Tuesday 16 June 2015

Pam Fudge at Writing Buddies' Sixth Birthday Meeting - 10 April 2015

Fifteen Buddies came to the Central Library at Southampton for the meeting immediately after Easter, our sixth birthday.

Good News

Jacqueline Pye received an honourable mention in a flash fiction competition run by Micro Bookings.

Janet Turner has published another book on Amazon Kindle: Off the Rails

Josephine has done no writing but a great deal of thinking, putting her ideas, on scraps of paper, into order.

Barbara Dynes has just sold another two articles, on relationships, to women's magazines, in addition to her regular column in Writers' Forum.

Patricia, whose first language is French, has written her first English-language article, for the new Writing Buddies magazine, Scribblers' Script.  She hoped it was good enough!  She also has an idea for the next edition.

Richard Hardie has been concentrating on getting his books into schools and libraries.  He has managed to get his books with the three suppliers who supply most of the schools in the UK and is working with the county school library service to encourage them to order his books from these suppliers.  'It is starting to pay dividends!' he says.

Ken Brady has two books out on Kindle, both offered on free promotion for two days.  He has given away sixty four copies.  He has learnt from his mistake and now realises that he should have given away the first book and sold the second.

New Writing Buddy Laura has written her first book, set in Nigeria, which she plans to publish via Kindle.

Penny had an article on Southampton's ghosts on the Spooky Isles website.  She had also been contacted by a company that lets holiday cottages, Hideaways, to help with a piece about Winchester for their holiday guide for the area.

Discussion

Could men write for women's magazines?  Bill commented that he thought that men would not be eligible to write for women's magazines.  It was pointed out that they were a paying market and should be open to both sexes.  Men would be accepted only if they submitted!  Simon Whaley recently blogged about this.

Agent Open to Submissions

Samar Hammam has opened Rocking Chair Books Literary Agency,  which concentrates on adult fiction, literary fiction, graphic novels and general non-fiction for publication around the world. She is looking for writers to represent.  See guidelines on her website.

SO:To Speak, Southampton's Festival of Words 

23 October - 1 November 2015 Twitter: @SOToSpeak15

The Writing Buddies will be corporate partners at the festival and will run a competition in conjunction with the festival organisers.  Watch this space!

The Scribblers' Script

Deadline for the first edition of the new Writing Buddies magazine is today.

Next deadline: 10 July
Theme: Summer

Discussion: The merits of The London Book Fair, Winchester Writers' Festival,  Festival of Writing, York

Each was deemed to be well worth going to, although trekking to York from Southampton was acknowledged as a long way.  At the London Book Fair, authors can gain an idea of what publishers are interested in publishing, as well as sitting in on workshops and talks. Each of the other two events were aimed at helping writers with the craft of writing and with the task of obtaining representation/publication.

Have a Go: Short Story

15 minutes to write a story incorporating the follow:
'He was afraid his anxiety to know the truth would set a guard on her tongue.' (Louisa Elliott by Ann Victoria Roberts).

This is becoming a popular section of the afternoon with everyone joining in and some of the resulting work read out.

Guest Speaker: Pam Fudge, Novelist

Pam, from Poole in Dorset, gave us an overview of how she got started as a writer and the inspiration behind her novels.

She started writing in 1983, with early success in competitions and on radio.  Since them, she has written ten romances, published by Robert Hale.  Pam was a tutor at adult education classes teaching Writing for Pleasure and Profit and also tutored for the Writers News home study courses.  She currently tutors writing for Write For.

The next meeting will be Friday 1 May 2015.  Everyone is welcome.

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