Chrissy

Thank you, Ath!

Thank you, @sandradavies I really didn’t expect that. The other entries were so good.

I’ll be back later with a comp for April.

Glorious. I’ve been to that part of the world and had no idea there had been a railway there, let alone one with such a remarkable history. It’s a shame it didn’t survive long enough that the preservation movement had got going, though by the sound of things it was probably lucky that they quit while they were ahead.

They’d Chosen Me for Being Good at Isolation

Those harbour houses had slope-ceilinged attics with dormer windows. I’d been instructed to stay in one garret, squint out between curtains, send situation reports every two hours. A reconnaissance man, a civilian thought to be steady, I watched the quay below, admired the yachts and motorboats moo…[Read more]

Congratulations, Sandra! I love your story.

Thank you, @Seagreen for the comp. I enjoyed doing my pastiche of The Big Sleep. I find that kind of thing a useful exercise. Recently my own  sentence structures and vocabulary have seemed stuck in a rut. Studying someone else’s gives a necessary jolt.

It’s a fun thing to do if other Denizens want to…[Read more]

Before this competition was set I’d been thinking about the opening from The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, specifically how it builds humour and tension in the first paragraph. I decided to use Chandler’s first two paras as a template for the story comp, possibly a daft and murderous thing to do but a bit of fun.

***

The Blush

It was the s…[Read more]

What a well-deserved winner, Seagreen. Such beautiful writing.

Thank you, Richard, for the prompt.

Oof. Yes. Gaiman. I think a lot of people I know are particularly hurt by that one because he appeared to be a writer of such humanity. I didn’t read anything of his that I didn’t like, and connect with in some way. At first, I did allow myself to give him the benefit of the doubt. Not for very long, and I’m not sure there’s any doubt now…[Read more]

impromptu

you’ll come to a bad end, said my dad in our hallway, in his pyjamas, hands at his sides, knuckles curled, though – as far as I know – he never raised his fists, and what’s more he was too clever for cliché most of the time, but that evening when I came home from the gig with a scent of sweat and beer, I was grinning, shifting from foo…[Read more]

I asked it for a 200-word synopsis for my 2,200-word Den Challenge story (which I haven’t posted on the Den yet). The result was mostly a true reflection of the story – about 90% right I’d say. It had the minor character’s motivations wrong; they went in the opposite direction to what I’d written, unless of course I haven’t described them clearly…[Read more]

This is very interesting, Ath. Have you tried giving it a word count, e.g. to produce a 300-word synopsis?

Thank you for posting this, Ath. Christmas has been so busy I’ve only just read it. It’s a touching story.

This links to a short piece in The Bookseller:

The Bookseller – News – Society of Authors calls for change to ‘acknowledge all writers involved’ in celebrity-written books

The main message is:

“The SoA is asking publishers, celebrities, booksellers, festival organisers, agents and all involved in the industry to recognise and reward all…[Read more]

Yes, it’s the old vanity approach of taking advantage of unaware writers’ naivety. There’s a common belief that editing more or less equals proofreading without so much as a beta read along the way. I imagine all vanity publishers will be using AI in the same fashion.

I think what’s notable about Spines is the number of books they plan to…[Read more]

Hi @janette

I agree it could bring self-pub into disrepute though the large number of self-pub books on Amazon that seem not to have had human editing, regardless of the availability of AI, is already doing that.

The publishing industry can seem very off-putting. I’ve never tried to be published by it so I haven’t been through that particular…[Read more]