandas with my daughter and her friends last year.

It’s always exciting to win a prize, even third in a category in which there are only two other entries, but you don’t need to win prizes to enjoy the Village Show. The most satisfaction comes simply from feeling like you’re part of a huge, traditional act of community.

It’s also rewarding to serve on the Committee, which I did for 13 years. I’ll never forget seeing at one meeting an elderly judge demonstrate his set of brass shallot-measuring rings, as used by his father before him. The Hawkesbury Show is living history.

But the most unexpected buzz relating to the show struck me only recently, when, at my daughter’s 11th birthday party, I was chatting to her friends’ mums in our garden. One of them, relatively new to the village, was taking photos of the children’s antics.

“You ought to enter that into the Village Show,” I remarked, admiring a particularly good one.

“Spoken like a true Hawkesbury villager!” said another mum, whose family has been in Hawkesbury for generations.

23 years after moving here, I’ve finally arrived.

Happy Show Day, everyone!

The 2014 Show will take place on Saturday 30th August. For more information, visit its website: www.hawkesburyshow.org.

 

Filed under: daughter, family, husband, lifestyle, nostalgia, village life Tagged: English village, Hawkesbury Horticultural Show, Hawkesbury Upton, traditions, village life, village show

Inspired by Young Writers

A post celebrating the joy of young writers wrapped up in their stories

Inspiration for a three year old girl's fan fiction

One of the many highlights of the Homeric Writers’ Retreat, which I had the pleasure of attending earlier this month on the Greek island of Ithaca, was witnessing a young boy, aged about five, shyly but proudly approaching our group as we sat chatting by the hotel pool, to share with us the story that he’d written.

He’d dictated it to his mum, she’d written it down, and he’d subsequently provided the illustrations. He regaled us with his fan-fiction story about Angry Birds. His tale seemed as real to him as we were. Even Homer would have been impressed by his passion for his story. (Perhaps we should have asked for his autograph; in a couple of decades, we might be boasting that we’d “discovered” him.)

My Daughter’s Early Stories

On returning home, clearing out a dusty box of papers from beneath my desk, by chance I came across a trio of stories dictated by my daughter Laura before she started school. Reading them now at the ripe old age of 11, she finds them terribly funny, but I’m touched by how completely that young storyteller, like the boy in Ithaca, was immersed in her own world of make-believe. I’m reproducing them below for your entertainment.

Long may children continue to write with such obvious passion and pleasure, their imaginations and values undimmed by the abundance of distractions in our modern age.

The Family Choice

by Laura Young aged 4

There was a family and they lived happily together and that morning the postman came and the birds were singing and they went to the playpark before they had their breakfast and they loved to go on the slide and it was very lovely and they played and played and played. They really liked it at the playpark so they went on the swings and on the slide and on the roundabout and they were singing “halalalloo” and they were doing a show in the afternoon to their friends and they loved to go on the swings because they kept standing up on the swings and they didn’t fall down. They were always going on the slide and on the roundabout because they were so lovely and the postman came every day.

The Lovely Pony and the Horsey and the Unicorn

by Laura Young aged 4

There was a horsey.

There was a pony.

There was a unicorn.

The old lady looked after them.

The superlady was coming and the superman in case there was any trouble and there wasn’t any trouble.

The Tumbletots lady and the Tumbletots little girl came and played with them and tried to help at school with them.

Then the man which didn’t like the pony and the horsey and the unicorn came then the superlady and the superman came and got things off him then the naughty man liked them.

The End.

Milly Molly Mandy Goes Yukky

by Laura Young aged 3

Once upon a time a big frog came and ate Milly Molly Mandy all up and Billy Blunt and Little Friend Susan. They couldn’t go anywhere and had to stay in the frog’s tummy. Another frog came and ate other people all up. Another frog came and ate the boys and girls up. A cat came (Milly Molly Mandy’s cat) and ate all the frogs up and Milly Molly Mandy and Billy Blunt and Little Friend Susan. Some other people rescued them and they went home for tea.

(More feedback from the fabulous Homeric Writers’ Retreat to follow soon.)

Filed under: creativity, daughter, travel, writing Tagged: daughter, Homeric Writers' Retreat, storytelling, writing

Flummoxed by a Flute Exam

Wills Memorial Building – photo by Rob Brewer via Wikipedia (click photo for link)

A post about a curious incident after my daughter’s flute exam

Having long ago given in to the classic parenting trap of bribing one’s child through traumatic events, I agreed that after my eleven-year-old daughter Laura had taken her flute exam, I’d treat her to a trip to the nearest shopping mall, Cabot Circus.

Her flute exam fell at a bad time: the day of the annual school concert at the village school during her final few days there before moving up to secondary school. The exam was to be held at Bristol Music School in Clifton, in the centre of Bristol, 20 miles away from our village. Attending the exam meant she had to miss not only afternoon school but also the first of the two concert performances.

Musical Mission

I duly collected Laura and her flute from school, and we drove into town. As we neared the Music School, we passed dozens of smiling new university graduates with proud parents, attending their degree ceremony in the Wills Memorial Building. As I watched them milling about, I did a simultaneous flash back to my own degree day, in my pink dress and grey gown with my parents up in York years ago, and a flash forward to Laura’s in 10 years time. Where did her first 11 years go? I wondered, panicking about finding a parking space with so many extra visitors in town.

Despite the heat, Laura was playing it cool: it takes a lot to faze her. She’d been practising hard on her flute for the previous few days, and if she was nervous, she was hiding it better than her mother was. We arrived in plenty of time, the exam was over quickly, and Laura remained calm throughout, focused instead on the promised Krispy Kreme doughnut that awaited her at Cabot Circus.

Parking at Cabot Circus was easier than in Clifton: we simply drove up the spiral ramp to the fourth floor of the multi-storey car park and straight ahead into an empty space. With one eye on the clock, as we had to be back at school for the 5pm concert, we did a quick tour of the toy shop to spend her birthday money, wrapped ourselves around a couple of doughnuts, and returned to the car.

The Missing Car

Or so was our plan. When we arrived back at the top of the ramp on the fourth floor, my car was not there. In its place was an almost-identical one – charcoal grey instead of smoke grey, a couple of years newer, and, I admit it, with fewer dents. But it was in exactly the same place. Laura, whose memory is much better than mine, assured me we had indeed parked on the fourth floor, but we agreed to check the exact same spot on the third and the fifth floors just in case.

My car was not there either. Realising that not only were we now on a tight timescale to get back to school for the concert, but that also locked in the car book were Laura’s flute, music and Heather the rabbit, her favourite and irreplaceable cuddly toy, I began to panic and theorise about this disaster. Perhaps the owner of the darker car had a key which matched ours, had parked next to us and got into the wrong car to depart by mistake?

The Search is On

Has anybody seen this car?

Thinking as fast as my now pounding heart, I grabbed Laura by the hand and whisked her down to the attendants’ office on the ground floor to explain our plight. The couple of chaps in there were kind and patient. They took down the details of the car and where I’d left it, before running a very clever search by licence plate on their security camera, which played back a recording of us driving in earlier. They then despatched their junior staff member to find it. Moments later, he buzzed through to say he had indeed found our car, and we were instructed to meet him at the lift on the fourth floor.

So we were right, it was the fourth floor! But we were puzzled as to how he could have found it so quickly. Had the driver of the darker car realised his mistake just the minute before and returned ours to swap it back again?

Mystery Solved

All was revealed when we arrived back on the fourth floor. The waiting attendant patiently pointed us in the direction of our car, which was awaiting at the top of the ramp. But, it emerged, there were TWO spiral ramps  on this side of the building: one going up and one going down. We’d looked at the top of the down ramp instead of the up. Well, who knew?

“We’ve never lost a car yet since we opened,” the attendant assured me, smiling proudly as he waved us off.

“Phew, I thought I was going to have skate all the way home.”

Relieved to retrieve car, flute and rabbit and to be on our way back to school in time for Laura’s concert performance, I wondered how I’d managed to be so stupid, when we were so geared up for action earlier on. Then it occurred to me: the minute the flute exam was over, our adrenalin surge had stopped, our brains had cranked down a few notches, and we’d relaxed and stopped thinking strategically. We were no longer primed for fight or flight, and in fact were not fit for either. No wonder we couldn’t find the car.

It was only later that I discovered that between leaving the exam centre and getting home that I’d also managed to lose my glasses.

But the good news is: we’ve just heard Laura passed her flute exam. Thank goodness for that! Parental duty done.

Filed under: daughter, humour, lifestyle, nostalgia, parenting, travel Tagged: Bristol, Cabot Circus, flute, losing car, parking, where did I park my car, Wills Memorial Building

My Interview on Alison Morton’s Blog

Selfie with Alison Morton at the Romantic Novelists’ Association annual conference in July 2014

This post gives you the link to my interview by thriller writer Alison Morton and fills in a bit of background. 

I’m very pleased to be interviewed on Alison Morton’s action-packed author blog, under the deeply flattering headline “Debbie Young – Marketing Superstar”. (She knows how to charm, does Alison!)

In it, her interesting questions include a query as to whether I’ll ever write a novel and, if so, what would it be about. Hop over to her blog to find out the answers, and also to read more about her terrific Roma Nova series of alternative history thrillers (or alternate history, as the Americans call it, to the irritation of purists everywhere).

Here’s the link: Debbie Young’s interview on Alison Morton’s blog

More about Alison Morton

I’ve known Alison for a couple of years, during which our writing careers have been running in parallel.Not long after SilverWood Books published my authors’ marketing guide Sell Your Books!, Alison launched her first novel, Inceptio, assisted by SilverWood’s excellent author services.

Although Alison is energetic, computer-savvy and tremendously clever – in short, capable of doing all the self-publishing work herself – she preferred to delegate it to SilverWood, freeing up her own time to devote her time to writing and marketing her books.

At the SilverWood Open Day last September

Her strategy paid off, because she’s now published three books in the series – Inceptio, Perfiditas and Successio – and is writing the fourth. Her books have had fabulous reviews (including some from me here), they’ve won all sorts of awards, and she’s just been snapped up by A for Authors agency for her subsidiary and foreign rights.

Ironically, although Alison now lives and works in France, and I live in England, I’ve seen her more often than any other SilverWood author lately, our paths crossing at the London Book Fair, SilverWood’s Open Day, at the RNA Conference earlier this month, and other authors’ launches.

Alison’s latest book in the Roma Nova series

Or maybe it just feels that way because she has such a high profile on line. She’s also guested on my Off The Shelf Book Promotions blog, her latest appearance being to share her top tips for book promotion here.

Either way, she’s a great role model for any aspiring self-publishing author, and, as you can see from our selfie above, a lot of fun.

And if you’ve read this far without visiting my interview on her blog, do it now! Here’s that link again: Debbie Young’s interview on Alison Morton’s blog

 

Filed under: blogging, book reviews, reading, self-publishing, writing Tagged: Alison Morton, book promotion, Inceptio, Perfiditas, RNA, self-publishing, Silverwood Books, Successio

Romancing the Romantic Novelists

Selfie with RNA President Katie Fforde

A post about my recent talk at the Romantic Novelists’ Association annual conference.

A couple of weekends ago, I had what you might call a novel experience: I went to give a talk to the Romantic Novelists’ Association.

How It Came About

The invitation arose from a chance meeting last autumn with the lovely Katie Fforde, the bestselling romantic novelist who happens to live not far from me. As local authors, we were both invited to join a discussion panel, broadcast last autumn from the Green Room of the Cheltenham Literature Festival by BBC Radio Gloucestershire. (You can listen to the broadcast here, if you like.)

Cheltenham Festival broadcast with Katie

With oodles of hugely popular titles to her credit, Katie is the current President of the Romantic Novelists’ Association. The panel’s wide-ranging conversation touched on the subject of self-publishing, for which I’m an enthusiastic advocate. Afterwards Katie suggested I speak at the RNA’s annual conference to give them the low-down on what self-publishing has to offer romantic novelists and to explain how the Alliance of Independent Authors, of which I’m a member, could offer them.

Fast forward to 13th July, and there I was, addressing the RNA’s members in a lecture theatre that took me back to my university days.

Great Setting

Caught in mid-flow by my friend the alternative history thriller writer Alison Morton

The setting was no ordinary university (not that I’d call my alma mater, the University of York, ordinary), but Harper Adams University.

Harper Adams is an agricultural college in rural Shropshire, complete with its own farm, in a pretty mock-Tudor complex not far from Newtown, a beguiling small market town with at least two bookshops. (Note to self: must take a trip there in our camper van one day.)

So far, so romantic, you might think – until I checked out the lunch menu and discovered that we were eating the animals raised by the farm. I dare not confess to my vegetarian daughter that the catering, by the way, was excellent.

Fun Talk

I enjoyed Alison Morton’s talk about writing alternative history

My brief was to speak to the title “You Need Never Walk Alone”, identifying the misnomer that is the world of self-publishing: a more caring, sharing community than I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with before. My speech explained to them that the “self” in self-publishing was misplaced, because these days, any indie author worth reading employs professional-level tactics to ensure their books are the best they can be, from having their covers designed by a specialist to engaging editors and proofreaders on a par with those used by traditional publishing houses (very often the same people, in fact, operating as freelances).

I was unsure what to expect when I agreed to speak. Would the room be filled with women of a certain age in floral frocks? Would they lob rotten tomatoes at me for daring to speak of authors acting as their own publishers?

With bestselling romantic novelists Talli Roland and Joanne Phillips

I’m pleased to report I was warmly welcomed and quickly made to feel at home, and that my talk was well received by all who attended. Self-publishing certainly offers many opportunities even for those who are comfortably ensconced with trade publishers, such as the chance to revive their out-of-print backlist and earn a much greater royalty than previously. (I was all wrong about the floral frocks too, by the way – not least because there were quite a few male writers in attendance.)

Welcoming Atmosphere

I also discovered a very sharing bunch of writers, enjoying the stimulus of each other’s company and of an impressively varied programme, covering everything from writing craft to yoga for writers (boy, I could do with some of that!)

Oh goody, a conference!

Summing up for me the generous spirit of the group was the nature of the goody bag. Well, don’t we all love conference goody bags? I’d been told in advance by author friends who are members of the RNA that the conference goody bag was not to be missed, and they were right. Not only did the bag itself look very pretty, sporting the RNA’s attractive log and smart strapline “Love Writing”, it was filled with all sorts of, er, goodies:

a fine collection of brand new paperbacks
practical items such as a manilla folder and an A4 notepad
sustaining treats in biscuit form
some super correspondence cards on the theme of romantic novels
some slick promotional freebies for specific novels: a smartly packaged teabag promising “the perfect cup of tea” to promote the novel Not Quite Perfect by Annie Lyons, a gorgeous metal bookmark attached to a bookmark for Victoria Howard’s Ring of Lies; a foil-wrapped chocolate coin promoting another book and a bag of chocolate buttons stapled to a business card (sorry, my daughter’s eaten the evidence for both of those)

Great Souvenirs

Fabulous bookmark is enough to make me a fan of Christina Courtenay

My favourites were, by chance, two items promoting books by the RNA’s current chairman, Christina Courtney: a tiny bookmark in the shape of a fan (book title: The Gilded Fan), which was actively useful on that very hot weekend, and an ingenious dolls’-house sized crystal ball (in fact a glass marble stuck to a silver ring), as featured on the cover of The Secret Kiss of Darkness.The latter now has pride of place in my daughter’s dolls’ house.

Conclusions

So simple, yet so clever – Christina Courtenay’s crystal ball made from a marble (top left)

I may only have been at the conference for the last day (it ran Friday to Sunday), but I enjoyed it so much that I’m rather hoping I’ll be invited back next year. It was almost enough to make me want to write a romantic novel – something that hadn’t as yet been on my to-do list. But, as my author friend Orna Ross said to me the other day, “Never say never.” And if I ever do, it won’t just be because of the goody bag, honest.

For more information about the RNA, which welcomes aspiring writers as well as already-published authors, visit their website: 

www.romanticnovelistsassociation.org 

Or follow them on Twitter at @RNATweets.

NB The RNA doesn’t yet admit self-published authors other than as associate members, but they’re actively reviewing that situation, which is greatly to their credit.

Filed under: self-publishing, writing Tagged: Alison Morton, Christina Courtenay, Katie Fforde, Romantic Novelists' Association

Flash Debbie

You’ll read it in a flash

Today I’m playing musical chairs on the Alliance of Independent Authors’ (ALLi) blog of self-publishing advice.

As Commissioning Editor, I’m usually behind the scenes, soliciting suitable posts for the various strands on the blog – publishing news, writing craft, marketing advice, and so on. But for once I’m writing a post myself: a feature for the Writing Craft strand.

My post focuses on writing flash fiction – those very short stories that are typically no more than 1,000 words long, compared to the 3,000 words of a conventional short story.

I only started to embrace flash fiction a couple of years ago, but already I love it with an evangelical zeal. I’m keen to encourage other writers to give it a go, to practice writing succinct, terse prose that will help them polish their writing in other genres.

To read my blog post for ALLi, click here.
To read more about my flash fiction and to try some free samples from my new collection Quick Change, click here.
To download Quick Change from Amazon, click here.

And now I think I’d better not let this post to go on any longer!

(Still fewer than 200 words!)

Filed under: reading, self-publishing, travel, writing

An Old-fashioned Remedy for A New-fangled Illness

For a frivolous Friday, here’s a light-hearted post that has nothing to do with my writing. It’s about a strange prescription that I received from my doctor earlier this week. Do not read if you are squeamish about health issues – you have been warned!

Beware the hidden dangers!

On returning at the end of last week from a residential school trip with 27 nine-to-eleven year olds, my daughter and I needed to catch up on sleep, which I thought would restore my energy levels. But I woke up next day still feeling rather depleted, due to a swelling in the right side of my neck that had come up virtually overnight.

A few days later, because the lump had still not subsided, and Dr Google had failed to make a plausible diagnosis, I called the doctor. I found it hard to talk to the receptionist because the swelling was now so big that it was painful to open my mouth very far (torture for any chatterbox). She fixed an immediate appointment.

After prodding about for a bit, the very nice GP gave me a diagnosis and prescription:

Diagnosis: blocked salivary gland caused by the tiny polishing fragments they put in new-style whitening toothpastes (we’d just switched to a whitening brand)
Prescription: a bag of pear drops, or any other sour sweet likely to make one salivate more than usual

No need to sugar these pills

Well, that’s one way of keeping the cost of NHS prescriptions low, I thought to myself, as I headed round the corner to Poundland and invested in one bag of pear drops and another of chewy sour cherries.

So acidic are both of these sweets that It’s hard to believe that technically these “pills” contain any sugar at all.

Hard to believe that kids prefer these to vegetables

Apparently the best cure is to force out the blockage with a surge of saliva, before, like a pearl in an oyster, it grows to the size where surgery is needed to remove it. Yuk! The desired effect is to force a miniature volcanic eruption in your mouth. Double yuk!

So this morning finds me sitting at my desk, alert for pre-seismic movement that might herald a cure, as I chomp through sweets that feel like they’re steadily removing every last scrap of enamel from my teeth – pretty ironic when the starting point was a new improved toothpaste that promised to take better care of them.

My other Poundland purchase? A tube of innocuous clear toothpaste gel. Those whiter teeth will just have to go on hold for a while.

Going full circle – back to the Colgate ring of confidence

What’s the strangest cure you’ve ever been given for an ailment – and did it work? Do tell!

 

Filed under: health, humour, lifestyle Tagged: Colgate ring of confidence, doctors, GP, prescriptions, salivary gland, strange cures, toothpaste