Hornsea Writer, Joy Gelsthorpe, On Writing

The Book Nook

 

Give me a 3-word summary of what you will be doing, writing-wise, in the coming year

Publishing
Promoting
Writing

Tell me more

Bonfires and Brandy has been beta read/copy-edited by a local historian as well as two other
authors, so the manuscript is now with the publisher and should be out in mid-summer. It is
my fourth novel in the series about the Jordan farming family in Reighton in the early 1700s.
This latest book is no sanitised version of life; it shows a village left in a moral vacuum.
Without a resident vicar, young men are hell-bent on sport, gambling and mischief. Women,
children and animals face the brunt, but there is hope for the future. A boy’s personal tragedy
alters his life and, alongside cruelty, there is the redeeming feature of a boy learning to be a
shepherd. Boys will be boys and they can change, but can the men do the same?

Apart from Wray’s Stationers in Filey, few bookshops will stock local authors, so I’ve done

my usual tour of shops-cum-post offices in the area. This has led to a couple of successful

outlets. Since Hornsea Museum and the gift shop at Hornsea Mere sell my books, other

museums and tourist sites will be my next venture. I live in hope.

Just recently, a bookshop opened in Bridlington Old Town (The Book Nook, 44, High Street)

It not only stocks my books but also advertises them in the window display. Yey!

I'll be attending Hornsea's Town House Fair on Newbegin on Saturday, 26th August to sign and sell copies of the new book.

Craft Fairs are another option. I’ll be at The Driffield Steam Fair this year to sell and sign

books – the weekend of 12th to 13th August.

Tell me about a writing-related event from last year

Last year I attended the first Filey Literature Festival since Covid. Other local authors also
displayed and signed their books at The Evron Centre. Luckily, I’d bought a card reader so I
could offer a deal on the books so far in the series. Sales were good and I was glad I’d bought
bags that were just the right size for three books. Now I need to buck up my ideas on signing,
and remember to ask how people spell their names…

Learn more about Joy here.

Blink and You Missed It

 

I have always enjoyed the challenge of telling a complete story within the discipline of a tight world count. It's up to readers to join the dots and complete what is left unsaid. This week Vine Leaves Press published my story below in their long-running 50-word micro-fiction series.

 

The Old Dog 

His uncle left everything to charity and he inherited the cantankerous dog. It was old, with a weeping eye. He paid the vet’s bills and gave it food but no love. They lived in mute, reproachful companionship until the dog died and the man mourned a life of failed relationships.

Not only are the stories short, they are also short-lived. One a day online. Then it vanishes, replaced by the next offering. A smorgasbord of light-hearted, sombre, wise or witty stories. Yet come the end of the year, they will re-appear in anthology form. 

In the meantime, fans of bite-sized fiction can sign up for their daily dose at https://www.subscribepage.com/vineleavespress

Madeleine McDonald

 

 

 

 

 

 

Half-Price Ebooks!

 

Not all authors sell their ebooks direct via the many e-retail outlets available as it can be a lot of work keeping tabs on individual outlets. 

Linda Acaster uses the distributor Smashwords/Draft2Digital to gain access to Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple, and Scribd. It works well, as Smashwords offers ePub format as well as mobi format for a Kindle.

And Smashwords runs a twice-annual Sale 😃 

Until the end of July, Linda's titles via Smashwords are available half price - yes, 50% discount added at checkout. What could be easier? Do have a look.

Thinking about writing your own fiction? Linda's Writer's Guide does what it says on its cover - no waffle, ten full stories explained: 

Reading A Writer's Mind: Exploring Short Fiction - First Thought to Finished Story

 

For readers who enjoy a quick shiver as the daylight fades, there's a choice of three Chillers:

 

Want to lose yourself in longer reads? The time-spanning Torc of Moonlight trilogy of a modern-day water goddess, takes you on a journey through Celtic Hull, Roman York, and Medieval Durham. History is mere inches beneath our feet. And it never truly dies.

 

Available as a single trilogy or individual ebooks.

Enjoy your reading!

Hornsea Writer, Stuart Aken, On Writing

Give me a 3-word summary of what you will be doing, writing-wise, in the coming year.

Creating new fiction.

Tell me more

Currently, the envisaged novel is forming within my skull, as the idea forms into something that may become publishable. As a pantster, I never plot. My created characters are people I come to know and love, mostly. Once those relationships have matured, I set the players in a location relevant to the story and allow them to determine the route they will take to arrive at my predetermined destination. I know what themes I want to explore. I carry in my grey matter the fragile scaffolding on which the story will be built. But all my writing, regardless of what else the story says, is about relationships. And the way I deal with those is by wearing my characters’ skins, moving in their shoes, encountering their doubts, fears, and hopes, and attempting their ambitions.

The new novel is partly inspired by Yann Martel’s extraordinary work, ‘Self’. For now, I’ll say no more on that.  

Tell me about a writing-related event from last year

Resting from the all-consuming demands of imagined scenarios, I spent last year writing for Medium. Eighteen stories in total, on a variety of topics from dogs through taxes and beaches, to walks in foreign climes encouraged me to share my thoughts. Most of these are accompanied by photographs I’ve taken (I was once a full time professional photographer, and now continue the art in a semi-professional way.) You’ll find one piece that illustrates my two creative loves here. There will be more short articles this year. You’ll find them here.

Writing the odd factual piece is useful for an author of fiction, as it increases the writer’s knowledge of the real world, which can then inform whatever stories are subsequently written. Not all fiction is reliant on research, but by far the vast majority is. We spend a great deal of time discovering facts to lend validity and truth to the products of our imagination. Last year, I spent a good deal of time resting my creative drive and encouraging the restorative effects of enjoyment of life. I also read a lot of factual books, including some basic research for the next novel. That task will continue this year, even as I begin to write the new book. It’s an ongoing process for most of us. Without deep research from the author, many works of fiction would fail to convince the average reader of their veracity.

Learn more about Stuart here.

How a lifetime interest in the Tudors led to a fantasy series

When I was 14, I read Margaret Campbell Barnes’ “Murder Most Foul” about Anne Boleyn. I became so fascinated about her, I then read anything our village library had about her - not much - and ravaged the school library, too. 

When I was in my early 20s, my parents went to Warwick Castle, where Holbein’s pencil drawing of Anne was on display. My father was not given to flights of fancy, but said ‘That looks like our April’. When I got married and had an ‘Anne Boleyn beaded head-dress', then saw the photos, the pencil sketch did look a bit like me. 

So it was no surprise that years later, I decided to write a historical fantasy crime novel, set in a world where Anne was not executed but carried her 1534 pregnancy to term.  I then decided to go the whole hog and put a bit of magic in it, and Luke Ballard, elemancer, was born. It wasn’t until I visited Hampton Court Palace - on my wish list for over 30 years - that Luke found his home in the Outer Green apothecary shop.

The amount of intrigue flying around the court in the last days of Henry VIII’s life was the perfect setting for what would become the first book in the series. Needless to say, Anne Boleyn plays an important part in the plot. 

Thus, “Dangers of Destiny” was born.

You can  find out more about it here on my blog: https://authorapriltaylor.blogspot.com  

Dangers of Destiny is free to read on Kindle Unlimited, or £3.99 from Amazon.
You can find it here: https://mybook.to/aEYs

You can read more about April Taylor here:

 Twitter  Amazon UK  Amazon USA YouTube

Hornsea Writer, Linda Acaster, On Writing

Give me a 3-word summary of what you will be doing, writing-wise, in the coming year.

Pivoting my focus.

Tell me more:

For years I’ve been a writer of novels which needed a great amount of research and planning. While they’ve brought me much satisfaction, they are definitely a long haul job.

By chance I came upon novellas, dipping my toe into the Chiller genre with Scent of the Böggel-Mann and The Paintings, and found the length better suits the demands of my current lifestyle. I’ve a couple of Historical novellas to finish, and I’m looking for a subject and genre I’d enjoy carrying into a series.

I’m also concentrating more time on content-writing for Medium, a digital platform which hosts a multitude of niche publications. The aim is to launch a couple of my own. Through years of research and novel-writing, I’ve a wealth of information to share.

Tell me about a writing-related event from last year

I created my first decent ebook cover for the Psychological Mystery The Forever House, launched during early summer, but overlooked the “bleeds” necessary for a paperback edition – LOL! After an initial horrified shriek, I turned to YouTube to immerse myself in a crash course on photo-manipulation, and realised I enjoyed the challenge. The attention to detail is very reminiscent of that needed when writing fiction.

Learn more about Linda here.

Hornsea Writer, Madeleine McDonald, On Writing

Give me a 3-word summary of what you will be doing, writing-wise, in the coming year.

Anything and everything.

Tell me more:

In 2022 my aim was to submit something somewhere once a week to competitions or anthologies that either paid a cash prize or rewarded authors indirectly by publishing under an ISBN number. Alas, online magazines that fill their pages by asking authors to work for no pay are mushrooming, and are to be avoided like the plague.

I am grateful to those generous writers who donate their time and effort to spread the word among fellow scribes by posting lists of worthwhile opportunities on the Internet.

In terms of success, in 2022, I had three short stories, and two non-fiction pieces published. 2023 has started well, with the publication of one poem and two cosy crime shorts.

A new departure for me was selecting and introducing stories for The Best of Cafe Lit 11. All the authors published on the CafeLit website are good writers, and selecting only a few took careful thought.

Tell me about a writing-related event from last year

The success I relished the most was to win Press 53's monthly competition to tell a story in 53 words exactly, after submitting to them for years. Their contest is great fun and I shall carry on trying.

Learn more about Madeleine here.

Forthcoming publication: Crime and Punishment in Tudor England

Crime and Punishment in Tudor England: From Alchemists to Zealots tells the story of the enactment of law and its penalties from Henry VII to Elizabeth I. 

The sixteenth century was remarkable in many ways. In England, it was the century of the Tudor Dynasty. It heralded the Reformation, William Shakespeare, the first appearance of bottled beer in London pubs, Sir Francis Drake, and the Renaissance. Oh, and the Spanish Armadas―all five of them! Yes, five armadas and all failures. 

 

 It was a watershed century for crime and punishment. Henry VII’s paranoia about the loyalty of the nobility led to military-trained vagrants causing mayhem and murder. Henry VIII’s Reformation meant executions of those refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy. State-controlled religion―summed up through the five reigns as Roman Catholic; Anglo-Catholic; Protestant; Roman Catholic, and Sort of Protestant but I don’t mind so long as you swear the Oath of Supremacy―became an increasingly complex, not to say confusing, issue for ordinary people. 

 

 Although primary sources are rare and sometimes incomplete, the life of criminals and the punishments meted out to them still fascinates. 

 

Read about:

·       John Daniell and how he tried to blackmail the Earl of Essex.

·       The Stafford insurrection of 1486, the first serious opposition to the new king.

·       The activities of con-man extraordinaire, Gregory Wisdom, and many more. 

 

Crime and punishment didn’t start with the Tudors and this book summarises judicial practices built on tradition from the Roman occupation. It covers often gory details―what happens to the body when it is beheaded, burned, boiled, or hanged?

Arranged in alphabetical order of crimes, it recounts tales of blackmail, infanticide, kidnapping, heresy, and sumptuary laws. Told with occasional low-key humour, the book also includes Tavern Talk, snippets of quirky information. 

  Dip into it at your pleasure.

 

 Crime and Punishment in Tudor England is available from all outlets for pre-order now. 

Publication date 30^th August 2023.

You can read more about April Taylor here:

 Twitter  Amazon UK  Amazon USA YouTube

Hornsea Writer, April Taylor, On Writing

Give me a 3-word summary of what you will be doing, writing-wise, in the coming year.

Reissues. New series. Non-fiction

 

Tell me more

Dangers of Destiny – the all-new first book in the Tudor alternate-history-crime series, formerly published by Harlequin, will be published by March 2023. The other books in the series will be edited and re-issued throughout the year.

Series title will be The Luke Ballard Chronicles.

New series – current working title: The Guisborough Guardian.

 

The theme for the series is: Darkness cannot claim what the light refuses to surrender.

Catalogue of Evil is the first in the series. An historical crime novel set in 1971. The action centres around the market town of Guisborough in North Yorkshire. A series of young adult girls have been abducted and killed in a ritualistic manner.

When one of her library assistants becomes a victim, librarian Octavia Otterburn and her friend, historian Jeffrey Thompson set out to solve the murders. It is only as they delve deeper they discover the true magnitude of the problems—and dangers— they face.

 

Triumph of the Heart is a romantic suspense novel set in the 15^th century Wars of the Roses. The theme is becoming who you are, despite all opposition, is the true beginning of happiness.

 

Dependent upon acceptance, a non-fiction for Pen & Sword. The subject is under discussion.

 

 

Tell me about a writing-related event from last year

I wrote my first commission for Pen & Sword Publishing. Crime and Punishment in Tudor England will be published in July 2023. This was a completely new departure for me and stemmed from the Tudor alternate-history-crime books published by Harlequin under the series title The Tudor Enigma.

The book was very intense, but, as a librarian, I loved all the research, but, not unnaturally, found some of the details distressing. While I have made every effort to back up the facts—with over 400 endnotes (that was fun!)—the writing remains informative but with low-key humour. It can be read in sequence or dipped into. There are also snippets of interesting information at the end of each section called Tavern Talk.

It has been received very positively by my editor and the dust-jacket, which will be revealed in due course, is stunning.

 

Learn more about April here.