Feeling floral

We've visited quite a few big gardens on our recent travels, as well as walking through woods and countryside full of wild flowers. Here are just a few examples of flowers we've seen.

Womag news

People are still getting rejections from TAB. It seems rather a waste of time, as we're told to assume a rejection after three months, and the rejected stories are, as far as I'm aware, all much older than that. In my case, they're nearly all for stories sent and given up on years ago. I've also had rejections for stories TAB have published!

Free to enter writing competitions

Thanks to Alyson for this flash fiction competition from Curtis Brown. Max word count 300, theme landmarks. The first prize is £300. 

The rules state AI must not be used – something I totally agree with, but wouldn't be able to prove I'd complied with. Apparently in some cases, the use of dashes is considered 'evidence' of having cheated in this way, as is the knowledge AI exists. 

Here's a poetry competition with £100 first prize (you'll need to scroll down a bit to find it). Thanks to Aly Rhodes for sending me the details.

Other publication opportunities

Thanks to Alyson for the info that Haiku Shack are looking for micro fiction and short poems. They don't pay, but you can submit previously published work – as long as you did't give up all rights, of course.

btw, if you're involved in any publication, physical or digital, which welcome submissions, doesn't charge a submission / reading fee, and would like a mention on my blog, please get in touch.

From Liz Filleul – Earlier this year, I signed a contract with Clan Destine Press, an Australian small-press publisher, for a short story collection called Sentenced Beyond the Seas: The Convict Constable’s Casebook. The book features a convict constable, Will Grafton, solving crimes in 1830s Van Diemen’s Land. The seven short mysteries include three that have been previously published in The People’s Friend Special. ‘The Convict Constable’, ‘Death Knock’ and ‘Dead Men Tell No Tales’ appeared as 9500-word ‘long crime reads’ in May 2020, May 2021 and May 2022 respectively. 

Patsy has kindly invited me to blog about the work involved in taking those three stories and making them part of a collection that can be read like a novel. So next week I’ll be blogging about the process involved with this. Having just been through the editing stage, I can safely say that it’s been trickier than I initially envisaged!