Bella

Fab news. I wish both of you could win, and I certainly hope you both make the shortlist.

Brainstorming here. Like Squidge, I love your working title. Limelight does nothing for me. Sorry.

Maybe turn things around:

The Improbable Life of an Ulster Storyteller – a Lyttle blarney goes a long way.

Or

Are you sitting comfortably? Then let me tell you a Lyttle story.

Or

Hold The Front Page – the improbable life of an Ulster storyteller

Excellent.

I do wonder how anyone can marry their mother-in-law accidentally or otherwise – rather puts the lie to all those joke, though.

On the subject of having the courage of one’s own convictions I see that Imtiaz Dharker has turned down the role of Poet Laureate so she can concentrate on her own work.

The glib answer is “that’s just his opinion”. I think UWS probably does exist and I don’t understand why he is slating it. My impression is that an agent faced with a synopsis they like and an MS written in UWS will say “yippee”. I don’t think real originality is as prized as it should be, at least not when it comes to trad publishing. S…[Read more]

@athelstone – its in the Conversations section of My Jericho. The replays are at the bottom of the page and they have recently added the latest ones.

Wow. Thanks @philippaeast. So glad you liked it. I found that slush pile rather depressing, especially when they asked what age group I was writing for. I’m struggling with it still, so it’s on the back burner for a while while I do something else. I will come back to it but I need some distance first.

This is great. A good build up of tension and it certainly kept my attention as I wondered what Alex is so afraid of, and why.

The prickle started between my shoulder blades and trickled down my limbs like iced water the moment I stepped outside the front door – I thought “the moment I stepped…” was continuing the simile so this pulled me out…[Read more]

Thank you everyone. You are a fab lot. This is a first draft, unedited, so thanks in particular to @Kate for the nit-picky points which are most useful, though I had not requested them. And yes – September is a while away but I will probably jump straight there as far as Bethany is concerned. Anything in between is likely to be flashback to the…[Read more]

Lovely news Raine.

Yes it would be lovely if they had the right info on the signs. Especially before you find yourself on a toll road going the wrong way…

Thanks all, and particularly Philippa. I may well have some questions on agoraphobia for you in due course – thank you so much for the offer of help.

As to the house being the narrator – yes, it does mean that the entire book takes place in or around the house. It was actually working OK just taking place in the kitchen, but I think the story…[Read more]

Thank you so, so much for sharing these notes. Much appreciated.

Ugh. What a hateful drive. Glad you made it in the end.

I remember a family holiday to Belgium. We took 2 cars – stepson had not driven on the continent before. The idea was to drive in convoy, with an understanding that if we got separated hubby and I would press on to our destination because we had a fairly limited time slot in which to pick up…[Read more]