GippsGirl

Thanks @Raine, but I am YEARS away from submitting anything!

Gosh, Sandra, you posted your verdict at 4 am! I hope you’re catching up on sleep today. Thanks for an excellent comp theme, which elicited a host of cracking entries.

Congrats to Kate on a worthy win, and to John and Seagreen for their honourable mentions.

Fine with me, Sandra. Do you want to provide bank details for a transfer (by way of PM) or would you prefer a cheque?

Bringing a gun into a house changes it.

Atoms shift and reconfigure to make space
for this alien instrument
and what it might wreak.

It’s not the way, she pleads.
Violence begets violence
and can’t be undone.

Pushed back by forceful hands,
she quakes in the corner,
bible clutched to heart.

He sits rigid, jaw clenched, hairs on end,
the wei…[Read more]

Congrats, Sandra! A great accomplishment to get it in print after eight long years. Friends who know I write can’t understand why I’m still at it after five. I, too, would love a signed copy, and assume you reap more of the profit (!) if purchased direct rather than via Blurb? Could do a bank transfer.

And a catch-up is definitely due! x

I interpret this directly as: don’t ever put yourself in the position where you might regret the things you didn’t do,
which leads me indirectly to: don’t hold back from doing the things you could have done because you’re likely to regret it later.

The word adventure didn’t spring to mind when I read your post (though I get what you mean).…[Read more]

What fantastic news! Congratulations, Kaz, and I read that you met your agent at a successful speed-dating pitch-event. That’s a great reminder to make sure we writers are best prepared for such meetings.

I didn’t know of the Wheeler Centre. It looks like an amazing resource, and next time I’m home in Melbourne I’ll try to get along to an event there.

“A Lyttle Goes a Long Way”
The Improbable Life of an Ulster Storyteller
gets my vote.

Improbable tale feeds into the stereotype of Irish blarney. That title tells the reader before they’ve turned the cover that what follows is not to be believed, so why bother buying the book?

Improbable life suggests a life fully lived, a life of intrigue and…[Read more]

I, too, think a subtitle (strapline?) works, though I’m rather partial to Kaz’s suggestion of ‘improbable’ which suggests an especially rollicking good story from an Ulster Storyteller.