Rae of Light

       Joyce Bailey I live in North London with husband Jim and son Paul. I was born in Scotland and moved south in late 1960s to live in Essex, then Suffolk where my nearing completion novel, All the Bright Days, is set. I've had many jobs (all grist to a writer's mill) including one in a cosmetics factory (features in above novel) but for several years have worked as a medical secretary combined with intermittent freelance writing for magazines and newspapers.  Some years ago I made a conscious decision to drop factual writing for fiction and found the creative writing courses I did with the WEA (tutor Stewart Permutt ) and with Caroline Natzler extremely helpful in setting me off on the fiction writing path. SNOWFLAKES I told myself: don’t go on the internet, don’t keep looking at how to write, how to do a novel.   But in the end I did and I found this thing called the Snowflake Method .   What appealed to me is it’s writt...

                       Ian Richardson “I am a South London based writer who, after a near death incident, started acting around four years ago and resumed writing about a year later. It seemed like a good  idea. My work, including short stories, poetry and short plays has received professional rehearsed readings in local literary festivals and events. Two full length pantos have been performed in Community Theatre runs.   http://thcentre.com/tag/panto/ GENRE I don’t write in any particular genre.  Lots of it is mining incidents from my own life particularly childhood.  What I’ve been writing is somewhere between short story and Gonzo journalism.  I’ve recently reread some short stories by Heinrich Boll .  Some of them are only five pages long and nothing happens in them really.  But they’re absolutely intense.  They pull you in.  If I had a choi...

      Chantelle Atkins Chantelle Atkins was born and raised in Bournemouth, Dorset and still resides there now with her husband, children and various animals. She writes in both the Young Adult and Adult genre, and describes her work as gritty and character driven. WORK /LIFE BALANCE In the day I don't get any actual writing done but I do go online and do bits and bobs - emails or promo stuff, whatever the baby allows. Then I don't get on again till he's in bed. It's just solid then until I go to bed – 3 or 4 writing hours maybe. My other three children are all a bit older so they know once the baby's in bed it's my writing time. But I feel guilty all the time. But they understand that a bit because it's the only time I have until he wakes up. The day goes so quickly. When the baby was teeny tiny I got loads done because he was just asleep or I could have him with me and carried on so it was brilliant. I have Saturday nights...

     Steve Shahbazian I've attended Caroline's classes, written one novel – Green & Pleasant Land , a set of Sci Fi short stories – Approaching Paradise and err... that's it really. As my friend once said, “Why not have a go at writing? What have you got to lose?” Seventeen years later... NOVEL APPROACH Green & Pleasant Land is a political dystopian novel which I started work on way back in 2001. I've had the title for longer than I can remember. It was always that. When I first started it this was the only good thing about the novel. I hope it's improved since then. I wanted to write something in the same genre as things I like – Brave New World , 1984 , A Clockwork Orange . Whereas the idea of totalitarian governments and regimented societies had been done before. I wanted to look at a weak government, a fragmented society; a world which was in some ways familiar but in others, strange - to create a sense of ali...

         C ole Beauchamp Cole is another thoroughbred from the Caroline Natzler writing class stable. We both attended a writing group at The Royal Festival Hall and collaborated on Chasing The Hypotenuse . In a 45 minute chat over chai and a slice of victoria sponge we talked about old and new projects. TRUE PATH As you know, I’ve been working on this novel on and off for the last six years, but there’s been some movement lately. A fellow writer, Alice Hiller, read the manuscript and said, “It’s basically a captivity narrative – have you thought about first person?” My main character, Gen, is institutionalised to ‘cure’ her homosexuality. At first I thought, oh no, do I really want to do this? But I found it reads much better in first person than even a close third. When you’ve been working on a book for so long, you can edit it to death and lose heart. That’s what happened. I got up to chapter 12 and stopped. Then fate lent a ...

  Over the February half term Karine Hetherington and I found time in our hectic schedules to meet up at the Royal Festival Hall for coffee and a catch up.  The most important celebration of the morning was the recent publishing of her first novel, The Poet & The Hypotenuse . The last time we saw each other was about 3 years ago at one of Caroline Natzler 's courses when Karine was working on a short story version of The Poet & The Hypotenuse.  In fact, we worked together on a collection called Chasing the Hypotenuse . So in the 3 years since I last saw you the story has developed into a full blown book. Yes, it's been a long process because it's taken a long time. I've been working part-time. It's probably taken about 5 years. HOW IT ALL STARTED It started out as a short story about a young Russian emigre and her family in the 1930s. Then mushroomed eventually into a book which took a while becau...