Rae of Light

                       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...

So I'm on Twitter and even have a new phone to make those all important tweets more of a possibility.  To date I've tweeted about my first strawberries, redecorating my spare room and what's going on in my writing world. I also did a bit of research to see if there were any other sites out there which suited my personality better than the 140 character restriction of Twitter. That in itself proved time consuming and confusing. There's just so many of them. See what I mean? It forced me to ask myself if joining a whole load of different social media sites was really right for me. I can see some serious downfalls. It's a time consuming business and there are so many things to get distracted by. There's the danger of drowning in the vast ocean of Twitter, Pinterest, facebook, tumblr, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn, flickr..... Added to this, all the Social Media focus could lead to not doing what we (writers) really want to be doi...

       Emma Flint Emma Flint was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, lived in Scotland for eight years and is now an award-winning Technical Author in London. She says of her writing, "I want to poke around in the darker reaches of the human mind, and explore what people are capable of under extreme circumstances. I like to linger on physical descriptions, and exploit those tiny essential details that make a character human."  This approach has informed and inspired her first novel, Little Deaths , a heady blend of sex, murder, bourbon, noir and a femme fatale. Set in 1960s suburban New York, it tells a true story with a modern feminist slant. LITTLE DEATHS I’m on my third or fourth draft of Little Deaths depending on what you call a full draft.  Here’s hoping it will be ready to go to a publisher in early September.  The last draft needed a lot of structural changes and I had to thrash out one of the narrators.  M...

In my pre-birthday posts I go to great lengths to point out all the things I want and like most. This is my bid to ensure I get the kind of presents I can truly treasure. And let me tell you – it works a treat. To date I have a very large tub of Nutella to get through several wonderfully vibrant marking pens already in use – see my facebook page for evidence 2 packets of Fairtrade coffee in the freezer But as yet I've failed to mention what I'm really not so keen on. So, in a bid to redress the balance, I'm going to let you in on the little things which make me squirm; some, which I have no rational explanation for whatsoever. I'm not big on cut flowers. Those cut stems make me consider the rapid decline I'm soon to see in these colourful gifts. They make me feel sad rather than brighten my day as intended by the giver. I would prefer these lovely blooms stayed firmly attached to the plant they grew on. I understand t...

      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...

Have I mentioned before that writing is a lonely business? Of course I have. So to avoid feeling isolated us writers have to find ways to make it less so. One of the easiest I've discovered, apart from walking away from my laptop and leaving the house, is social media. It's a good way to meet other writers and like minded people. Even though I've been on Facebook for quite some time I've only really been posting more regularly since I set up my author page.  And since then I've discovered there are a wealth of Indie authors out there beavering away on their lonesome from dawn till dusk. And others from dusk till dawn.  And I thought that rather than hide away in our ivory towers, we should band together and conquer the world. Mmmm – a bit of my megalomania creeping to the fore there. Let's move on shall we. In a bid to become even more social media savvy I signed on to a Twitter workshop at SAF with Emily Benet a...

     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...