Raine

Happy dancing along with the rest, Kaz! Congratulations – this is so exciting. Sorry I’ve not been in among the beta readers but I’d love to catch up with this some time.

I did wonder if there was an act involved… Not convinced you need lots more ‘innits’ unless he’s thinking them. Glad the thoughts were useful x

Thank you Squidge,I appreciate the input. Food for thought.

Thanks Jules.

I have so missed reading your writing! So good to see you here x

Ooh… I like this. Love the ramblings of his mind and the nuggets he reveals. I think I only noticed one it’s instead of its towards the start, so don’t worry so much about the dyslexia…

The first thing I picked up on are his speech/thought patterns. By which I mean he sounds…[Read more]

Like it. You mentioned ‘telly’ bits – as in telling, rather than showing. So when we first meet Florence, you tell us ‘a woman was sitting in a chair’ – a simple change like ‘a woman sat in a chair, eyes on the tv’ can make it less so. Similarly, towards the end, ‘He held a glass in each hand which…’could become something like ‘The glasses in…[Read more]

Thanks @debi! I am indebted to you and Emma for getting me this stage 🙂 I’m so excited…I’m watching emails between my agent and the Penguin Random House editor fly, saying such nice things, and I’m having to pinch myself 🙂

@bric – thank you love! You played a big part with your beta magnificence, too 🙂

And thank you everyone, for all…[Read more]

Read some of those stories, @johnalty – superb stuff, all with a strong, distinct voice. Even a couple of twists. Looking forward to finding @elle‘s stuff too

That’s brilliant news. Congratulations!

Thabks for the shout out, Kaz 😊 it was your talent and perseverence that won the day though xxx

You’re all brilliant. Thank you so much for your really heartwarming comments. I keep reading them with (another) stupid grin on my face.

And I have been VERY remiss in not singling out two members of the previous Cloud for special thanks – @debi and Emma Darwin, who run the phenomenally excellent Self Editing your Novel course – which first…[Read more]

There are two things it does do, John.

1 – it forms one of the filters on what you want to see on the main wall (Activity tab on main menu). You can toggle through the sub menu and choose to only see what friends have said. Right now we’re a small forum of 70 but if we hit a couple of 1000 of active users, you might very well prefer to just see…[Read more]

You mean the coppery tang of blood as her scalpel slices through pale flesh?! Just kidding. I know what you mean, Laure, I need to work on the atmosphere.
I hope this exercise is helping others to get a grasp of what makes a story work – join in everyone.

This reads better and I like that ending much better. One thing I think it’s missing at least for me are smell, colours, touch, little details that makes a scene come alive and differentiate it from other stories. For example, the smells in the nursing home, or when you said the restaurant was shabby, how was it shabby are we talking mismatched…[Read more]

Brilliant news! You must be dancing!

That’s absolutely fantastic news! Well deserved. Break open the bubbly!