Five free entry writing competitions – and some travel pics.

I've not been stuck in the mud at home over the last few weeks, as we've had a few trips away in the van and climbed two mountains! OK, maybe they weren't actual mountains, but they had the word mountain in the name and we climbed up them, which is good enough for me.

I'm 'chuffed*' to say we're going to be on more campervan adventures for the next few months. That will make keeping this blog updated more difficult, but I'll do my best. 

You can help out by passing on any womag info, free entry competition links, or other useful stuff you come across. Put them in comments, email me or message me on twitter with those.

Please ask any questions via comments on the blog. Doing that means others also see both question and answer meaning you may get help from other writers, and the response might help others too.

Here are five free to enter writing competitions to keep you busy while I pack the van and we plan our route.

This competition from Mills and Boon is for 'romance writers from underrepresented ethnic backgrounds'. The prize is a book contract wort £2,000 plus £,500 'to support your writing'.

For this competition from Inkitt, you're required to post a mystery or suspense story of up to 7,500 words. If you can then persuade enough people to like, share and review it you could win $500. I won't be giving this a go. I dislike both the popularity contest part and the strong possibility of publishing work without any reward.

If you're a 'beginning professional' in speculative fiction writing, you can enter this competition from Dream Foundry and be in with the chance of winning $1,000. 

The Foxes Retreat competition is for poetry, prose or scripts of up to 500 words on the theme of other worlds. The prizes are 1 to 1 coaching and workshop places.

The New Media Award offers various prizes up to £1,000.

* Sorry!

Yours and Yours Fiction rejection policy

Recently I've seen a few comments from people who've submitted to Your or Yours Fiction and after not hearing back for a few months are wondering if they should consider their stories to have been rejected. 

This is from their official guidelines.

"Rejection policy 

For short stories submitted to Yours magazine, you will receive a rejection slip if we are unable to use your story. 

However, for short stories submitted to Yours Fiction, because of the volume of submissions, we are unfortunately unable to provide individual letters of rejection. If you would like your posted short story returned to you, you are welcome to include a Stamped Addressed Envelope with your submission. Please note, however, that it may take up to six months to return these stories."

When you make a submission, you'll get an auto response, which includes this –

"Our review period is x6-12 months. As a result, if you haven't heard from us by the end of 12 months, it's safe to assume we haven't been able to use your submission. 

Space in the magazine is very tight, so please don't take it too badly if we haven't been able to publish your submission."

So, we need to wait 12 months with either publication, unless we get a rejection before then. Just to add to the confusion, it's not uncommon for a story to be passed from one editor to the other. I'm not sure if that story would then jump the queue, or if there could be a further 12 month wait.

Usually the response, if there is one, takes less than 12 months but I don't think it's safe to assume that what has usually happened in the past will necessarily be the case for current submissions.

Over to you!

Do you have any womag news?

Are you researching, writing, subbing? Had any acceptances or rejections? Any other news?

Feel free to use the as a picture prompt. If you'd like other writing prompts, short exercises and story/scene suggestions then you might find this book useful.

I'd love to hear your competition news.

Have you entered any writing comps? Had any luck? Heard about interesting contests? Got any tips to pass on? (Although I only feature free to enter competitions in my posts it's fine to share news about other competitions too.)

Talking of competitions, the winner of one of Glenda Young's novels, as offered in this post is – Carrie Congratulations! Please contact me with the UK address you'd like it sent to.

A bit of an update

At time of writing, the view from the (mobile) office window, was almost exactly like this, but sunnier.

The ALCS issue, now resolved thank goodness, has slightly overshadowed other posts on this blog. In case you missed the posts on other topics...

Glenda Young has written an encouraging guest post which I think will be of interest to anyone considering taking their writing in a new direction – or to anyone who'd like to win a signed copy of one of her books.

I recently posted links to five free to enter writing competitions.

Just to clear up any possible confusion, this blog is run solely by me, Patsy Collins. I also have a Womagwriter twitter account for writing related stuff. The views expressed by me in either place are entirely my own. Those views expressed by people who write guest posts for this blog, or leave comments, are theirs. I very appreciate people leaving comments, but don't necessarily endorse all the points made. In exceptional circumstances I will remove a comment, if I feel that's the best thing to do. Thankfully that's very rare – except for obvious spam. I get plenty of that!

There are online groups and blogs connected with womag writing which you may like to join or follow. Those who run them are welcome to post links / descriptions in the comments. I am in no way connected with any of these and can take no credit nor blame for their activities. 

A statement from ALCS

 I've received the following statement, to be posted on the blog, direct from Alison Baxter at ALCS.

Claiming for articles from ALCS for My Weekly and The People’s Friend

 

We have received a number of queries recently from contributors to My Weekly and People’s Friend, published by DC Thomson who have been unable to add these publications to their accounts via our website and been advised that they are no longer eligible. 

 

Please let us first of all apologise for the way in which your queries have been handled by the ALCS team, for any distress caused and for the length of time that it has taken us to respond appropriately and accurately up to this point. 

 

There appears to have been some confusion internally about the status of some titles published by DC Thomson and ALCS’ entitlement to collect for them and this has unfortunately been miscommunicated to several of our, understandably very concerned, members and incorrectly changed on our website.  

 

This miscommunication by ALCS, which suggests that DC Thomson have changed their processes causing their titles to be ineligible for ALCS payments, is incorrect. The publications that have been specifically mentioned (My Weekly, The People’s Friend) are currently included in the ALCS payment scheme, and the functionality on our website will be rectified shortly to reflect this.

 

As part of a wider review of our Article claims system we are in the process of reviewing our internal policies to ensure that we do fully adhere to the UK regulations on collective rights management, so should any titles that you currently claim for be considered in the future to fall outside of our payment remit we will advise you of this individually and in advance of any changes. Changes may be made to the scheme in future, but it is always our aim to individually inform members wherever possible of changes that will directly impact them, particularly in what has been a very challenging couple of years.

 

We understand that DC Thomson have been extensively contacted over this by many of their contributors so we will also be contacting them directly to explain the situation. If any individuals have any specific concerns, please contact Alison.baxter@alcs.co.uk

Angela Gilchrist from The People's Friend has also written a blog post on this subject.

Guest post by womag writer and novelist Glenda Young

 

Today's guest is Glenda Young

Why your comfort zone is bigger than you think

Hi everyone, I’m Glenda and I’m a womag writer and bestselling author published by Headline. My novels are set across two genres which are 1) gritty sagas set in a northeast mining village in 1919 and 2) cosy crimes set in modern-day Scarborough on the Yorkshire coast. I’ve also written TV tie-in books for ITV’s Coronation Street, I run a Coronation Street fan blog and am an award-winning short story writer. I’ve also got a unique claim to fame as the writer of Riverside, the first ever weekly soap opera published in The People's Friend magazine.

Phew.

That’s quite a lot of different genres to write in. And as if that wasn’t enough, whenever I get time, I love to pen short stories for women’s magazines. Over the last few years, I’ve had hundreds of womag stories published. And as all womag writers know, each story was tailored to the magazine it was submitted to, because knowing your market is key. However, not all of my stories were in the same genre. For instance for women’s magazines, I’ve had stories published about a cowboy searching for his father, horror stories, cosy crime, mysteries and plenty of comic short stories. I even wrote the first same-sex romance to be published in My Weekly magazine. As I'm not gay it's further proof that the margins of what you are capable of writing about can - and should - expand to the market's requirements.

But even though all of these short stories, and my novels, may appear at first glance to be in different genres, what I’d like to remind anyone reading this is that they were all written for the same market. As womag writers know, we tend to write for women. And that’s exactly who I keep in mind whether my story is about cowboys or comedy, whether my novels are sagas or cosy crime. I slant each story or novel to fit the market and have fun with what with I’m doing.

What I’m trying to say in a roundabout way (sorry Patsy, I’ll get to the point, promise!) is that just because we’re writing for women’s magazines, doesn’t mean you can’t try something new and surprising, as long as it fits the magazine’s specifications. And if you want to write a cowboy story, for instance, it doesn’t mean you have to leave your comfort zone. Think of it more as expanding your comfort zone around you, pushing it a little to give you more room to breathe.

Because after all, when we’re writing for women’s magazines or any particular market, writing something that might at first appear difficult and daunting, as long as you tailor it to the market you’re writing for, it isn’t that different at all. You’re simply playing with the genre and having a great deal of fun at the same time. And when you have fun in your writing, I truly believe your reader will find it fun to read too.

Glenda Young's  Website, Twitter, Facebook

From Patsy – With the reduction in markets for womag fiction, many of us are considering other types of writing. That might seem daunting but, as Glenda says, new doesn’t need to be completely different. If we think of subjects we’ve used in our stories, and know something about, we may come up with ideas for articles too and could attempt those with the same readership in mind. 

Glenda has kindly said that she'll give a signed paperback copy of any one of her books, plus some bookmarks, to one person who comments on this blog. (The books are stand alone, so you don't need to worry about picking the right one to start with.) Anyone may enter the draw, but the book can only be sent to a UK address. To be in with a chance, leave a comment on this post by midnight UK time on 16th August, making it clear that you'd like to take part. Of course comments from those not entering the draw are equally welcome.

Busy, but... five freebies

I have lots going on at the moment*, but I've made time for this quick post to share a few free entry writing competitions.

For the Weird Christmas story competition there are several prized of $50 and one of $75 for stories of 350 words, written to the provided prompts.

The Perito prize offers £200 for 'outstanding new short fiction of between 1000 and up to 2000 words'

Thanks to Alyson for the links to both of those.

If you write audio drama you could win £3,000 through the Imison Award. There's also a Tinniswood Award for the same form. I'm unsure about the prize for that one.

The Barbellion Prize is for 'an author whose work has best represented the experience of chronic illness and/or disability'. Last year's prize was £1,000.

The Frank Moffett Mosier Fellowship for Works in Heightened Language offers $1,500 for one act plays, or $3,000 for full length works.

*The cake, as well as being rather yummy and eaten onboard a ship which was not yet in service, is a great metaphor for the way I'm packing so much into a limited time.

11/8/21 update on the PF/ALCS issue

Update 11/8/21 I've seen nothing official direct from ALCS, but have been forwarded messages saying in effect this was all a mistake by ALCS, we can claim, and that they'll sort out the website soon. I've also had reports that people have now successfully registered some DCT published work.

original post...

Jenny Worstall contacted the ALCS for more information on this issue and received the following response, which she thought might be of interest to readers of this blog.

"In regards to the publisher, D C Thomson they have always mandated with the NLA for some time. ALCS has reviewed the mandates of publishers and in order to adhere to Government regulations, we could no longer pay out on publications from Publishers who were mandated by the NLA as, we receive our revenue for journals and magazines from the CLA who do not have a licence to collect monies for NLA publishers.
To that end, ALCS allowed a ‘cool off’ period whereby, we still honoured the existing claims submitted by our members which has now come to an end. Although DC Thomson the publisher is mandated with the NLA, it does not reclassify any journals or magazines to a newspaper. D C Thomson still retain their published journals and magazines.
We can only advise that you contact your publisher to see if you can now claim via them for the money that you were previously eligible to receive from ALCS. This may be something that is included within your contract. Our understanding is that the NLA will pay your publisher any fees due contractually, but this is something that you will have to ask them about directly.
This will be brought to the ALCS Distribution and Membership Committee who will be looking into ways of how to get this message out to our members once we have established how many ALCS members are actually affected by this.
The most recent publishers to date are;
• William Reed
• Pageant Media
• Aspermont Media
• PEI Media
• Incisive Media
• Euromoney Institutional Investor
• Stage Media Company"

And in a further update, I asked ALCS on twitter if you could still claim ALCS for stories in MW Annuals and PF Annuals and they said yes, because these publications have an ISBN.

I do feel we don't have the complete picture yet and hope ALCS (and DC Thomson) will be able to shed more light on this situation soon. I'm trying to be patient!

I looked at my contract (from 2016) but couldn't find any mention of ALCS. But it would appear that DC T was mandated with NLA then. So, unless I'm understanding this incorrectly, it is not DC Thomson that has changed, it's to do with a review (and government guidelines?).

I think the situation is beyond an individual writer or writers now and I hope that maybe writers' organisations will be able to shed some light on this and/or speak up for writers in some way.

Any thoughts?

Where to send your short stories – and why you write them

I know some people write entirely for their own pleasure. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that! For most though, the real satisfaction comes when it's selected for publication, chosen as a winning entry, read and enjoyed by others and/or when they get paid for it. 

Here are some places you can send your short stories in the hope of achieving one of those outcomes –

Free entry writing competitions

Thanks to my writing buddy Sheila Crosby for passing on the details of this short story competition. Entrants must be resident in the UK or Ireland. Stories can be up to 4,000 words and the prize is £3,500. I'm definitely having a go!

And thanks (yet again!) to Alyson Hilbourne for telling me about a competition. Future Folklore is a 'speculative fiction contest that imagines a world where equitable climate change initiatives have been set in motion'. The prize is $400 for a story between 1,400 and 2,000 words.

A reminder that Secret Attic run regular competitions and challenges. There's a £20 for the best story in each of the monthly competitions. Other selected pieces are also published.

Submission opportunities

There's no payment for either of these, but money isn't everything.

Paragraph Planet are still accepting 75 word pieces to publish on the site. These can be complete mini stories, scenes or extracts from longer pieces. Published pieces are promoted on Twitter.

Cafelit want 'thought-provoking and entertaining stories, though ones which might be a tad different from what you normally read in a woman’s magazine'. These can be tiny, 3,000 words or anything in between. Successful pieces will be published on the site and may go into the 'Best of' anthology. You may submit a mini biography to be published alongside your work.

Women's magazines

My submissions database is a guide to which magazines will consider unsolicited submissions, what they want and how to submit them.

Do you write for fun, in the hope of publication, prizes or payment, or for another reason? 

For me there are lots of reasons, including it being something to keep me occupied on rainy days during our campervan trips.

Over to you! (and free entry writing competitions)

The winner of the copy of Violet's War as offered in my last post is Lindsay Bamfield. Congratulations! I'll be in touch soon to arrange delivery of the ebook.

I'd love to hear your competition news.

My apologies for accidentally publishing the half finished version of this post last week and having to quickly take it down as it conflicted with something else! And thanks to Liz who spotted what I'd done before I did and commented with a link to this free to enter novel writing competition.

Thanks to Alan Barker for sending me a link to this competition, which he spotted while on holiday.  They're looking for poetry and short (500) word stories with the theme of 'touching the wild'. Work cannot have been previously published – you may submit up to three pieces.

Have you entered any writing comps? Had any luck? Heard about interesting contests? Got any tips to pass on? (Although I only feature free to enter competitions in my posts it's fine to share news about other competitions too.)

Do you have any womag news?

Sorry, I don't yet have an update on the ALCS issue with DCT publications (which I posted about here). Do you know anything more?

Are you researching, writing, subbing? Had any acceptances or rejections? Any other news?

Feel free to use this photo as a picture prompt. If you'd like other writing prompts, short exercises and story/scene suggestions then you might find this book useful.

Do you have writing tips to share, questions to ask, or suggestions for this blog?

My news is that I'm presenting another online writing workshop in August.

Guest post on writing historical fiction, by Rosemary J. Kind

Today's guest is my friend Rosemary J. Kind. She's the author of several novels including the excellent Flynn and Reilly series, and co-author of From Story Idea to Reader. I've asked her to visit the blog to share some insights into writing her latest historical novel, Violet's War.

You've written several historical novels, Ros. Which comes first, the story idea or the research?

Definitely the story idea. Once I’ve got a story then I know when and what I need to research. Usually, I’ll come across something and just feel compelled to tell the tale that’s behind it, in a way that can bring history to life.

Violet's War is set at the time of the first World War. What made you chose that period? 

The period was chosen by the story idea. In 1921 the English Football Association banned women’s football from their members’ grounds. Women’s football had become very popular as a result of factory teams raising money for charity during WW1. I wanted to bring that story to a much wider audience.

Which publications / resources have been most useful for your research?

There was a Preston based team called Dick, Kerr Ladies Football Team. They were one of the teams that made women’s football famous in their day and thankfully there are books dedicated to what they did. I read books specifically about the team and generally about women’s football. As the subject grew I also had to do a lot of research into WW1 and conditions and life in the trenches. I watched many YouTube videos of original footage and documentaries from the period. I’m also very fortunate to have a good friend who is an expert in the field and how was happy to answer my many questions.

Your characters' names seem just right for the period. How did you chose those? 

That was really fun. For one thing, I asked my readers for the names of their ancestors from that time. I had so many wonderful responses that it gave me good variety to choose from. I also use census records where I need to, in order to make sure I do get names which are typical for both the period and the location.

Violet Dobson is a football player. Were you already interested in the history of women's football, or did you have to learn it all for the novel?

When I was young I wanted to play football. I spent all my childhood out on a football pitch up until I was about ten. Then I went to our teachers, on behalf of myself and some of the other girls and asked if we could have a girls’ football team, instead of playing netball. This was in 1975 and I was very firmly told ‘no’ we could only play netball. It was an unforgivable response, but typical of the time. Sadly I left football behind because I was so cross about the response. I wish I’d known about the history of the women’s game then and had fought for our right to play. I’m just glad I know now.

Attitudes to women playing have changed quite a lot. Is there an extract you can share, without giving away too much plot, which shows some of the off pitch issues the teams faced?

‘Violet was just wondering whether to carry on when an older man walking a dog paused alongside the pitch. “You girls should be ashamed of yourselves, parading around like that. You,” he pointed his stick at Florrie, “the one in the shorts. Put some clothes on, young lady, before I have you arrested.”

Violet gasped, but Florrie was unfazed.

“Do you want to join in?” Florrie called to the man, who was smartly dressed and standing very upright for a man of advanced years.

He waved his stick at her and marched away from the ground.

Violet shook her head sadly; that was exactly the sort of thing she was afraid of.’

Did you learn any facts which caused you to change parts of your story?

That happens all the time. The biggest change was realising I needed to include chapters from Billy’s point of view and tell the story of him going off to war, in parallel to Vi working in munitions back home.

Can you share an example of historical detail and how you used it in the novel?

I had to understand what the girls would wear both working in a munitions factory and playing football. I deliberately don’t give the reader reams of descriptive passages, that’s not my style. However, it is vital that the tiny details that are fed in throughout the story are accurate. It took me quite a time to find the details for Billy, where he would have trained, how many slept in a room even how much their kit weighed. It’s all vital to making the story feel authentic.

I know from my own writing that your research will have provided more information than

you could use in one book. How do you decide what to leave out?

I only include what is necessary to give the reader a picture. That can be tiny details such as telling you that Vi traced the rose pattern on the wallpaper with her eyes while she was thinking. There is a lot of fascinating information, but I’d rather give you a list of my sources in case you want to read more than overdo the description so that the story gets lost. For me, it’s all about the story feeling authentic. If my readers want non-fiction description they would look elsewhere.

Violet's War really is a good story. You can get it here. You might also like to read The Blight and the Blarney, which is the first in Ros's Flynn and Reilly series and currently free, and Are We Nearly Famous? which is another freebie by Ros, myself and two of our friends.

Ros is giving away an ebook copy of Violet's War, which can be sent anywhere. To be in with a chance of winning, leave a comment saying you'd like a copy by midnight UK time 19th July. I'll announce the winner a few days later.

ALCS and TPF/MW

 It's currently not possible to make ALCS claims for The People's Friend and My Weekly. This is because 'DC Thomson have moved their mandate from the Publishers Licensing Society to the Newspaper Licensing Agency.' This applies not just to new stories, but also those which were published several months ago. I don't know if the situation can be reversed/resolved, but it is being investigated.

The Friend fiction team have promised to keep writers updated, which I'm sure they will do. 

Table for two and doubling up.

Free to enter writing competitions

For this competition from Briefly Write, you're asked for short poems. There's a £50 prize.

The Val Wood prize offers £100 and publication for the best feel good short story of up to 2,000 words on the theme of Now and Then. 

Sticking to the sequence, the prize for the Beechmore Books writing competition is £200. You can enter fiction, non-fiction or poetry. The theme is Perspective.

My news

My 30th book, a lovely new romantic short story collection, Love Is The Answer is out today! It's also our wedding anniversary. That is not a coincidence.

Here's the blurb – Love is something that many people go to great lengths to find, and to keep hold of. Willow helps others find theirs through a combination of meticulous programming and random chance, Sal stumbles into romance through a series of embarrassing accidents and Gran discovers love on a protest march.

Margaret makes a very practical arrangement to secure her share of love and happiness, Doreen has to call on a friend to help discover it and Nadine uses a dog to track it down. Lorna wins her happy ever after through a dangerous aim at a coconut shy.

Lynn and Andrew's marriage has gone aground like a stricken ship, but it and the vessel eventually refloat. Weirdly it is Thomas Telford who helps Nikki relocate it. For Patrick and Angie it's a kite which does the trick, and Rachel has to break her arm to heal her relationship.

Whether they're together forever, broken-hearted, or still trying to make it work, anyone who has loved has a story to tell. This collection contains 24 of them.

With a bit of luck, Gary and I will be enjoying a romantic meal tonight – from the comfort of our campervan.

Book promotion ideas

If you've got a book published, whether with a big name publishing house, you've done it yourself on a shoestring, or anything in between you're going to need to promote it. Writers are often told we need to 'build a platform' on social media, so tweeting and making Facebook posts is an obvious thing to do.

Personally I do think it's sensible to mention our books that way – but only now and then. I've seen writers send out multiple tweets per day, sometimes even per hour, all just asking people to buy their book. I can't tell you if they're still doing it, as I've unfollowed or muted them all. It's better, I think, to tweet about the book and your writing life, and include some non promotional stuff too, than do nothing but masses of straightforward promotion on social media. After all, if you want to buy books is that where you look? And when you use social media is it a stream of adverts you're hoping to see? (By the way, here's the twitter profile for this blog and here's my personal one.)

It's possible to pay for social media advertising. I don't do that myself, for the reasons above, plus it's expensive and sounds complicated, but I know they can work well for people who are prepared to put in the time and risk some money. Paid advertising on Amazon is something I've dabbled in. To me that makes more sense as we're targeting people who want to buy books like ours, but might not otherwise find them amongst the millions of others on offer. Again it takes a little time to learn how to use them, and there's a risk of spending money for no result, but you can set daily limits and it's easy to make changes.

Winning a writing competition would be good publicity. My first novel publication came about after I won a novel writing competition. Although that wasn't a massive success and I've since got the rights back to Escape To The Country, it was a big boost to my confidence at the time and in the long run helped me become in Indie author. (I'll be back with more free to enter writing competition links soon.)

Newsletters are an excellent idea, as people will only sign up if they actually want to hear from us and learn about our latest releases, promotions and other news. It's a requirement that people can easily unsubscribe which is good because we know those who remain on the list really want to be. It's common to offer a 'reader magnet' which is usually a freebie, often something exclusive to newsletter subscribers. For my newsletter, I offer a free short story. As a lot of my books are collections of short stories, that seems sensible.

Another thing you can do is have a blog and pepper it with mentions of your own books, along with everything else you post about. You might have noticed I do that! If you don't have your own blog then I don't blame you – they are time consuming. In that case you might like to write guest posts for someone else's blog. You'll need to do a little more than send out blanket emails to every blogger you know asking them to promote you though. Read the blog, and leave comments so you're not approaching as a stranger. Think about the type of post which might interest readers of that blog and offer something appropriate. If you do more than one guest post to different blogs, don't send exactly the same text with exactly the same photos. That's not fair.

A website is another possibility. Here's mine. They do take time to maintain, but are a good way of making it easy for interested readers to find out more about you and your books.

Perhaps you could get interviewed, or otherwise included, on a podcast. I've done a few of those.

Local newspapers are a good place to try. That could be paid for ones, the free ones and online newspapers. The latter are likely to be easiest to get into as they're not restricted for space the way 'real' papers are. Whichever you try, don't just send them a 'buy my book' promotion, but try to make it personal – local papers like pieces about local people. To further increase your chances of it being accepted, make the article as locally relevant as possible. Even if it wasn't set in your home town, maybe you wrote some of it in a local coffee shop, or used the local library for research.

Here's an example of something I recently sent to my local online paper.

You could try national publications, but unless you're well known and/or pay well you're unlikely to be successful. However if you are one of their writers you might be lucky – it's definitely worth at least mentioning your book to your usual contact. This is what happened when I told 'my' People's Friend editor about my first audiobook.

If you've got an interesting angle (as opposed to 'author writes book') it might be worth contacting your local radio, or even TV station.

If you're going to try to persuade bookshops and libraries to stock your book, you may like to create an advance information sheet to send them, or deliver in person. Perhaps you could also leave some of the sheets for readers to pick up, or offer bookmarks or business cards with the book details on. (It might be possible to leave some of these in other venues such as cafes or your dentist's waiting room.) If you're feeling really brave you could ask about giving talks or holding a book signing in the library or bookshop – or contact local groups and clubs to see if they'd like you to visit. Oh, and anywhere you can get away with it, drop in links like this, which show all your available books. Have you tried any of these marketing methods, or attempted something different? Which interesting promotional attempts have persuaded you to buy books? Have I tempted you to take a look at any of mine?

Winner announcement and womag updates

The winner Eirin picked to recieve a copy of I Know I Saw Her by E D Thompson, as offered in this post is – CHARLIE. Congratulations! Please email me (address on the questions and contact page) and I'll put you in touch with Eirin to arrange delivery.

Womag news

I've recently updated my guidelines database. I hope you find this useful. As ever, if you learn of any changes, or hear of other potential markets please let me know. For those either leave a comment to any post, or email me using the address on the questions and contact page.

Yours and Yours Fiction have new guidelines, which you can find here. These guidelines explain their rejections policy. Thanks to Pamela Gough for bringing them to my attention.

For Yours the guidelines state – "We also publish longer stories that are serialised over three issues. These should be approximately 3,000 words long and the first two parts must end on a cliff-hanger so that readers will be eager to find out what happens in the next issue."

It's not clear to me if they mean 3 x 1000 words or 3 x 3000 words. Anyone know?

Susan Watson will be returning as My Weekly's fiction editor in September. Claire Gill, who covered her maternity leave, will be remaining with the magazine working on virtual events and digital content. The magazine is currently (still!) closed to unsolicited submissions.

My News

My short story collection Coffee & Cake is now available as an audiobook, as well as in paperback and ebook formats. The paperback can be ordered through your local bookshop, or library, if you prefer not to use Amazon.