Writers Monthly Meet-Up

Greenacre Writers are organising a monthly writers meet-up.

To begin with it will be a social gathering. It may turn into a bring and read event but that will be decided by those who attend.

When: Monthly Every 2nd Wednesday 

Where: The Bohemia Pub, 762-764 High Road, North Finchley London N12 9QH

Click here for Greenacre Writers monthly newsletter

New Short Story Competition

We are delighted to announce the Greenacre Writers Short Story Competition

Closing Date: Monday 20 October 2014 (midnight GMT)

Word Count: Maximum 1000 words on any subject.

Prizes: First Place – £45; Second Place – £20; Third Place – £10

Entry fee: £4.00

Story length – maximum 1000 words.

The story can be written on any theme or in any genre.

Stories must be written in English.

Please write it in an easily read font such as Ariel 12pt.

Send your story by email, as an attachment, to greenacrewriters@gmail.com. Put ‘Story Competition’ in the subject line of the email. Please include your name and story title in the email and add your PayPal receipt number as well. (If you are unable to pay by PayPal and post your entry to: Greenacre Writers, 25 Chislehurst Avenue, London N12 0HU) 

Pay the £4 entry fee via PayPal using the button above. You may enter more than one story but each entry costs £4.

We will email confirmation that we have received your entry and PayPal payment.

We will publish a longlist of 25 and a shortlist of the best 10 stories as well as naming the prizewinners.

The winning story will be published on our website but the copyright remains with the author. We are happy to put a link to your blog, website or email with your winning entry if you wish. 

The shortlist and winner will be announced on this website by 31 October 2014.

       

 Click here for the RULES  

Judges

All stories will be read and judged by Greenacre Writers. They have a mixture of backgrounds in publishing and teaching, as well as qualifications – Writing MA.

Happy Writing!

Dragon's Pen Winner and Runner-Up

Greenacre Writers and the Finchley Literary Festival are delighted to announce the winner and runner-up of this year's Dragon's Pen. Here is the announcement:

We three Dragons are delighted to let you know that Lindsay Bamfield has won this year's Finchley Literary Festival's Dragon's Pen for her novel-in-progress Do Not Exceed Fifty. 

Lindsay writes extremely well. Her narrative voice is engaging and convincing and we were impressed with the flow of the story, the immediacy of the voice, the structure of the narrative and the tone of her dialogue. Her internal and external observation is excellent and we found ourselves drawn in to Xanthe's life, eager to know if her quest to 'find a man' works out. There is an effortless tone to her writing -  a fiendishly difficult skill to pull off. 

Lindsay will now have the opportunity to be mentored by Gillian Stern, an editor and writer for Bloomsbury, Orion and Penguin. 

In addition, we are also awarding a runner-up spot to Anne Oatley, for her novel-in-progress Blue Devil. We were excited by the strength and originality of her writing, which is taut, intriguing and surprising. Anne will also be given the opportunity to be mentored by Gillian. 

We loved being Dragons and over the next couple of days, will be sending some feedback to all the writers who entered. Thank you for having us and we hope to be back next year.  

Gillian, Cari and Mary

This is fantastic news. A well-deserved winner and runner-up. Congratulations Lindsay. And congratulations Anne. We are very pleased for you both. Well done. 

And a huge thank you to Gillian, Cari and Mary for all their hard work. All the writers who were brave enough to enter the Dragon's Pen will receive feedback from the dragons in the next couple of days. So, keep an eye on your inbox.

Congratulations to Katie Alford

We'd like to wish Katie Alford, member of Greenacre Writers - Finish That Novel2; many congratulations. She has finished her novel and been published. 

When Katie first joined Greenacres and brought along some of her Steampunk writing for critiquing, it ended up Katie explaining how the writing should be read rather than the other way around. You may ask, as we did, What is Steampunk?

The quick answer is: Steampunk is modern technology—iPads, computers, robotics, air travel—powered by steam and set in the 1800’s. But if you want a more detailed definition, read more here: Ministry of Peculiar Occurences 

Katie has been writing novels since she was 16 and is very excited to finally have one in print. 

Atlantis and the Game of Time

Kristell Ink, Grimbold Books (26 Aug 2014)

About the book:

Their goal is a single culture, a single history, threatening to obliterate all others, with peace forged only through oppression. 

From the dingy annals of human prehistory, a new culture emerges. Like the Atlantians, they too can travel through time, but these are no passive, desk-soft anthropologists, and they will not be satisfied with coexistence. They desire to absorb, to assimilate, and will crush any civilisation that stands against them. The Atlantians know the price of complicity is too high; they will not risk the annihilation of human advancement, culture, art, and freedom. Instead, they send their overworked operative, Professor Lokyne, and a select group of book-loving, academic activists to face this new enemy. Atlantis’s only hope is that they can employ their research and cultural integration skills to study their new enemy, find a weakness, and then strike from within. Only then can they hope to bring down this parasitic new civilisation and return the flow of time to its normal course. 

In this fast-paced, exquisitely detailed adventure, we follow the trepidatious group as it struggles across time and culture from ancient Egypt and Babylon, to China and beyond, exploring equality and the injustice inherent when one culture seeks to extinguish another.

As well as a writer, Katie is also an artist and designed the trailer for her book. You can find out more about Katie here.

And, for people wanting to buy a copy it is available from the following links:

Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

Smashwords

Foyles

Or you can order it from your friendly local high street bookshop using the paperback ISBN : 978-1-909845-59-6

Finchley Literary Festival

Greenacre Guest Blog by Mumpuni Murniati

I said to my two children aged eleven and eight, 'We’re going to CliFi Workshop next Saturday,’ Yes! was the response; not out of interest but the excitement that they would only spend half day at their Arabic School.

We arrived early. Rosie was looking tired but calm, particularly as the clock was ticking and the speaker was nowhere to be seen.  The kick-off event on 24^th May started on time nevertheless. As my children seemed to settle in, I decided to saunter round browsing the library books. To my delight I spotted Amy Tan’s ‘The Opposite of Fate’; soon I was immersed in a chapter about her mother’s morbid imagination. I was thinking of the indescribable trauma the woman must have been through as a child following the suicide of her mother.  In so doing I did not hear my middle daughter’s answer in response to a question of what would happen beyond our lifetime. I was later told, she said: ‘We’ll invent the ‘fountain of youth’ and learn to speak to animals.’ My English was not as good as hers when I was eight.

At the end of the session she and her brother admitted that they had enjoyed the experience and moreover Sarah Holding’s the SeaBEAN Trilogy had enticed them with ‘ideas’ (I’m always intrigued when they say the word ). In my view, Holding writes well and I hope her books line the shelves of the school libraries so the likes of The Diary of the Whimpering Kid, can be put away. 

At the Anthology Launch on Sunday 25^th I was one of the readers.  My story ‘Expedients’ was about the long-overdue meeting between two ‘strangers’ in a park. Andi Byrne’s ‘Authors In Residence’ was the story I enjoyed most, for I recalled a similar accident at home concerning ‘The Oxford Companion of English Literature.'  The victim was my eldest son, for the heavy book was put on a shelf over his desk and well...accidents happen! You'll have to read the anthology to find out what happened in Andi Byrne's story.

On a serious note it was a good networking event for Greenacre Writers and I hope the same event will continue in 2015.

On 28^th I took my two daughters and their friend for A.L. Michael’s forty-five minute workshop ‘Write Here Write Now’ at Friern Barnet Community Library. The workshop aimed to enrich the children’s writing through a number of approaches, eg. speed writing and using various objects to conjure up a character. Despite the rain, there was a good turn-out. In between the session I chatted with Carol (another Greenacre Writer) whose nephew also participated.  Moreover, I congratulated Michael on the publication of her debut chick-lit novel The Last Word.

On the way home I told the girls the tale of the occupied library and how this had contributed to it reaching its eightieth ‘birthday’ on the 23^rd March (I supposed my words fell to deaf ears as they were much more interested in going back as soon as they could L).

I also attended the first session of The Reader Organisation on 29^th May to which I also took my three children, held at North Finchley Library. Paul Higgins and Ruth Cohen were the jolly facilitators. We read ‘Meeting Echo’; a chance encounter between two young minds in an airport; the Chinese girl Echo and the English man Danny. Each person in the circle was able to convey their thoughts and impressions in relation to the story which was fascinating.

The last fifteen minutes were spent discussing ‘Daydream,’ a short poem which seemed to reverberate John Lennon’s Imagine. Somebody then recalled the days when being an ‘idle child’ was something to be frowned at.

The hour passed but the story and the poem lingered in me. I felt grateful that my darlings could stay (and most importantly they behaved).

The Dragon’s Pen the day after was a learning curve (‘Yay! We don’t need to go,’ shouted my children thanks to friends who were willing to babysit them).  The five minutes slot went fast, but I managed to finish reading my flash fiction ‘Shadows’ seconds before the knocking on the door.

Talking to other participants about their work and pursuits beforehand eased me a little from the pressure equivalent to a walk-in job interview.  And yet, the three ‘dragons’ themselves Cari Rosen, Gillian Stern and Mary Musker  turned out to be three wonder women who had no resemblance whatsoever to the Hungarian Horntails.

Bettina the Abseiler

Greenacre Guest Blog by Bettina von Cossel

I’d like to thank all those who generously sponsored my abseiling in aid of the Finchley Literary Festival. I’m really pleased about the outcome. All in all I raised £340. 

Liz Goes, a fellow Greenacre writer, had promised good-looking hunks on top of the tower to strap me on securely, and she didn't promise too much. Hercules and Brad Pitt roped and hooked me up with the utmost care; my husband couldn't have done it any better. Still, I found the event extremely stressful because I’m scared of heights, and the moment when I had to climb over the edge of that tower and let go, was one of the worst in my life. I was so terrified I felt sick.

I can’t even tell you how relieved I was when I arrived back on firm ground. The security men from the Harlow Tye Rotary Club, who'd organised the event, helped me out of the abseiling gear, all looking at my bottom, strangely enough. It turned out that my husband had involved them into a vivid discussion whether my bum looked big from below. Of all the topics in the world… A man’s soul will always stay a mystery to me.

Thanks again so much for supporting me, and enjoy the Finchley Literary Festival.

Bettina von Cossel will be giving the following talk at The Finchley Literary Festival:

Crime Writing - How to Kill your Darlings?

Tuesday 27th May, 3pm

Church End Library, N3 1TR 

Free of charge. 

Find out more. 

The Truth about the Writing Life

Greenacre Guest blog by Allen Ashley

Many years ago I had an article published entitled “The Hollywood Writer and I” in which I took issue with that formulaic filmic portrayal of writers as shambling, alcoholic womanisers desperately trying to replicate a past glory (basically: the received popular image of Dylan Thomas). The truth about the writing life is far less glamorous / clichéd / easy to pigeonhole. Many writers that I know live a hand to mouth existence from one commission or sale to the next; and such a lifestyle precludes as a financial impossibility the notion of quaffing a bottle of Jim Beam every night to send one into dreamland. Most writers, even quite successful ones, have some other employment that offers a reasonably steady income – teaching, lecturing, copy-editing, librarianship, taking paid reviewing gigs for “The Guardian”, whatever.

These days the public stereotype of a writer is probably J. K. Rowling. Rich, courted by Hollywood, her tweets eagerly consumed by fans, even lower standard fare that she initially publishes under an assumed name sells by the bucket load. Photogenic and with something of an airbrushed rags to riches back story, she’s become the poster girl for the “I Want To Be A Writer” dream. Trouble is: the writing community is an iceberg: Rowling is its visible tip twinkling in the Edinburgh sunshine and the LA starlight; the rest of us are the submerged part trying not to drown.

As well as writing, many years ago I turned to editing also. When I responded to submissions, I started giving a short critique of what worked or didn’t work in the story. People thanked me for my notes – which were mostly intended to aid my thinking. As well as this, I dipped my toes into running writing workshops, aiming to pass on some of my hard-won experience and knowledge to aspiring authors. With a background in teaching and the encouragement of those close to me as well as those I’d helped along the way, I took the plunge a couple of years ago and became a full-time writer and tutor. My situation wasn’t quite as I’d envisaged it when I was 13 or 14 wanting to be the next J. G. Ballard. As a short story specialist, I know I’m never going to make millions. I take some other work a couple of days a week in order to stay afloat.

But I love tutoring and believe I have a natural talent for it. Like a proud parent, I’ve been able to guide several people towards their first ever publications or competition successes. Others have had their faltering publication record revitalised. In some ways, I’m offering something that I would have found immensely useful when I was a novice writer myself many years ago.

I haven’t uncovered the next Dan Brown or Martina Cole and don’t necessarily expect to do so. The supernovas are very far beyond this stratosphere. But even if people don’t graduate straight from my classes to the top of “The Sunday Times” bestseller list, they will have improved as a writer and will have a deeper understanding of how the business actually works.

If I had a pound for everybody who’s come up to me and said, “I want to be a writer, how do I go about getting published?” or “I’ve written a book, can you tell me how to get it published?” then I could probably retire several years early. Oh if only it were that simple. At this point I have to diplomatically inform them that such success, if one ever achieves it, is usually preceded by years of hard slog; and maybe before you start expecting Bloomsbury or Penguin to chuck a contract your way, it might be best to start with smaller, more realistically achievable ambitions for the moment. That’s where I come in. Of course, the question should be: “How do I go about improving my writing?” or “How do I become a better writer so that I’ve got more chance of being published?”

Remember: JKR is the dream; the myth, even. And she did it by hard work and application. So, if you fancy a bit of hard work – and fun! – come along to my workshop at North Finchley Library at 4pm on Friday 30 May. It’s free at the point of delivery. My slogan is: “You will be writing within five minutes.” You may even discover the Shakespeare or Emily Bronte inside you!


As part of the Finchley Literary Festival, Allen Ashley, as well as running the above workshop will be hosting the “Spoken Word Showcase”. Come along and hear a great range of fiction, poetry and non-fiction from Festival writers and local authors. Reading spots allocated on strictly first come, first served basis. Allen will also chair the Panel Discussion: Men writing as women and women writing as Men at the Main Event, Sat 31st May 2-6pm

Enquiries to Allen on allenashley-writer@hotmail.co.uk