It’s hard to believe that by the end of this month 2010 will already be halfway through! The 2010 football world cup will also be in its final stages in South Africa. I am lead to believe, by those in the know about such things, that now would be an appropriate time to say “Come on England”! I must confess, though, that I don’t follow football at all. In fact I don’t even really like the game. At the risk of alienating some of my readers, it seems to me a game played by over-paid prima-donnas whose sole ambition is to win the game at whatever cost, including cheating, rather than play a sport fairly. I get so angry watching the so-called professional sportsmen falling flat on their faces and rolling about as though shot every time someone brushes past them that I have to turn the television off! As I am half Welsh, and deeply proud of it, it seems only right that I should much prefer to watch rugby, whichever code they are playing. At least then if someone is rolling around on the floor they will either be doing something with the ball or they are properly hurt! One of the best experiences I have ever had I think was sitting at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff watching the Wales v England Six Nations match in 2005. Even though I was resplendent in my Wales rugby top and almost entirely surrounded by England supporters there wasn’t the slightest hint of animosity, indeed one of the England supporters leant forward and congratulated me on a brilliant Welsh try (almost as if I had been directly responsible for it!). The result was not important (though Wales won 11 - 9!) it was the spectacle of the event and the respect and camaraderie amongst players and spectators alike that will be forever etched in my memory.

Anyway, enough about sport… suffice to say I genuinely hope England do well; it’s just that I won’t be watching…

The last month has been a really productive one for me on the writing front. You may remember I was writing a science fiction story, Mars Probe 13, which was finished in draft form. Well it is now fully typed up and the initial editing stages are complete. I was writing the story to submit to the Writers Bureau course and part of the package I have to submit is a detailed analysis and exploration of the magazines that may be interested in publishing the story. I am still researching a number of publications at the moment and I am very optimistic about the possibilities. The only fly in my proverbial ointment may be the actual length of the story. Most of the publications seem to want stories of about 2,000 to 3,000 words and Mars Probe 13 is nearly 5,000 words long! The trouble with cutting that much out of a story when it is complete is that you run the risk of losing the essence, the heart of the overall picture you are trying to paint. It may be I have to return to the drawing board on that…

Alternatively I may try and find a home for my first attempt at my entry for the 2010 Yeovil Literary Prize competition. I had written a short story which is provisionally entitled 1622 and which combines a true historical event, the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom in the Netherlands, with arguably one of the greatest portraits ever painted, The Laughing Cavalier (incidentally, did you know that was a moniker given to it during the Victorian era? It’s original title was just “Portrait of a Young Man”. I can see why the Victorians adopted a new name for it!). Anyway, I digress… the story worked really well for me and I literally flew through the writing of it. The trouble is that when I typed it up and edited it I found it to be about 3,800 words in length and the competition required it to be no more than 2,000 words. Blast! Do you spot a theme emerging here? I must learn to curb my verbosity I think…

Consequently I then had to try and come up with another story at really short notice. I went off to my usual writing haunt, Caffe Nero in West Wickham, and wracked my brain for a story, but after two hours sitting there looking at a blank piece of paper I gave up and went home. Undeterred though I returned the next day and opened my notebook again. I found myself staring at the same blank page again for a while until the story literally took place all around me. I was suddenly aware that everybody around me in the coffee shop were in couples and that I was the only one sitting there alone. And that was where my story, Lost and Lonely Heart, started! I invented lives for the couples and wrote the story from the lonely man’s point-of-view whilst he, in turn, waited for his “date” to arrive. The story starts from the point at which the narrator is convinced that his new date will not be coming and so he is left watching the other occupants of the shop. We see a brief glimpse into each of the couples lives in turn as the minutiae if their daily lives goes on around the narrator. By the end of the story we have seen relationships in all their ugly and beautiful glory. Does his date turn up? I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until the results of the Yeovil Literary Prize 2010 are announced in September to find out!

It was rather pleasing that, by the time I had finished typing it Lost and Lonely Heart was only eleven words over the 2,000 maximum word limit and, with the help of my sister, I managed to get it down to size fairly easily and it ended up at exactly 2,000 words!

One of the strange things about the story when I read it back was how autobiographical it turned out to be. I suppose the old adage has proven correct, certainly in this case, write what you know. Although the story is entirely fictional I do recognise a lot of myself in some of the characters and situations. It also proves the point that stories happen around you in real life every day. All you, as a writer, have to do is see them…

The Yeovil Literary Prize has also opened the competition to full-length novels this year and, consequently, I have also submitted Exodus for consideration by them. I had been reluctant to enter Exodus as the book was already submitted to the Society of Authors McKitterick Prize competition. However I discovered this last month that the shortlist had been announced and, sadly, Exodus had not made it to the final five. I was a little disappointed, not just with failing to make the shortlist, but because of those that had. Please don’t misunderstand, I have nothing against the other authors and I am sure they all deserve to be on the shortlist. My disappointment comes, though, from the fact that the competition is open to first-time authors who are over forty and is open to those who are both published and unpublished. Having checked the shortlist I discovered that all of the books have already been published and there is not one unpublished author amongst them. Whilst I congratulate all the short-listed authors it would, I think, have been nice for the Society of Authors to have included one unpublished author in the list or had a separate category for those not yet lucky enough to have publishers and are trying to break into the ranks of published authors. Whilst I do not for a moment suggest that Exodus would have made that shortlist either (although I would like to hope it would!) it would give the novice unpublished writer some hope of success it a major competition.

I have also submitted Exodus to another small publishing house, Flambard Press, as recommended by the Crime Writer’s Association. They have said it will take them about two months to consider it before they make any decisions so I will have to wait until the end of July before I hear anything from them. Fingers crossed…

One of the other pieces of writing I have done this month is the prologue to one of my planned historical novels. I was inspired one morning on my way to work and the phrase I had thought of gradually developed into a sentence before becoming a paragraph. By the time I got to the coffee shop the next morning it had become the germ of an idea for the complete prologue. The name of the book, or at least the working title, came to me at the same time and for now the book will be called The Dragons Last Breath. Although the title may suggest otherwise it is not a fantasy novel but will be a part fiction, part historical fact story based in South Wales and set in the 13th and 14th centuries. The narrator will be entirely fictional but many of the people and events will be real, although I will, obviously, take a certain amount of poetic licence with some of them! As if making the book and the language historically accurate, in the main, was not hard enough the prologue came to me as a first person narrative. Though all of my short stories have been in the first person so far following the same route for a full length novel will be a new and challenging enterprise for me. I must say I am quite looking forward to it!

I know I have mentioned it before but I am also working on a number of articles I wish to get published on the Suite 101 website. Well I have now written seven of the initial twelve articles I intend to write and I am in the process of typing them up and writing the remaining five.

It seems that writing has taken up an ever greater proportion of my life over the last couple of years. I have all these short stories spinning around in my head, many of which will be entered in various competitions, and the others will be for my already planned short story anthology entitled Heroes. The first of the anthology stories, Gladiator, is nearly complete already and I have the outline drawn for the second. I am aiming for about ten stories in the finished book. I am writing all of these articles, I am working on the second Rhys Davies novel, The Cleaners, and I have now started The Dragons Last Breath. I think I am going to have to give up my real job, it seems to be getting in the way! If only…

I am absolutely loving the writing and I just wish I had done it sooner. I hope I never lose the sheer joy that writing brings me.

Anyway, I think I have waffled on enough for now so I will leave you in peace until the next newsletter. As always though I shall leave you with my thought for the month, this time from Nathanial Parker Willis…

It is the month of June,
The month of leaves and roses
When pleasant sights salute the eyes,
And pleasent scents the noses.

I hope you enjoy what promises to be a beautiful June.
　

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