Still Rocking

I've published a new collection of short stories.

All except one were previously published in The People's Friend, Woman's Weekly and The Weekly News. The last story, What Prue Didn't Know, won the Woman's Short Story award, one of the competitions organised by the Scottish Association of Writers in March 2020, judged by Helen Walters and is published here for the first time.

The Spaghetti Tree

Seven-year-old Alfie plans an April Fool joke to play on his Grampa, but Alfie’s dad isn’t sure that Grampa’s in a laughing mood.

Swimming for One

Joe, middle-aged and newly single, is happily indolent – or he would be if his bossy little sister didn’t interfere.

History Lessons

Re-enacting a Jacobite battle isn’t Lucy’s idea of (every) Saturday afternoon fun, a fact she’s hiding from her new boyfriend.

To the Moon and Back

It’s July, 1969, and Apollo 11 is heading for the moon. Meanwhile, on Earth, Mike is trying to keep house while Patsy is in hospital awaiting their third baby.

Don’t Say Cheese!

Cheese hates the childish nickname she seems to be stuck with – it’s not the image she wants when she finally meets her French friend’s glamorous older brother.

A Labour of Love

George arrives home unexpectedly to find a strange man in the house with his wife. Is his complacency about his long marriage about to be shattered?

What Would Jane Think?

Is the dishy new staff member ‘in want of a wife’? Evie tries surreptitiously to find out – isn’t that what Miss Austen would do?

Still Rocking

Marnie appeals for her granny’s back-up when she wants to attend a festival, but Flora has her own musical memories which she’s not about to share.

Following Joel

Alison and Tommy have moved from Scotland to London to help their son and his wife with childcare but it’s getting rather overwhelming.

Back to the Sixties

It’s 1999. When Meg encounters a former classmate who caused her to break up with her best friend she’s at a loss to know how to behave.

Arthur and the Stone Lintel

When widowed Arthur takes up Architecture Appreciation classes, led by the obnoxious Roland, the last thing on his mind is a new relationship.

What Prue Didn’t Know

City girl Prue stays with her new friend Sarah and her family on their smallholding and makes some unexpected discoveries about herself. 

A paperback will follow. Meanwhile Still Rocking is available as an e-book from Amazon – and hey! it's up in lights!

Find out about my other publications, including three story anthologies, here.

Love in the Forbidden City

In 2011 I was lucky enough to go to China, to Beijing and Xian and then north-west, far off the tourist trail, to a small town called Xingian in Gansu Province. I found it all so fascinating that in the eight years since then I have read loads of books about China – from its earliest history to the modern day, and even did an online (Future Learn) course on the European Discovery of China.

I’ve only written one story though (so far) inspired by the visit and that was The Palace of Complete Happiness which was published in Woman’s Weekly, and that came about by looking again at the names on this map of the Forbidden City.

I chose it as the title story for a collection of previously published with the theme of love … published on St Valentine’s Day last year.

Two for Joy

Superstitious Jess is looking for true love – will the magpies or the tea-leaves point her in the right direction?

Bonnie Prince Charlie

Isabel has an unexpected guest staying for Bed & Breakfast – and there are people who would pay to know his whereabouts.

Sam Something

Sam is enjoying a cappuccino while waiting for his colleague – when he overhears his name being mentioned at the next table.

Summertime Blues

It’s the year of Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep, but Lindsay, part-time record-spinner on a Scottish island, is feeling far from chirpy.

A Green Wedding Dress

As Caitlin attends a rather strange, small registry office ceremony she can’t help comparing it favourably with her own lavish and traditional wedding.

Please, Mr Postman

When Petra tries to track down some missing letters she ends up meeting some of her new neighbours.

Ae Fond Kiss

When café owner Mary takes part in a flash mob to sing one of the Robert Burns’ love songs she finds herself standing next to one of her customers.

A Parallel Universe

Louise meets David for the first time in fifteen years and wonders about the life they might have had together – is it too late?

See You Later, Alligator

Lizzie’s met an explorer who wrestles alligators but is she intrepid enough to fall in love with him?

And Pomona Came Too

There’s a third party in Nick and Jill’s relationship – his metal detector. He even wants to take it on their weekend break to Basking-in-the-Wold …

Making a Scene

Of course her little boy’s birthday party is Lorna’s first priority but how she wishes she could be in two places at once.

Meet Your Match

Patsy decides it’s time to look for a new partner on a dating site but she gets distracted by her memories, and by three items that have arrived in the mail.

For Love or Money

Jackie is about to marry someone who’s made a lot of money – is she trying to leave her two oldest friends behind?

The Palace of Complete Happiness

While escorting a school party through the Forbidden City in Beijing, Milly comes to the conclusion that she can learn a lesson in love from the life of the imperial family.

The Palace of Complete Happiness is available from Amazon on Kindle and in paperback from FeedARead.

Writer of the Week

I have a story in this week’s People’s Friend called Goodbye Sukey (issue dated 24 February). I was delighted when the editor, Shirley Blair, said that she was going to make me ‘Writer of the Week’ and sent me some questions to answer about how I came to write that story and, more generally, about my writing.

You can read the interview here.

If you like Goodbye Sukey you can read more of my short stories in these three collections. All of the stories have been previously published in The People’s Friend, Woman’s Weekly and elsewhere, or have been placed in competitions.

The Palace of Complete Happiness and other love stories

Three’s a Crowd and other family stories

Another World and other stories

Another World/National Short Story Week

National Short Story Week 2017 runs from 13-19 November. 

To celebrate it, I've put together an anthology of some of my short stories. What most (nine of the eleven) have in common is that they won or were short/long-listed in competitions including the Muriel Spark Short Story Award, judged by Maggie O' Farrell, and the Scotsman/Orange Short Story Award. All the stories have been published in anthologies/magazines.

The Real Thing

Inspired by Pride & Prejudice’s Mary Bennet, long-listed for the Jane Austen Short Story Award in 2009. Looking at her sisters’ relationships, Mary concludes that fiancés are fun but husbands are hard work.

Four in the Morning

Judged by Maggie O’Farrell, winner of the Muriel Spark Short Story Competition, 2008. Her memories, her worries about her daughter, strange noises in the dark house – all conspire to prevent newly widowed Alison from sleeping.

The Ties that Bind

When Eleanor and Doug sort out their late mother’s possessions they come across a puzzling photograph.

Home before Dark

Was this move to the country a good idea – or a terrible mistake? It’s late – surely Billy should be home by now?

The Shimmering Shores

Joy gets away from an unhappy home life by taking the bus down the Scottish east coast every week, hoping to have a chat with bus driver Vic.

Angel

It’s 1923. Beatrice pays a visit to the sad lady in the house across the square and makes an unexpected friend in her garden.

Lucky Tatties

Anne remembers the sweets she used to get in the village shop, including the ‘lucky tatties’ – but who were they lucky for?

Second Best

Georgie may never have won a show-jumping medal at the Olympics but she does have something that has eluded her former rival.

Booty and The Beast

The narrator gives up on love to concentrate on her career as beauty columnist but she can never forget Ronan.

Pittenweem

Barbara thinks she made the right decision all those years ago but a new young colleague makes her wonder if it’s too late to change her mind.

Another World

Shortlisted for the Scotsman/Orange Short Story Award in 2006. Liam recovers from an injury, sustained on active service, in the company of his younger sister – but can he ever tell her about that other world he’s been through? 

Available on Kindle: 

http://amzn.to/2hv8xOb

@ShortStoryWeek

#shortstories

Bad news and good news

Magazine short story writers got a shock this week when it was announced that the fiction editorial staff of Woman’s Weekly was being reduced from three to one and that only their regular writers could submit to them i.e. they are closing their doors to new writers until further notice.

I’m very happy of course that I am one of those ‘regular writers’ (it was a nail-biting time before I got the email confirming that I was – there are many writers a lot more prolific so I wasn’t complacent.) I wasn’t on the list when the same thing happened at Take a Break and My Weekly so those doors are closed to me. But it is sad that this is the trend – when money needs to be saved in magazine publishing it always seems to be fiction that suffers. 

I do hope that this is not the thin end of the wedge at WW – that they continue to publish their twelve Fiction Specials as well as the weekly issue which has two stories and a serial.

Thankfully The People’s Friend – the world’s oldest women’s magazine (founded 148 years ago and long may it continue) –still has its ‘open door’ policy of welcoming new writers and giving feedback on submissions. Once you’ve had a story accepted you are assigned an editor who will work with you. If a story is rejected they will give the reason (and, yes, ‘regular contributors’ get rejections too) or they might suggest changes, work with you to improve the story. And however many stories you’ve had published it’s always a huge thrill to get an acceptance pinging through the ether!

Between the weekly magazine, all the Specials and the annual they buy 600 stories a year ...

I am delighted to be the guest author again at their story-writing workshops, hosted by Fiction Editor Shirley Blair – in Dundee on 21 September and York on 28 September. I’ll be talking about getting ideas and developing them, with examples from my own work, and about story structure.

If that appeals to you but you’ve never read the magazine or haven’t read it for a while, I suggest you read a few current issues to see the kind of stories they are looking for –feel-good, as they have always been, and now with twenty-first-century situations and relationships.

There’s a booking coupon inside the current issue, dated 19 August, and in the next issue 26 August, and online https://www.thepeoplesfriend.co.uk/2017/08/21/story-writing-workshops-autumn-2017/.

Maybe I’ll see you there?

Three's a Crowd

I am pleased to say that I have brought out a collection of my short stories (previously published in The People's Friend, Woman's Weekly and Woman's Day).

The Kindle edition will be published on 27 February 2016 and it is available for pre-order now:

myBook.to/B01BP9UDRY

A paperback edition will follow in March.

Extract from Hide-and-Seek for Astronauts, published in Woman's Weekly:

Last year, Julie hired a fire engine.

The year before, she had an igloo built in the garden – in June. The year before that she took ten four-year-olds on a steam train.

Now she had begun to talk about Ben’s next birthday party although he wouldn’t be seven for another two months. He was obsessed with space so I asked if she’d booked a supersonic trip around the galaxy with a stop for moon burgers.

‘Very funny. Haven’t finalised the details yet. Just keep the eighteenth free.’

When Julie and I were kids, our birthday parties were a few friends round to play in the garden and a home-made cake with candles half-burnt from their previous outing. I don’t remember either of us ever getting new candles, but we didn’t care.

 ‘It’s different now, Karen.’ Julie was dismissive when I reminded her. ‘Anyway, you don’t have children.’

I may not have children of my own but as an infant teacher I see more than enough of them. Julie was right. It is different now. We thought that life didn’t get any better than playing hide-and-seek and looking forward to a big piece of Gran’s jammy sponge. But that all came free, more or less – now birthday parties seemed to be about spending money and not just keeping up with the Joneses but leap-frogging over them.

Julie had become an expert leap-frogger, and spending money was one of her favourite occupations. As was trying to persuade me to spend my hard-earned.

‘Why don’t we go shopping for some new clothes for you?’ she asked me. We were sitting having a Saturday morning cappuccino. It was just ten o’clock but she was carrying several shiny carrier bags from one of the designer shops in the precinct.

‘What for? They’ll just get poster paint and sticky finger marks all over them.’

‘You don’t teach all the time. Matthew suggested … ’

‘Matthew suggested what?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Julie.’ I gave her the look I give P1 when they’re particularly fractious and she capitulated.

‘We were watching one of those makeover programmes and he said why didn’t I put you forward?’

‘As if! I’m not going to parade in my underwear, or worse, for all the world to see. What would Gran have said?’

What Gran would have said to such an event was beyond our imagination, and we dissolved into giggles.

‘I can’t see you doing it,’ Julie conceded. ‘But you could do with a new look.’

I wasn’t offended. Julie meant well and we had this conversation, or variations on it, regularly.

‘I really can’t be bothered,’ I said. ‘You do the glam bit for both of us.’

To be fair, I knew that Julie would be happy to pass her cast-offs on to me and I would have been happy to take them. It was unfortunate that I, the older sister whose hand-me-downs Julie was forced to wear as a child, was three inches shorter than her and a completely different shape.

Julie was still thinking about Gran.

‘We hardly had any clothes that weren’t second-hand or home-made,’ she went on. ‘Remember the paper pattern she kept making those pinafore dresses from? The same one she’d used for our mum. And those scratchy jumpers?’ She pulled a face.

I didn’t tell her that I still had the moss green chunky polo neck Gran knitted for me when I was fourteen, and that I wore it on winter nights when I got in from school.

 ‘She tried to teach us to sew and knit but that was a lost cause.’ Julie finished her coffee and patted her red lips with a napkin. ‘Sure you don’t want me to come shopping with you?’

I was sure.

But when I was getting ready for bed, Matthew’s suggestion came back to me. I looked at the nubbly tweed skirt I’d just flung on the chair. I’d had it for five years but it was still perfectly serviceable. The top I was taking off was in a shade of blue I didn’t particularly like but it had been on a half-price rail.

I didn’t envy Julie her designer lifestyle. Fun for a day maybe but what a palaver. Sometimes I wondered what Gran, with her one ancient lipstick and her three-times-a-year perm, would think of Julie’s manicures and facials and whatnots, not to mention her built-in wardrobes and her forests of shoe-trees.

The nubbly skirt went on again on Monday with a top, mustard this time, from the same sale rail. Even I could see that the colour didn’t suit me; the face that stared back at me looked to be the last stages of yellow fever.

Maybe I should make more of an effort.

Everything seemed to go wrong that morning. When I was gulping down some cereal my cat, Scatty, jumped on the table and knocked over the milk carton. The traffic, even in the bus lane, was worse than usual. P1 was playing up and my fiercest looks did nothing to quell them.

And when I had a break in the staff room at lunch-time there came a hysterical call on my mobile from Julie saying she was at the school gate and did I have a minute.

I hurried outside.

now read on ..... 

myBook.to/B01BP9UDRY

 

The Palace of Complete Happiness

The Palace of Complete Happiness

Sounds blissful, doesn’t it? Although in the building thus called in the Forbidden City in Beijing it didn’t mean rooms of books and all the time in the world to read them, with pit-stops to eat toast and cheese and apples, which would be my idea of complete happiness.

For the thousands of people who lived in it, especially the Royal Family, the City was a golden cage. There would have been riches beyond the dreams of avarice there but the place would have been stiff with protocols and quarrelling eunuchs and women hobbling on bound feet and cruel punishments for small transgressions. And a cage is a cage whatever colour it is. Extremely fascinating to read about though.

Ever since I visited China in 2011 I’ve wanted to set stories there. A few months ago I was looking at a map of the Forbidden City and thought The Palace of Complete Happiness would make a great title.

This is in Woman’s Weekly Fiction Special dated January 2016.

It's contemporary – a teacher is escorting a party of teenagers around the City and finds an uncomfortable parallel between part of its history and her own life. 

Oh, and if you're looking for some Christmassy stories (and why wouldn't you be?) I have one in this anthology, called Molly's Christmas Candle.

Toot, toot

I’ll give a little toot on my trumpet if I may.

I submitted six stories over the last couple of months, three each to Woman’s Weekly and The People’s Friend; five were accepted, of which two have now been published; I’ve been asked to tweak the end of the sixth one.

Usually when I start a story I have a destination for it in mind, and that works – some of the time. An exact science this writing lark ain’t.

The two published stories were in Woman’s Weekly, one a couple of weeks ago and one this (issue dated 29 September 2015).

Both of them were inspired by prompts in my weekly creative writing class. Neither was written with the magazine in mind but with the goal of using them as competition entries.

As far as I remember the prompt for Lucky Tatties was the memories that are conjured up by taste. Maybe you called them lucky potatoes or maybe you’ve never heard of them – they were a hard flat sweetie about the size of an old penny, dusted in cinnamon and with a little plastic toy inside. You had to be careful not to swallow it.

Like my heroine, Anne, I never liked them very much.

The feedback from one competition I entered it was to chop the story off two-thirds of the way through. I didn’t want to do that; it was short enough as it was. I could tell the adjudicator didn’t like the rest of it much either, and I can see that it isn’t the easiest of stories as it flies in the face of various received wisdoms – it tells rather than shows (a deliberate decision on my part) and there is no dialogue.

Increasingly, Woman’s Weekly (in their weekly magazine and monthly fiction specials) publish stories in a variety of styles so I thought I’d nothing to lose by sending it to them. And everything to gain as it turned out.

Pittenweem did win a competition, the General Short Story competition at the Scottish Association of Writers’ conference, judged by novelist, short story writer and playwright Catherine Czerkawska. After WW accepted Lucky Tatties I thought, well, maybe there’s a chance to see Pittenweem in print there too.

I think the original prompt for the story was when we were looking at character in the class and I thought I’d have an office as the setting. (Said office is not in Pittenweem (a fishing village on the east coast of Scotland) but a postcard of it becomes a kind of talisman for my main character.)

In other writing-related news, my People's Friend serial The Ferryboat, which was published in the magazine last year is now the 'daily serial' on the PF website. Catch up with it here.

And I am delighted to be doing two more People’s Friend story-writing workshops, with fiction editor Shirley Blair, in Dundee on 8 October, and York on 22 October; and judging the Woman’s Short Story competition at the Scottish Association of Writers conference in March 2016.

The ties that bind

This story is published in Woman’s Weekly (17 March 2015).

I’ve mentioned in a previous post the creative writing class I go to on a Friday morning. Last year, for a term, we wrote on the theme of transport and one class member brought in a prompt of a black and white picture of a young man on a bicycle.

I decided, in the class, in the ten minutes we got to write something on it, that it was an old snap that had been unearthed by a woman and her brother when they were clearing their mother’s house. Because the brother looked like the young man and not like their father the woman wondered if their mother might have had an affair. 

When I came to develop it at home I decided to aim for 1800 words and send it to Woman’s Weekly as I knew they were short of stories that length – plus I didn’t think it was a storyline The People’s Friend would go for … .

I haven’t had a story in Woman’s Weekly for ages so I was delighted to get a quick and positive response to this one.

I love looking through old family photographs. (Reminder to self: use your own photos as prompts.)

I have lots of them. Fortunately, my mum had gone through her photographs and written on the back, but there is a limit to the information you can put on and how useful it’s going to be to future generations. For example, I can read ‘Aunt B, Nairn Beach’ and know who that is but unless I add ‘Kate’s maternal great-aunt Belle’ my children won’t have a clue. And their descendants – if they’re kind enough to have kept the photos – won’t know who ‘Kate’ is, never mind Aunt B.

There is a packet of photographs Mum had labelled ‘Canadian connections’. These had been sent back home to Scotland since the beginning of the twentieth century when a branch of the family emigrated.

One has been labelled by its sender: ‘This is my eldest sister with me’.

Not very helpful eighty years on. Luckily, I was recently put in touch with a current ‘Canadian connection’ who is interested in the family tree. I sent her a scan and she was able to identify the ladies.

The ties that bind.