Saturday 26 September 2015

Hull Book Fair

The Hull Book Fair was held on a Saturday in mid-September. An initially rainy day cleared up in time for hordes of readers to pour into Hull’s central library to feast their eyes on the best of local writing.

The Fair was opened by Mike Ulyett and Library Services Director, Michelle Alford


Hornsea Writers’ stall was sponsored by Fantastic BooksPublishing




The picture shows (L to R) authors Madeleine McDonald, Ann Wilkinson, Sylvia Broady and Penny Grubb standing behind their collection of 28 different titles – books from Hornsea Writers themselves plus recent publications from local publisher Fantastic Books. The stall featured crime, fantasy, paranormal, saga, autobiography, historical and writing guides. 

Friday 18 September 2015

A Shameless Demand for Your Hard-Earned Cash!


I'll be uncharacteristically brief. I took part in the Great North Run last Sunday. That's a run of 13.1 miles for those who don't know. I'm 67 and undertook the run to raise funds for the charity that helped me defeat the pernicious condition commonly known as ME/CFS, from which I suffered for 10 years. Now recovered, which in itself is an unusual event, I wanted to give something back to the community that supported me. So, please visit my blog here to discover how you can gain a free eBook as a reward for your generosity. A look at another post, here, will give those of you who are interested full details of the run itself (it's a long post). But, if I've caught you at your most busy and generous, you can bypass it all by simply going to my JustGiving site here and donating a couple of quid, dollars, euros, or any other currency you happen to have on your person.

Thank you for you attention and your generosity.

Friday 11 September 2015

Three books at a time

Hornsea Writer Penny Grubb recently found herself reading three books at once and wondering how this came about. The books were a crime novel, an autobiography and a romance. 

In the normal course of events Penny would put these genres in order of preference as first the crime, second the biography and lastly the romance. In the case of this triple read, the order upended itself and became romance, crime, then autobiography. 

The reasons were varied, touching on a doctor demanding a cigarette on a hospital ward, a peer of the realm being not quite as irritating as he might have been and a rather clever mirroring of a favourite classic. Follow this link for more detail of Penny’s take on Sayers, Tennant and Bard.

Friday 4 September 2015

WRITERS' VILLAGE AWARD



Madeleine McDonald was one of only five writers shortlisted in the summer 2015 Writers’ Village short story competition. The competition is run twice a year and attracts hundreds of entries from across the world. This summer’s crop produced three winners, with a further five shortlisted and ten highly commended.

One reason the Writers’ Village competition attracts so many entries is that the sole judge, author John Yeoman, takes the time and trouble to provide a short critique of each and every entry.


The Writers’ Village website offers writing courses as well as an entertaining blog.