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. 

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.

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.

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. 

www.writers-village.org    

Horses for Courses: Residential writers' courses - April Taylor's view.

I have been back from the Swanwick Writers School in Derbyshire for almost two weeks now. In those two weeks, I have mused on the advantages and disadvantages for any writer attending one of these courses, using my experience of the Writers Holiday in Wales two years ago and the Writers School in Swanwick.

There will be those writers who do not feel they need to spend the £500 (ish) for a week of being looked after and not having to concentrate on anything but writing. Good luck to those. My feelings are that, even the seasoned published successful writer can come away with something new from a writing week experience.

Writers' Holiday, Fishguard

Swanwick Writers School, Derbyshire







If you would like to read more about my thoughts, go to my blog here:
www.apriltaylorauthor.com/blog

You can find more information about April Taylor here:

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Fascinated by History - Isles of Orkney

 

Linda Acaster has embarked on another short series of research blogposts taking in the northern isles of Orkney and Faroes, sitting out in the Atlantic Ocean north of Scotland.

[Research, eh? A likely story...]

Her intimation is that too many historical novels tend to dwell within their own time periods as if nothing existed or left its mark on the novel's 'present' and its characters.

She starts in Orkney, concentrating on the Neolithic megaliths that pre-date Stonehenge. 

Orkney: Vast Skies & Standing Stones

Orkney: Skara Brae Neolithic Village
Faroe: Mountains, Fjords & Vikings

Fascinated by History

Members of Hornsea Writers are, to a greater or lesser degree, fascinated by history. Sometimes it is the mistakes of those reaching for power repeated down the centuries - see novels by Stuart Aken and April Taylor - and sometimes it is centred on ordinary people who lived in a time before our own who found the inner strength to deal with circumstances we wouldn't want to face outside the pages of a novel - see books by Annie Wilkinson and Madeleine McDonald.

One of the three wings of Gainsborough Old Hall c1460

Linda Acaster is fascinated by how a place, sometimes natural, often man-made, affects the lives of those who lived there, often diverse people across the centuries. 

Her latest post concerns aspects of one of the country's few mediaeval manor houses still standing in its recognisable form - Gainsborough Old Hall in Lincolnshire - where royalty separated by historical eras - King Richard III and King Henry VIII - once rested their heads, and the Pilgrim Fathers plotted their escape down the River Trent close by.

How to be a better writer. A couple of suggestions by April Taylor

By definition, all writers are creative. If they were not, there would be no impetus to pick up pen and paper or sit at the keyboard. It is also true that no writer, however talented, comes out of the blocks with a piece of writing that is perfect and polished.

Writing, as all writers will tell you, is a solitary profession and this does not help the creative writer develop that subjective self-criticism we need in order to progress along the road to, perhaps not success, but certainly, to better writing, more in-depth writing, writing that pays attention to character motivations and conflicts and does not, as I certainly did when I began, force the characters to do things they would never dream of doing in the name of plot!

There are many resources to help the solitary writer, online courses, social media groups and the like. However, two things I believe to be essential to the development of creativity into solid, "good" writing are a constructive and supportive local writing group and by that I mean one that has experienced authors in it who do not pull their punches, but are never cruel and, once a year, a week at a writing school.

I will be honest and say that I would never have become a published writer - both traditionally and self-published - had it not been for Hornsea Writers. And as for a writing school experience, I suggest you pop over to my blog to read more. www.apriltaylorauthor.com/blog

For more information about April Taylor, you can find her here:

www.apriltaylorauthor.com
https://www.facebook.com/britwriterapriltaylor?ref=bookmarks
https://twitter.com/authAprilTaylor

Research - Making the Most of What Comes Your Way

If the ubiquitous question asked of writers is where do you get your ideas from? close on its heels must be variations on how do you get to know this stuff? Yet mention Research is often to watch eyes glaze over. Non-writers seem to think that some sort of academic degree is a prerequirement, and with it hours spent poring over dusty tomes. 

Most basic research - the stuff that prompts our inquisitive gene to spend hours in libraries or on the internet - passes by our eyes and ears, and often our noses, every day. The trick is to notice it. Being relaxed and outside the daily routine helps, as Linda Acaster has been noting on her blog.

She's just returned from a holiday in the fjords of Norway, and kicks off a short series of posts based on her experiences seen through a writer's eyes. The first is about Landscapes. 

Still to come are posts on the architecture of the Hopperstad Stave Church outside Vik, Bergen's Museum of the Hanseatic League, and the rather cryptic Viking Ships Not From Norway.