I sympathise with Tracey Chevalier as judge of this years Mslexia competition. So many short stories deal in pain, death and loss. Several years ago I remember a similar plea from QWF Magazine for writers to ‘lighten up’ and I guess that the appetite for reading submissions must diminish rapidly when every course is another … Continue reading Let me entertain you
I have to admit that I’m so accustomed to receiving rejection letters that the moment when Jo Derrick of the The Yellow Room wrote accepting (yes, an acceptance!) Blue-Sky Thinking was more of a buzz than when I at last held Issue 4 in my hand on Saturday morning. But hey, no matter how … Continue reading The Hard Stuff
On Saturday, Issue 3 of The Yellow Room arrived, and being too beleagured by seasonal franticness to engage with the writing there and then, I settled for skimming through the ‘bios’ – helpfully picked out in bold at the end of each story. To a certain extent this is dangerous – these people sound so interesting compared to … Continue reading Life lines
Have been a bit distracted this week following my technicolour appearance on Pitch Parlour and a flurry of ensuing comments emails etc. It’s nice to be noticed, and in exchange for my idea on restructring the blog, the ubiquitous Miss P. has also suggested some tweaks to my pitch letter. If this is bartering, I’m all in … Continue reading Doing business
Around this time last year most of us in the Bristol Women Writers group were polishing our entries for the new Bristol Short Story Prize and so we were disappointed when none of us made it to the short list. Still, having recently acquired (thanks, Louise!) a copy of the winners’ anthology, it is good to see … Continue reading Bristol Short Story Prize
Ali Bacon, Author 