Writing Buddies - 9th April

In Penny’s absence, Jacqueline has written these notes.

The Writing Buddies met once again at The Art House on Friday April 9th, with, as usual, a wide ranging discussion and some interesting writing activity to report.

Tessa is publishing the second book of her trilogy in June. She is currently working on establishing her website - www.tessalorantwarburg.com - “justhost” seems a good basis and is reasonably priced, although some of the information and directions use American terms and need decoding. She is still thinking of exploring the possible audio-book route in Hamburg.

We welcomed Catherine on her first visit. She produced a good amount of writing while at university, and wants to increase her output. One of her short stories was published in Hampshire View, and a short piece for a competition was also published elsewhere. Another work has been accepted by Pick Me Up weekly magazine, and Catherine is currently converting one of her short stories into a one-act play. She has a blog – katyslittlemeows.blogspot.com – it is really interesting and informative and well worth a look (my comment, not hers!). She is a keen Twitterer (as Catherine Miller), and reports that the main publishing houses are on Twitter and not only do they give an idea of what they’re up to, but they apparently scan writers’ tweets as well. She is set on converting all the buddies to Twitter!

Nathan was also welcomed to the group for the first time. He has written poetry and sci-fi short stories, as well as features on specific interests such as snowboarding, and he mentioned enjoying writing parodies of films among other things. He has a wide range of interests which might inspire further work.

Elizabeth is returning to Spain soon for a short time, and plans to work on short stories she is currently rewriting.

Jimmy has had his autobiography accepted by The History Press for publication in May next year, subject to a reduction in length and resubmission by November. It now has a working title “Growing Up in Wartime Southampton – Someone Else’s Trousers”. Legend Press want to see his Sundance novels, too. He is now on Facebook as James Marsh.

Glen has been sorting out a huge amount of written material from over the years, and is amazed by the quantity. Some she may discard but other work may be useful.

John had his poetry/artwork exhibition extended at Goblets. He showed the group the basis of a booklet made up of the pictures and his own poetry, and hopes to get a print run with a view to sales. He mentioned www.cutepdf.com as a free downloadable program for printing of pictures and text. He may look for a sponsor to advertise in the booklet, and the group discussed this. Tessa mentioned that Lulu self publishing can offer work produced in different sizes. John has also written a play for the artists’ group to perform.

Jacqueline is just completing her latest script for Eastleigh Talking News. She has managed to terminate her webhost contract with streamline.net early, as she kept getting messages that her browser wouldn’t support their system despite having followed instructions. She is maintaining just her blog with a link to her writing CV for now. She has an outline for a sleep-related feature and is pitching it to health magazines; the group suggested one or two other possible homes for it.

We discussed outlets for poetry; Apples and Snakes have open readings ar venues such as Soul Cellar and the Nuffield Theatre – contact is pete@applesandsnakes.org – and Moving Voices runs at the Art House once a month. For novellists, the site authonomy.com invites authors to post up the first 10,000 words of a novel, and the Yeovil Literary competition for novels, poetry and short stories was mentioned. We also discussed the online ‘employers’ suite101, the problem of practical issues getting in the way of writing plans, unusual spooky incidents, computer crashes, domain parking, and the wide variety of Peter Lovesey’s work.

Finally, although members often have plenty to report, we very much welcome new writers, published or not, to our meetings and discussions. Our next meeting will be at the Art House on Friday April 23rd (auspicious as Shakespeare’s birthday!) at 2 pm.