Friday 31 July 2015

Competition 2nd place

My brilliant local writing group Tring Writers Circle hold an annual short story competition and this year's theme was 'forbidden'.  We had a good length of time to get the story written but as my focus had been on a last minute revision of the novel, time was running out so fast that I'd only managed to write two hundred odd words when I finally sat down at the computer around 8pm to write the story with a midnight deadline.  My theme was August 1961 and night the Berlin Wall/barriers were put in place.  I didn't get to complete my story as I ran out of time and, at 11.50 with 200 words left to write, I wrote a two-line paragraph to finish it off, spell checked it, read it through and submitted it at 11:58.  On competition night my story amazingly came in second .... with the short amount of time I'd spent writing I certainly didn't expect to be placed at all :)  Thank you TWC xx

Tuesday 21 July 2015

No nails left

Latest scoop on my middle grade/tween novel is that I contacted the editor/agent who had given me such positive feedback on the first chapter she saw last year.  Going on previous form I didn't expect to hear back from her but late one night I checked my emails and there was a message from her asking to see the rest of the manuscript.... making me swear out loud and wake DH!
Cue frantic last minute revisions - undertaken late at night as our eldest daughter was in the middle of her GCSE's and had first shout on the computer.  I hadn't replied straight away as I wanted to make sure there were no glaringly obvious errors and she then called me to make sure I'd received her email.  How I managed to stop myself from screeching down the phone I'll never know :)  Anyway I sent it across to her just over five or so weeks ago ... will post again when I've heard back.