Indholdsfortegnelse for July 2024 i Writing Magazine

You can do a lot with words, and the contents of this month’s WM are a case in point. Words are transformative: they can change the way people see things. Make things happen. Make money. Make a difference. June is Pride Month, and we’re proud of this month’s Take Pride in Your Writing coverline, and the chance to celebrate the LGBTQIA+ writing community, inclusivity and diversity. Everyone should not only be able to see themselves in a book, but, if it’s their passion and their dream, to write one that reflects their lived experience – read Freddie Kölsch’s piece on writing her dark, queer YA romance and why representation matters on p20. The way we live affects how and what we write, and as social media is an inescapable facet…

Do you remember what I said about dreaming time? We should sit and stare into space at least once a day. Daydreaming is good for you. Ideas arrive when you’re not concentrating on anything else. James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, sends out an email once a week to anyone who has bought his book and registers their interest. A while ago one of his messages said that the reason people get good ideas in the shower is because it’s the only time during the day when most people are away from screens long enough to think clearly. This confirms what I’ve said about dreaming time. Thinking clearly, that is concentrating on what you want to, or need to, is similar to daydreaming because doing either produces ideas. It also…

Unathi Magubeni’s debut novel, The Star Child, achieved bestseller status in South Africa in 2019. It has now been translated into English and is published by Legend Press. I asked Unathi about his writing process. ‘It usually starts with flashes of inspiration,’ he says. ‘In the initial stages, I only write when there’s a burning inspiration that is ready for the page. However, as the architecture of the storyline becomes clearer, I dedicate a more rigid schedule. I like writing in the evening and the early hours of the morning when the rest of my community is asleep. There is solitude and the feeling that there is more time and space in the ether as the many are resting. I love writing in winter and get more inspired on cold…

North Yorkshire council has decided to stop using punctuation on road signs because geographical databases can’t cope with them, a situation guaranteed to infuriate all writers of sound mind. And one which seems a strange move, given Cambridge’s city council was forced to reinstate correct punctuation on road signage following public complaints about it being dropped over ten years ago, while there was an outcry when Mid-Devon District Council even considered the idea. Nevertheless, a North Yorkshire council spokesperson said, ‘All punctuation will be considered but avoided where possible because street names and addresses, when stored in databases, must meet the standards set out in BS7666. ‘This restricts the use of punctuation marks and special characters (eg apostrophes, hyphens and ampersands) to avoid potential problems when searching the databases as…

Ahero? What about a heroine? Surely it’s important to mention heroines, too? Yes, of course, and I am certainly going to talk about heroines. But, for the purposes of this feature, hero will cover both male and female, because (as fellow grammar nerds will already be aware) in English grammar the male always embraces the female. Bless. So now let’s talk about heroes in fiction. What is a hero, for a start? A hero is the central character in a story: the person (or rabbit, or robot, or whichever kind of entity the author chooses) without whom the story could (probably) not exist. A hero is also the character who’ll need to find something, achieve something, win something, learn something, or even destroy something – the list goes on and…

If you think back to your childhood, and your early encounters with horror, one thing that might come to mind is the urban legend – those stories that spread on the streets or around the halls of school, all told with a (seemingly) earnest belief and delivered in hushed voices, often away from the ears of any adults. The tales would often be – in the cold light of day – rather extravagant and lurid, but these sorts of dark, localised tales do spring up everywhere. They can leave a real impression upon us, and while the details of the experiences may be different there is a certain commonality within them. And that, of course, can make them a fertile ground for writing your own horror stories based on the…

In May the Mystery Writers of America announced the winners for the 2024 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, the 78th Edgars, honouring the best in mystery fiction and nonfiction published in 2023. The winners were, Best Novel, Flags on the Bayou, James Lee Burke; Best First Novel by an American Author, The Peacock and the Sparrow, I.S. Berry; Best Paperback Original, Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, Jesse Q. Sutanto; Best Fact Crime, Crooked: The Roaring ’20s Tale of a Corrupt Attorney General, a Crusading Senator, and the Birth of the American Political Scandal, Nathan Masters; Best Critical or Biographical, Love Me Fierce in Danger – The Life of James Ellroy, Steven Powell; Best Short Story, Hallowed Ground, Linda Castillo; Best Juvenile, The Ghosts of Rancho Espanto, Adrianna Cuevas; Best…

Every day I would see them without seeing them, head down, caught in my thoughts. Dregs littering the pavement, a loser’s life in your face, the kind of blank hopeless eyes you want to avoid, skirting a wide path and holding your breath to avoid inhaling fetid skin and old urine. I’d taken a job at the coffee shop, nothing too complicated, just serving up cappuccinos and hot chocolates, oversized dry muffins, sickly flapjacks. The customers were mostly passing through: office workers wanting takeaway coffees, tourists needing a pick-me-up cookie, although most of them left their plastic-lined goblets half full of brown swill, mauled brownies left on their plates. After a couple of weeks I got a new coworker, Ben. He was younger than me, maybe late twenties, and I…

Imagine this: You’ve just killed someone. You’re the only one who knows the whereabouts of their body. You will do anything to get away with the murder. A big problem is that there’s a phone in the dead man’s pocket, tracking his location. But… but what if he were to post on Instagram hours after his death, ‘proving’ his whereabouts? And what if you used his social media accounts to send the police and anybody else looking for him, off in the wrong direction? It’s probably safe to say that mobile phones and everything that comes with them, from constant reachability, satellite tracking to social media, are here to stay. In two decades, they have revolutionized the world and how we communicate. And in a decade, social media has completely…

Ready to have the first 300 words of your manuscript critiqued? Contact tjackson@warnersgroup.co.uk for details Linda Barnsley is a psychotherapist living in Staffordshire. She has written a few short stories, but not had any of them published. She has attended a few workshops in York with Sue Cooper that she found very useful. After retiring from Keele University three years ago to concentrate on her private practice, she would like to rekindle her passion for writing and complete the novel that she started a few years ago. Prologue I’ve had thoughts of killing my mother for a long time now.1 In the past2 they were fleeting thoughts but becoming more often now and staying for longer.3 She has never been a mother to me!4 I’ve been the one in the…

STAR LETTER HAPPY HORRORDAYS I must admit to being a little apprehensive. I’d never attended one of these events before. I’d convinced myself everybody attending would be a far better writer than me and would look down upon me as an imposter trying to worm my way into a circle to which I didn’t belong. However, the moment I stepped off the train and into the historic and allegedly haunted city of York my apprehension was replaced by excitement. Could there ever be a more appropriate location for a ghost story and horror writing weekend? I was soon to find out there probably wasn’t. A little tentatively I walked into the Guildhall and was immediately greeted by our friendly and enthusiastic host, Alex Davis. I sat in the creepily atmospheric…

Each month in WM, we feature creative writing by our subscribers. Selected pieces will be published in WM and we pay £50 for prose and £25 for poetry, and provide a minicritique explaining what made the pieces stand out to us. This month’s call is inspired by ‘A sense of ending’, Emily Usher’s inspiring piece on p7. We’d like to see your submissions on the theme of ‘Ending’ – we’re inviting you to think about writing an end of some kind, and you can interpret the theme in any style, form or genre. Submit prose up to 500 words and poetry up to 40 lines to wmsubmissions@warnersgroup.co.uk. Include your subscriber number. The closing date is 30 June.…

American-born novelist Edward Wilson writes the bestselling William Catesby series of spy thrillers, and it’s intriguing to learn that his British hero Catesby has plenty in common with Edward himself. Catesby is a rough kid from the Lowestoft docks, a state-school-educated maverick in the rarified, publicschool-educated world of espionage and, in Catesby’s own description of himself, something of a two-faced bastard. Edward was an equally rough kid from Fells Point, the docks area of Baltimore, Maryland. ‘My mother’s family ran a tavern that catered to sailors, one of whom became my father,’ he explains. ‘But he died when I was seven months old, so I don’t remember him. Like Catesby, I feel a bit of a two-faced bastard myself because I volunteered to fight in Vietnam, even though I knew…

Whisper House Press Whisper House Press is pleased to announce its first call for submissions for an anthology with the working title Costs of Living, writes PDR Lindsay-Salmon. Submit stories, 500 to 4,000 words of ‘carefully constructed horror stories with a focus on the oft-unclear distinction between a scary-enough reality and our less-or-morefrightening imagination, both in personal and social realms.’ Strictly no work using A.I.s Submit stories by email with COSTS OF LIVING SUBMISSION in the subject line. Include a very brief cover letter, a 100-word author biography written in the third person, and any social media information in the body of the email. Payment is US$25 per accepted work. Website: https://stevecaponejrauthor.com Dark Holme Publishing Dark Holme Publishing puts out spine-tingling anthologies. They like ‘unearthing chilling narratives from a terrifyingly…

PICTURA JOURNAL pictura journal is a new journal that wants work which ‘offers a vivid snapshot of the writer’s world.’ The team ‘want to see the mundane rendered with clarity and quiet moments given room to breathe.’ Submit one to five poems and prose in the forms of fiction or creative nonfiction, up to 1,500 words. Include a cover letter and brief third-person bio. Payment: ‘only a token payment of at least US$5.’ PDRLS Website: https://picturajournal.com Root Quarterly Root Quarterly’s winter issue has the theme ‘Glass Houses’, writes PDR Lindsay-Salmon. Writers are asked to think about ‘What might help people in the process of regarding others as full human beings, even when they may disagree with them?’ The team match artwork and photography to the work published. Submit fiction, 500…

The Black in White Poetry Competition 2024 The contest is for poems about the experience of racism in the workplace or in childhood. Now in its fourth year, the Black in White Poetry Competition is inviting entries of original, unpublished poems of any length. There are prizes of £250, £125 and £75, and up to 25 commended poems will be published in a new Black in White book, to be launched in October during Black History Month. The entry fee is £1.50 per poem (free for under 18s). The closing date is 21 June. Website: www.blackinwhiteservices.co.uk/poetry-competition-2024 The Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2024 The annual award from The Poetry Society is one of the biggest prizes for poets between 11 and 17. Every year The Poetry Society selects…

My perimenopausal memory must be totally shot because I can’t for the life of me remember what made me want to write my first manuscript. I’ve always loved to read but, unlike many writers, I don’t recall a childhood dream of becoming an author. The motivation may be long forgotten, but what I do remember is writing a novel manuscript in my twenties and how excited I was to send it off to three agents. They all rejected me – I’d come home to an envelope on the doormat, addressed in my own handwriting and affixed with stamps I’d paid for myself, and know instantly it was a no. Triple ouch. Eventually the floppy disk went in a drawer and I concentrated on my day job as a news editor…

So far, in our meandering through the Building Blocks of Creative Writing, we have taken a look at the Building Block of Structure and the Building Block of Setting. We will now examine another of the fundamental Building Blocks of Creative Writing: the Building Block of Character. Before I was asked to write this column, there may be some of you who remember I wrote a couple of articles on Character and Voice early in 2023. This makes things a little tricky. I do not want to repeat verbatim everything I said in those articles, yet I cannot – for the sake of this series – leave out something as fundamental as the Building Block of Character. This dilemma puts me in mind of when I first contemplated writing…

To mark the 75th anniversary of the publication of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, the sculptor Hans K Clausen has been having people send him print editions of the novel, aiming for a total of 1984 copies. The volumes will form the foundation of The Winston Smith Library of Victory and Truth, ‘a visual art installation, a sculpture, a library, a museum, a curiosity, a venue’, which will open in the village hall on the Hebridean island of Jura on 8 June, the 75th anniversary of the original publication of the book. Orwell wrote his classic novel towards the end of his life while living on Jura. Clausen told the Guardian, ‘I don’t see my art project as political. It has politics woven through it, but it also has a love…

As director of the Scouting Programme at Cornerstones, some of our best manuscripts are referred to me, and I read submissions as an agent would. I can then offer feedback to an author in a way they’re unlikely to receive from a publisher or agency, and can help them develop a successful submission package. For a manuscript to be scooped up, it needs to feel finished in a way that an agent will instinctively respond to. Occasionally there might be elements that can be finessed, in terms of a story arc or perhaps a certain character or two, but there needs to be a polished quality to the work that holds its own. This means that the book will usually have been honed over multiple drafts and that any issues…

Common Deer Press Common Deer Press is on a mission to find and publish extraordinary and enduring books for children and teens, writes PDR Lindsay-Salmon. The team aim to publish ‘uncommon and exceptionally well-written literature for children and teens,’ and seek children’s literature that engages, entertains, and inspires. Currently submissions for picture books and Middle Grade books are on hold until the end of the year but submissions of YA novels are welcomed. Submit by email including name and full contact details, title of the work, a two page synopsis, the first ten pages of the work and C.V. Response time is slow. Rights and royalties discussed with the contract. Website: https://www.commondeerpress.com Infernal Moose Infernal Moose is a new indie publishing house with an editorial team focusing on sharing fantastical…

Book thieves busted Europol has arrested nine people from Georgia for being part of a ring stealing rare books from academic libraries and institutions across Europe, writes Gary Dalkin. Volumes stolen include first editions by Gogol and Puskin, from the University of Warsaw, and a dozen manuscripts from the Paris-based National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilisations. Methods employed ranged from simply breaking in and taking the books, to posing as academics who would access the titles in reading rooms, ‘meticulously measure the books and take photographs before handing them back’, then sometimes months later swap them with duplicates. Some titles are believed to have been auctioned in Moscow or St. Petersburg, and the investigation involved searching 27 locations and over 100 police officers. Europol said, ‘In total, the criminal…

AFAR Afar is a US based ‘travel media brand’, which is to say it publishes a quarterly print magazine, website, plus podcasts and videos about travel, all intended to make a positive impact on the world through storytelling that inspires, empowers, and enriches travellers who care about the world, writes Gary Dalkin. Afar Magazine publishes reported features, usually between 1,500-2500 words, personal essays, photo essays, and shorter ‘middle-of-the-book’ pieces. The focus is on places and the people who live there, rather than traditional travel lifestyle writing. Rates start at $1 US per word. Afar.com covers travel news, ‘destination inspiration’, cruises, features & essays, hotel reviews, commerce, intel and more, aligned around the belief that travel can be a powerful force for good. For the next few months editor Katherine LaGrave…

The Bedford Competition 2024 The annual international contest has a £1,500 first prize for both short stories and poetry. The story category of the Bedford Competition is for original, unpublished short fiction up to 3,000 words. The winner will receive £1,500, and there are second and third prizes of £300 and £200. There is also a £100 Bedford Short Story Prize for the best entry by a writer resident in Bedford, and the £200 Cygnature Short Story Prize for the best entry by a writer under 25. The entry fee is £7.50 per story, or £15 for three stories entered on the same form. The poetry category is for original, unpublished poems no longer than 40 lines. The prizes are £1,500, £300 and £200, with a £100 Bedford Prize for…

WINNER Blind Summit by Cathy Cade I huddled inside my fashionable coat. It wasn’t designed for bus stops. Andrew’s language that morning had been colourful. Ice dusted his fingers as he scraped the windscreen. He’d cursed again when the courtesy car coughed and failed to start. He’d taken mine to work instead. A bus arrived, but not the one I wanted. A pallid young woman stepped off, brown hair straggling from a knitted hat. She came to sit on the bench, where she fiddled with her bag and checked her watch. She shivered, although her coat looked warmer than mine. If Andrew had parked the courtesy car in the garage last night, it would have started. He blamed the car, of course. He’d taken against it from the first –…

When Bill Clinton fought and won the 1992 Presidential election his political strategist James Carville put up a sign in campaign headquarters which said, ‘It’s the economy, stupid’. It became the slogan for the whole campaign and is remembered to this day for the way it connected with voters. The core job of government is to ensure the smooth running of the economy, because it is that which puts money (and because of that, choice) into people’s pockets. Strangely that’s a popular thing to focus on and he won a famous victory on the back of it. Last week the Society of Authors, the trades union for authors, held an EGM in which motions to do with denouncing what is happening in Gaza and positions on ethical investing were debated…