Profile of Short Story Writer Heather Parker

I live in the Lake District with three dogs, four cats and a husband.  As you can see from the photograph, I’m pretty keen on all animals…  This beautiful, gentle snow leopard is Pavan who lives with his mate, Tara, at the Lakeland Wildlife Oasis – a conservation and breeding centre I visit near Milnthorpe.  Two of our own cats were feral when we adopted them but they’ve made wonderful pets.

I am retired from the University of Cumbria, so can spend even more time with the animals now.  I should, of course, be writing but have always found procrastination a pleasant way to pass the time and pets are a wonderful excuse…

I started writing in 2004 and have had stories and articles published in magazines in the US and UK, including The People’s Friend, The Weekly News, Dogs Monthly and Bella Online.  I have had two novels published by Drollerie Press but unfortunately that press had to close recently because of the publisher’s serious illness. Wild Child Publishing and Untreed Reads carry my short mysteries and my stories also appear in anthologies.

I write anything from articles, mysteries, literary fiction and humour, depending on the market and how I feel at the time.  I do enter competitions – and the highlight of my career was winning the Benjamin Franklin House / Daily Telegraph Literary Prize in 2009.   That was one of those good moments…

http://www.heatherparker.co.uk/

You can download Heather’s stories HERE

Regan W. H. Macaulay is a writer of fantasy, science fiction, horror, and children’s stories.  She has published a number of short stories, an article for children, and is currently working on a series of middle-grade novels, a number of picture storybooks, and a B-movie musical play.  Regan also enjoys producing and directing theatre, film and television from time to time, and is also a certified canine massage therapist.

Her feature film, Space Zombies:  13 Months of Brain-Spinning Mayhem!, aired on the SPACE and Drive-In Classics channels in Canada from 2004-2007.  The script has been published as a digest-sized paperback book and is available through lulu.com.

The creatures and landscape of New Zealand inspired Regan’s series of middle-grade children’s novels.  She visited the North and South Islands with her husband in 2003, and returned to the North Island with her mother in 2009 in order to research her second novel.

Animals have always been very important to Regan throughout her life and often appear as characters in her stories and films.  She will begin posting her new graphic novel (in progress), Dog Band, this June.  The comic features several dogs and cats she has worked with, including lead character, Alfie!

Her short stories have been published in print and online in Aoife’s Kiss Magazine, Mystic Signals and Sorcerous Signals, Yesteryear Fiction, R.E.A.L., the Canadian Kids’ Magazine, Silverthought online, The Glass Coin, DM Du Jour, and soon, Space Squid.

You can learn more about Regan and her work through her websites:  reganwhmacaulay.weebly.com (writing), tripletake.net (productions and scripts), and kurik9massage.weebly.com (canine and feline massage therapy).

You can find Regan’s stories HERE

I’ve had many crime-related short stories published over the past few years. Some of them are included in Alfie Dog such as ‘Cash cow’ and ‘Basket trap’. Of all the crime fiction sub-genres, noir is my favourite to both read and write.
Noir is not about solving the mystery, capturing the bad guy or saving the day. Instead, noir explores the idea that the seed of your destruction lies dormant within your own psyche. The catalyst may be related to love, lust, envy or greed but whatever it is that kick-starts your desire, you want it so badly that you’ll risk just about everything to get it.

My bookcase is overloaded with noir anthologies, novellas and novels. From my reading, I believe the key to writing noir is compassion. If you can’t feel empathy towards your main characters as you write about them and their frailties, then the reader won’t be able to make an emotional connection. The hidden message to the reader from a character in noir fiction should be ‘Walk a mile in my shoes’.

The classic noir tale is always a journey through the dark and shameful secrets of a character’s soul. And if the writer gets it right, the reader might recognise some of those dark secrets to be their own as well.

My noir novella ‘Ronnie and Rita’ is a love story gone very, very wrong. It was published in April 2013 by Dark Prints Press, a well-regarded Australian publisher of crime and horror. You can read more about ‘Ronnie and Rita’ at http://www.darkprintspress.com.au

You can find Deborah’s stories HERE

Promoting Your Work

March 24, 2013, was such a milestone for me as that was the very first time one of my stories was published. It was a short story, about 5,000 words long; still it meant so much for me that a publishing site agreed to release it in the form of an e-book. To describe how I felt when I first got the news that they accepted my manuscript was like doing a math exam at college. Very difficult!

I was totally green at that time. I didn’t know what exactly that I had to do to promote my story. I had become increasingly active in social media since the first acceptance news and I’d seen what my new friends did to gather attention to their books, but I was still not sure. I remember when I received the author copies from the publisher. The first thing I did was message a friend who had several books out already, asking what to do with those copies. *cues sheepish laughter here*

The publishing company that released my second short story gave me more complete pointers in their author package. The packages were very helpful and I became more experienced in spreading the word about my work. I also became more aware of the importance of reviewers. I did got reviews for my first story (which were very positive, thank goodness) but I hadn’t really known how to deal with them, either the reviews or the reviewers, so my apology to those kind enough to review my stories if I didn’t sound warm enough in accepting the reviews. It was simply lack of knowledge.

Along with the release of my third story, A Granted Wish by Alfie Dog Fiction, I felt as though I was becoming a veteran in doing promotions. I have been exchanging blogs with my peers, visiting theirs for my stories and hosting promos for my fellow authors’ new releases, doing a blog tour, and actively requesting reviews for my stories.

I have never thought I would be this busy when I began sending out my manuscripts to the publishers but I’m not sorry at all. This is such a great experience and I learn a lot from it.

You can find Iyana Jenna’s stories HERE

Trained as a visual artist, I have exhibited paintings, drawings, prints and artist books of my poetry. In late 2000, after completing a PhD (Fine Art) titled Poetic Visual Interplay, I joined a creative writers group, Marion Writers Inc. Inspired by the theme for the month, I wrote my first piece of short fiction. Wow! I was hooked. Words and my imagination collided with the detritus of memory to produce twisted stories and experimental poems. I had found a new means of expression allowing me to dissect my past, deconstruct my recollections and decode the personalities and misadventures of my unsuspecting family, friends, and even my trusty dogs. (My Mini-Schnauzers, ‘Timon’ and ‘Ty Zen’ have provided the characters of a Blue Heeler, a Red Setter, a Tibetan Terrier, and an old bitser named ‘Jack’, to name a few).

My stories often highlight the quandaries of many a flawed character in their search for love, meaning and authenticity. Most stories have a few twists along the way and a surprise ending. The taste of sea air and the nudge of a faithful dog are never far away.

You can find Judith’s stories HERE

This week was the second anniversary of the loss of our beloved dog Benjy. He was a Border Collie/Labrador cross with a big personality. Most Sundays I would dish up a roast dinner in his food bowl. He’d eat most of it but usually spat the peas on the kitchen floor.

He was the family dog in a rather unusual way. As a pup he went to live with my partner’s father, but when Benjy was seven years old father remarried and was unable to take Benjy to his new home, coincidentally just around the corner from us. So Benjy came to live with us, moving in the night before father’s wedding.

My partner took him for a walk in the park the following morning while I was getting dressed for the wedding. I was thinking they’d been gone quite a while, and was becoming concerned that time was running short for us to get to the wedding. Finally they returned, with the tale that Benjy had run off, apparently trying to get back to his former home. My partner had to phone his father and get him down to the park. Finally after a lot of searching and calling Benjy reappeared with his tail between his legs. Later in his speech everyone laughed when father said he was almost late for his wedding as he’d had to go in search of the dog.

Although he lived with us, Benjy was still able to go to work with my partner’s father. Early each weekday morning I’d hear the front door open, and if I hurried to the bedroom window I’d see Benjy jumping up onto the passenger seat of the truck. Unlike many dogs he was a good traveller.

Sadly he died very suddenly from a heart attack aged ten, but often at family gatherings we all share memories of our wonderful dog.

You can read Karenne’s stories HERE

Joan Zambelli

‘Home Sweet Home’ is the first collection of short stories to be published for Leigh-on-Sea author Joan Zambelli. Joan has had over 300 short stories published in magazines in the UK and Ireland, but this is her first book. She hopes that this collection, which brings together 12 of her children’s stories will be just as popular as the stories have proved individually.

Joan has enjoyed making up stories since her children were young, but she didn’t begin writing any stories until 1996, after her return to England from Italy. Although Joan writes stories for different ages of children, this collection is for those ages 3 – 7 and is designed to provide bedtime stories for parents to share with their young children.

When asked about her writing, Joan says, “I hope young children will gain as much pleasure from hearing my stories as I do writing them.  If any of my stories inspire children to read stories for themselves when they are old enough to do so, that would be a bonus. It’s well-known that there’s a young child in all of us, whatever our age…so happy reading to one and all!”

The book, which launches for download on 4^th March, is priced at just £1.49 and is published by short story publisher Alfie Dog Fiction which already carries 25 of Joan’s stories on its website www.alfiedog.com. The collection can be printed or downloaded to an ereader either from the publisher or other leading internet booksellers.

Readers can buy it HERE

(I’ve borrowed the title of a book by Eric Partridge on the correct use of language.)

‘He was sat / He was sitting.’
‘She was stood / She was standing.’

The language evolves all the time.  The written language resists changes until they become vital for adequate communication.  The spoken language picks up quirky fads with great enthusiasm – only to drop some of them as easily, while other trends linger for long enough to become accepted.  A word like ‘twitter’ has acquired a new meaning that was completely unknown only a decade ago, while the word ‘gay’ has abandoned its ancient territory and moved into a different realm.

As writers we aim to offer our readers the enjoyment of well written work. We don’t want to irritate our readers with obscure vocabulary and poorly constructed sentences.  But sometimes bad habits sneak into the language almost unnoticed, causing confusion about what is correct and what isn’t.

The following sentences are examples of incorrect usage which is threatening to gain a foothold:

‘He was sat on the bench.’
‘She was stood outside the gate.’

These sentences are ungrammatical and incorrect.  I’d even call them unattractive.  But they abound in common usage.  Does that mean they’re acceptable?  As writers perhaps we should try to prevent that from happening.

The two sentences are in the passive voice which uses the auxiliary verb ‘to be’ to indicate the tense of the verb (was) plus the past participle of the main verb (sat/stood).  The passive voice describes an action done to the subject by another agent (sometimes called ‘the logical subject’).

So: ‘He was sat on the bench’ by somebody who put him there. Compare this with the active voice: ‘He was sitting on the bench.’  Likewise with: ‘She was stood outside the gate’, i.e. somebody picked her up and put her there, and the active voice equivalent, ‘She was standing outside the gate.’

Now compare this with other pairs of sentences expressed in the active (AV) and the passive (PV) voice respectively:

AV: He was eating.
PV:  He was eaten.

AV: She was shooting.
PV: She was shot.

AV: They were drowning.
PV: They were drowned.

AV: I’m annoying.
PV: I’m annoyed.

Is the language really changing in such a way that we ignore the distinction between the active and the passive voice?  Do we just accept that?  Is it acceptable to say ‘I was sat’/’I was stood’ when we really mean – and ought to say: ‘I was sitting’/ ‘I was standing’?

One final example – just for the fun of it!

AV: We were drinking tea.
PV: The tea was drunk (while it was hot).
3^rd example:  We were drunk.

The 3^rd example is clearly not a sentence in the passive voice despite its similar structure.  Nobody ‘drank us’.  The word ‘drunk’ is not used as the past participle of the verb ‘to drink’ here, but as an adjective – derived from the verb ‘to drink’, but with its meaning altered to ‘inebriated’ i.e. having drunk too much… and it wasn’t tea.

You can read Christine’s stories HERE

for Author Susan Wright

‘Six Stupid Sheep and Other Yarns’ is the first collection of short stories to be published for Worthing author Susan Wright. Susan has had over 100 short stories published in magazines in the UK, Scandinavia and Australia but this is her first book. She hopes that this collection, which brings together 13 of her stories will be just as popular as the stories have proved individually.

She has enjoyed writing fiction since childhood, when she would fill notebooks with long, rambling tales about animals, but these days she writes straight on to a computer and tries to keep the word count right down.

“It’s always hard to choose which stories to include, but we have tried to make sure there is something for everyone,” says Susan, “‘Six Stupid Sheep’ is one of my own favourite tales and the book title came from there.”

The book, which launches for download on 21^st January, is published by short story publisher Alfie Dog Fiction which already carries 25 of Susan’s stories on its website www.alfiedog.com. The collection can be printed or downloaded to an ereader either from the publisher or other leading internet booksellers.

readers can buy it HERE

      I have never known a Southern Appalachian highlander who was not an inventive and accomplished narrator. I heard their stories on my grandfather’s porch, in church and meeting, in cornfields, around fireplaces in  winter dark when wind-driven snow sifted in under the door and a cup of coffee left on a window sill overnight would freeze, or huddled with them on the flanks of mountains while their hounds bayed and pursued along the creeks below. I listened to the sensuous music of their speech, noted the peculiar shapes of their words ghosting earlier tellers among other mountains far away across deep waters. When I tried to repeat their soul stories later, I found myself sounding more and more like them. They taught me how to hold a tale in my heart while I polished it in my head, so that it shone richer and brighter with each retelling.

Writing the stories down has been for me a more elusive skill. Fortunately, I’ve been nurtured by a gifted editor who cares enough about my stories to nail my hide to the barn door as often as needful. Her insightful judgments prove invaluable to my growth as a writer.

You can read Henry’s stories HERE