And we're off!

We delayed the start of our trip as long as we could, in the hopes of getting the office sorted before we left home. Unfortunately that wasn't possible, so it will have to wait until we get back. That's not ideal, but it is good to be off on our adventures.

Our first couple of stops were to gardens. I took a great many photos, which I've hardly even looked at yet, so the pictures will be trailing behind us. (If you'd like to see even more pictures from our trip, have a look at the blog on my website.)

Free entry writing competitions

Here's a monthly short story competition. The prize is $100 plus 50% of the subscription revenue from your story. Reprints are accepted – provided of course that you've not given up the rights.

A reminder about the Creative Futures competition. The theme is 'material', the competition is for under represented authors, entries of fiction, poetry and creative non fiction accepted. The prize is publication and '£25,000 worth of cash and professional development prizes'.

Womag news

Thanks to Suzan Lindsay for the details of the People's Friend poetry competition. They want - "a poem on the theme of 'reconciliation'. The poem has to have three verses of four lines. The competition closes at noon on 9th May. Email your poem with your name and address to pfeditor@dcthomson.co.uk with 'Poetry Competition' in the subject line. First prize is £150 with three runner-up prizes of £50 plus publication in the magazine."

If you've had a big batch of rejections from TAB, don't panic! Lots of people have (mine are in double figures and some go back to stories I submitted EIGHT years ago!). 

From Vivienne Moles

How do you find what publications you might have been in when they have the rights to place them elsewhere? (Something it's useful to know for various reasons, including claiming ALCS.)

I trawled through a few month's worth of Woman's Weeklys, just to see if any of my BOWW had appeared, as happened with Alyson this month. (I did it the long way 😩 and went through individual ones looking at the 'text preview). Then I had an idea: Haha! If you type your name in Pressreader (My library no longer subscribes, so this is as a non-user), preferably in inverted commas because it narrows the field, snippets of your work pop up and you can see where they've come from, and dates. 🙂

I suspect that might be useful for the Woman's Weekly family? Like Australia, NZ, Woman etc...,? You'd have to have someone with more of a repertoire than me to check that out. I work pretty much exclusively on a laptop and think this might not be so easy with an app (Hate apps! 😠 ) on a tablet. It will NOT find publications that are not in Pressreader. I found a variety of bits, including shortlisted from WM, a letter in the TV times from 2019, Best win and letters to WM.

Vivienne adds that at one time Yours didn't attribute stories, so although some show up, they don't all.

Thanks for this, Vivienne. My library also stopped subscribing to Pressreader and I hadn't realised it was still possible to still search for works, so this is potentially very useful.

The saga continues

The progress of our office installation has been so complicated, changeable and stressful that I daren't give you all the details in case I get a reputation for writing totally incomprehensible and unbelievable bleak nonsense. Let's just say I recommend using Sharps - but only if you want inspiration for unfathomable horror stories.

I'm hoping these flowers will stop me feeling blue about it all!

Womag news

Alyson tells me that Tracey at The People's Friend is looking for more pocket novels. The latest requirements I can find are here – I believe they're up to date.

Free entry writing competitions

On the Premises have a short story competition with the theme of 'Less' which can be interpreted in lots of ways. Maximum word count 3,000. Prizes from $250 for first place.

Thanks to Fiona for this flash fiction competition from Gooseberry Pie. There's $1,100 in prize money and they only want 400 words, so it already felt worth a try. After yet another snag with our office fitting reading the prompt was a bad day getting worse, it felt like a sign! I hope the bit about it all ending up better than expected comes true. 

A note about rights

You probably know that when a magazine buys a story, they don't generally just buy the right to print it once, even when they don't take all rights. Generally they'll require the right to reuse it, often in different formats. For example, they might decide to use it online, in an ebook, or in another magazine owned by the same company. 

It's because of this, that a story which I never submitted to Yours magazine is in the current issue. I wouldn't have known about that, without the combined efforts of Sharon Boothroyd and Sharon Haston. Thank you ladies – now that I know I can claim ALCS.

Btw, one of the flower photos in this post is a reprint from a previous post. Points to anyone who deduces which one!

Not going to plan

The photo is of our lovely new office which was fitted by Sharps in March – except obviously it wasn't. We've had several cancellations and a lot of stress. The problem was that they couldn't get the bubble wrapped pieces you can see, until two days ago. Unfortunately, they don't fit with our order, so the saga continues...

I'm still working on the next book in my crime series, and mostly resisting the urge to change it from cosy to grisly with a massive body count!

Free to enter writing competitions

Thanks to Vivienne for sending me the link to this competition from Toasted Cheese. The theme is festivals. You can submit fiction (as long as it's not in any genre) or creative non fiction. There are Amazon vouchers on offer for 1st, 2nd and 3rd placed entries.

Here's a competition to pitch a children's book. As well as the free competition, there's also the option to pay quite a lot of money to have your work assessed. It might, possibly, be worth it if you're certain you want a career from writing children's books and this is your publisher of choice.

Other publication opportunities

If you have a 'swoonworthy' romance novella of 10,000 to 40,000 words, you might like to consider submitting it to Spotify Audiobooks. Thanks to Liz for telling us about this one.

They only want audio rights, so you can still submit if the book has been published in other formats (as long as you hold the rights), or you'd like to do that yourself. I'm thinking of giving this a try.

Also from Vivienne is the info that Crowvus are looking for memoir submissions in prose, poetry or commentary.

Submission updates

Oh dear - another week when I've got the alert that the blog post is live before I'd finished writing it! I rather suspect that might happen quite often in the months ahead. Still, my cunning plan of posting stuff whenever I can, and scheduling the post is working. I'll keep on with that in the hope that a scrappy, unfinished post with a bit of info is better than nothing.

Photos are from last week's mini literary crime festival. One of the attendees said he uswd to find the blog useful, but hadn't seen it lately. I assured him it's still going, so hope he's found this post. If so - Hello! It was nice to meet you. Have you started editing that book yet?

Free entry writing competitions

Thanks to Alyson for this short story competition from the Jane Austen society.  The prize is to have your story recorded as an audiobook. It all sounds a bit complicated, so please check the website for more details.

Womag news

With Woman's Weekly we're now to assume a rejection if we've not heard back within 16 weeks, rather than 12 as was previously the case. Stories can still be 'placed on file' for possible use in future. If that happens, it's OK to try them elsewhere and withdraw them fro WW if you get a sale.

The People's Friend have again asked for no formatting at all on submissions - incliding not double line spacing, and no page numbers. This is to save them time and they will now not consider any submissions with any kind of formatting at all. This was announced on Twitter. If, like me, you don't use that platform, you can find the deails in my previous post.

New The People's Friend guidelines?

I've heard reports of new, and slightly confusing, guidelines for The People's Friend having been posted on Twitter yesterday. Given the date, and the fact they didn't seem clear, a couple of people have asked me if these are genuine.

I'm not on Twitter, so rely on their website for submission requirements. The 'latest guidelines' there are dated September last year. They don't match what has been seen, by some, on Twitter, and apparently the tweets didn't have the tone of a joke, so I'm not sure. 

When I know more, I'll post an update.

And here's the update, from Alan at TPF.

Hello! Everyone on the "Friend" is very busy, as you know, so from today onwards we won't be accepting submissions that have double line spacing or have formatting.

We also need double quotes for direct speech.

Please DO NOT have headers, footers or page numbers on your document. You must adhere to our word counts. 10% UNDER is OK, but not over.

It's taking up more and more time to get documents ready for our publishing system and that's why we're asking! Thank you!

Surrounded by criminal masterminds!

I'll be spending all of today amongst people who have crime on their minds, as I'm a participating author in a crime literary festival in Lee-on-the-Solent. 

Free entry writing competitions

 Thanks to Alyson for sending me the details of this playwriting competition. We've both had a good look and as far as we can tell it's free to enter. The theme is the climate change. The prize package includes £15,000 and an option to produce yor play at The Globe. You'll need to be UK based and have 'demonstrated a commitment to script-based mediums'. 

Thanks to both Fiona and Sharon B for this poetry competition with a £25 book token as the prizes in different categories.  The want funny poems, which can either be written, or performed and videod.  (Is videod a word? The red line underneath suggests not!)

Womag news

For those of us who don't use Twitter, Alyson and HB have passed on these tweets from The People's Friend - Get writing! We're looking for stories from July onwards for 'People's Friend' weekly, and from September onwards for our Specials. We're always looking for stories for our little annual! And Christmas stories can be accepted from April onwards...

Remember to put all your details on the manuscript. If it's a period story, please put the year it's set. Pay attention to word counts and don't go over.

My news

It's my birthday on Monday. I can't decide what kind of cake to have – what do you suggest?

 Free entry writing competitions

On the Premises have a new mini competition. This time they want two stories, but even if you use the maximum word count for both, it's still only 150. The first prize is $45.

Other publication opportunities

If you're a Scottish writer of romance novels, or a writer from anywhere writing romance set in or inspired by Scotland, then this might be of interest. Thanks to my friend Pauline for passing on the details. She's not a writer, yet is still looking out for interesting opportunities for us.

UPDATE - Sorry, I didn't get around to finishing off this post. There's been 'stuff' - you might know how it is. Still, my plan of adding stuff when I can and scheduling seems to be sort of working. 

Here are some tulips by way of apology.

Just a couple of things

Short post this week, as I've been busy with non writing stuff. 

Alyson Hilbourne suggested sharing this blog post from Kath McGurl on writing dual timelines as she thought it might be of interest to some of us.  I've never attempted writing anything dual timeline. I've read some good pieces written in that style and can see it's a very useful device for the right story, so I'm not ruling it out. How about you? Have you used, or considered using, dual timelines?

I wonder how many of you remember when Kath ran this blog? I don't recall how long ago that was.

Sometime ago, Fiona told us about her experiences on a Hawthornden retreat. You can read the details here, but to sum up, it's a month living in a castle for free, and with help towards transport costs, with nothing to do but write. Applications for next year can be made here.

Looking again

We're making plans for our next trip away in the van (which is why you've got pictures of a previous one). Most of the places we intend to go will be return visits. Things will look different though, as we've always gone in the second half of the year. The biggest changes will be in the gardens and landscape, but even a castle can appear very different depending on factors such as the light, weather and number of visitors.

Writing can be like that too. What we spot when editing just after we've drafted it will be different from what we notice much later - especially if it's been submitted and rejected in that time. Thinking about our intended audience or market, or expected time of publication can also make us read and edit our work differently.

What are you looking for when you read your own work?

Free entry competition news 

Thanks to Dee for telling us about this sonnet competition from New Writers. To enter, you need to sign up to their newsletter, which you can do here. 

Their site is interesting and includes details of lots of other writing competitions and opportunities. Most have fees, but there are some excellent prizes, so you might feel it's worth a try.

And thanks to Sharon Boothroyd for info on the Meetcute competition for romance novel writers from the Kate Nash agency. They want the first chapter and offer a prize of £500 plus representation. UPDATE - We've since discovered that although there's no mention of it until you get to the submissions page, there's a £12 entry fee. Sorry I didn't spot that!

Other publication opportunities

Here's a wrtiing challenge from Chris Fielden. He wants 100 words, with as many as possible being adverbs. Entries,  plus a short bio, will be published in an anthologu which will be sold for charity.

Eleventh Hour are looking for prose which has been previously rejected and since revised. We've all got some of those, haven't we? I'm not entirely sure what you get out of submitting your work there (sorry, I did look but I'm very short of time at the moment.) 

I'm mostly mentioning it because it makes the point that a rejection, or several, doesn't have to mean the end for that particular piece of writing. That was always the case, but with there now being more competition for every fiction slot, there must be loads of great womag submissions which don't get accepted.

My news

I'm taking part in a couple more promotions. This time they're both for books available through kindle unlimited (although they're also on sale). This one is for sweet romances and this one is has a mixture of genres.

What's Best?

This probably makes me sound old, but... It's March tomorrow. How can that be happening so soon? On the plus side, that makes it semi-officially spring now.

Free Entry competition news

Creative Futures have a competition for 'underrepresented writers' with classes for poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction. There will be fifteen winners who will share £2,500 and have their work published. The list of people considered underrepresented, including some I wouldn't have expected, so it's worth looking to see if you qualify.

Here's a short story competition for those who want a better world. The main prize is a year of 'writing guidance by a experienced writer / publisher'.

Womag / competition news

If you're thinking of entering Best's crime story competition, and as there's a £500 prize I expect most of have at least considered it, then you might want to take a look at this post by Simon Whaley. Thanks to Alyson for bringing it to my attention. 

btw, Simon is a useful source of information on many aspects of the business side of writing. It's worth signing up for his emails - unless you're one of those weir people who keep going of for months at a time in a campervan with limited data and internet access.

My news

As a very tiny part of Portsmouth Bookfest, I'll be at the Community Kettle in Cosham on Monday, selling books. If you happen to be in the area please pop in and say hello. No hard sell from me, I promise – and there will be cake available.

Three freeebies

Back to coloured sticks this week! 

Free entry writing competition news

Here's a flash fiction competition. In this case, flash means up to 1,000 words. It's for women writers only. The prize is publication and an invitation to join the group who are running the competition. 

On The Premises have a vey short story competition on the theme of circles. With a top prize of $35 you could earn more than a dollar a word! Thanks to Ruth for mentioning this in the comments to last week's post.

Thanks to Sharon Boothroyd for the link to this short story competition on the theme of hidden treasures. The prize is book tokens and possible publication. I may have mentioned this one before. Apologies if I have, but twice seems better than not at all.

My news

I've got two stories in womags this week. There are more details on my website.

Happy Valentine's!

Happy Valentine's! I've picked you some flowers (from my photo archives).

We're away in our campervan for a couple of days – just because we can. Hopefully I'll be surrounded by flowers today, as we're going to Kingston Lacy to look at the snowdrops. I'm becoming a galanthophile! We're doing something for Gary too, which will involve a bracing and character building walk.

Free entry writing competitions

This month, The Scottish Book Trust want 50 words about a fox, and offer an appropriately small prize. Thanks to Alyson for the reminder about that one. I know it's a regular thing, but keep forgetting both to mention it her, and to enter.

The Libraro Prize is somewhat bigger, being valued at £50,000 and including a publishing contract with Hatchette. They do want a whole book though - fiction or crossover YA, and you'd need to have finished it already as it's just about to close. Sorry for the late notice. I'm hoping late is better than never. There are reader prizes too, so it might be worth looking at even if your novel isn't quite ready (or not yet started) as it looks as though this is an annual competition.

The Jay Yes competition is for stories of 2,500 to 4,000 words, by unpublished writers. The prize is publication and publicity. There's plenty of time to get something written for this one.

Here's a romance novel writing competition for UK writers from a Black, Asian, mixed heritage and/or multiple ethnic background. The prize package includes £1,000 cash and help to get your book written and published.

Womag / competition news

Best have a new competition, this time with the theme of cosy crime. Thanks to Hazel (HB) for the picure with the details. Best take all writes for winning and runner up stories.

Dead cheap!

Today's treat (in addition to the bargain book mentioned below) is some coloured sticks. You weren't expecting that, were you?

Free entry writing competition news

I entered the tree to my door Valentine's competition, and got an acknowledgement wishing me luck. Then I got another email thanking me foe entering and spotted the words 'We regret to inform you'. I thought it was going to say I hadn't won, but it actually said they've decided not to run the competition. That's much worse! I'm rather cross, as I wrote something specifically after seeing the competition advertised on their site.

Story Glory has a free monthly fiction competition. You have to create an account with them, but it's free to do that. The prize this month is publication and a book. From next month there will be a choice of a book or Amazon voucher.

Thanks to Sharon Boothroyd for this nice sounding writing competition with eight cash prizes. They're looking for a piece of fiction, non-fiction or 'something in between' of up to 1,000 words on how you see the world. Anyone can enter. Closing date is Easter Sunday. If you've not entered a competition before, on account of feeling a bit apprehensive, this might be a good one to try.

Call for submissions

Thanks to Alyson Hilbourne for passing on this from Bridge House Publishing. The theme is 'Room at the Inn' and you have between 1,000 and 5,000 words to create something for inclusion in the anthology. In theory you could earn royalties, but don't count on it.

My news

My romantic murder mystery Acting Like A Killer is currently on sale for 99p / 99c. I think that's dead cheap! ;-) Anything you can do to help spread the word will be greatly appreciated.

Blue sky thinking

Free entry writing competitions.

The Jim Baen memorial short story competition is for 'a short story of no more than 8,000 words, that shows the near future (no more than about 50-60 years out) of manned space exploration.'

The prize package includes paid publication.

The Creative Futures competition is for 'underrepresented writers' (there's a long list of people who qualify). There are classes for fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction and offers £25,000 worth of 'cash and professional development prizes'. 

Other publication opportunities

Thanks to Alyson Hilbourne for the link to Fiction On The Web. The publish two stories a week, which can be from 1,000 to 10,000 words. The pay is £15 (or $15 or €15). They'll consider reprints as long as they're not currently available anywhere online, including ebooks.

I thought I'd test them out for you, by sending a story I'd previously had published in a magazine. Submission is by Submittable, so you'll need to set up a (free) account if you don't have one. 

The story I sent had been previously published in a womag. It was rejected within days. The feedback suggested they'd have preferred something less light. Feedback is optional. There's a thing to click when submitting if you'd rather not have it.

Bluesky

Alyson saw the above market mentioned on Bluesky. That's a platform I feel could be very useful, but which I'm not currently making the best of. If you're on there, please share your profile and/or that of others you find useful or interesting with regards writing, and I'll add them to the list.

For those unfamiliar with Bluesky, it's just like Twitter used to be, before it got swamped with adverts and bots. If you feel you already have enough social media platforms you're happy with, I wouldn't advise you to add more, as they all take up time, but if you want to add one, or make a switch, it might be worth you taking a look.

Alyson Hilbourne             J Lenni Dorner

Kathy Steinemann

Patsy Collins

Womagwriter

Elizabeth McGinty

And another one

Free entry writing competitions

In case you missed it, here's a link to the extra post I made on Tuesday, with three free to enter competitions, all with a Scottish flavour.

Thanks to Alyson for this 350 word story competition. There's no theme. First prize is $200, with two further prizes of $50.

My news

Here's another promotion I'm involved in. If you like cosy mysteries, do take a look.

How's your writing going?