Jackie Wesley

It did, but not by very much. I went looking for info on this, and found three post-nationalisation disasters with forty or more killed. Not quite slaughter on nineteenth century levels, but you have to take into account that the industry was being steadily run down.

Though I’m old enough (I was born in 1950) I don’t remember where I was or what…[Read more]

And thank you too, Seagreen.

For those of you who are interested enough to look up that song lyric, I should explain the significance of that line ‘Down there in the dark they are lying.’ On the grounds that conditions were too dangerous for any further rescue work, the controversial decision was taken to permanently seal the affected part of the…[Read more]

Thank you one and all. I’ve had a good feeling about this story ever since I knocked out the original version for last winter’s challenge in three days flat, but never in my wildest dreams did I envision it would do this well. Well, in my wildest dreams maybe, but not anywhere else.

The result has bolstered my faith in my writing ability, though…[Read more]

Thank you, Kate. Yes, it is. Once again I seem to have missed the boat to be the first to announce it, but hey, who cares? After writing and submitting two novels and getting 60% form rejections and 40% no reply at all, it does feel rather good to have got some validation at last.

Bitter, moi? Not just at the moment.

Oh, it’s gone live all on its little ownsome.

For a start, you could try Jericho Writers, which is what the Writers’ Workshop, sponsors of the old Word Cloud, morphed into a few years back.

Editorial Services

Sorry, I can’t make the kink go live without the entire post vanishing. You’ll have to copy and paste.

Ah. Forgot to check for new posts (not often necessary here, sad to say), hence the duplication with Ath’s post.

That’s four Denizens now on the longlist, a 20% hit rate. Impressive. Or is anyone else going to come out of the woodwork?

Wot I said to Ath, Daeds: making the longlist is an achievement, so congrats on that.

Well yes, obviously. But making the longlist is quite an achievement too.

Congratulations to you too, Kate. We may be a small group of people here on the Den, but we’re talented…

And congratulations to you too, Ath. Which story is yours? It did strike me that at least one of the titles had your ring to it, but I might have been completely off-beam so I ain’t sayin’.

I too fail to understand what ‘static’ is supposed to mean in this context, or why it should apply to present tense. I have no problem whatever with reading present tense stories: sometimes I think I even prefer them. With past tense you’re always at one remove, as if listening to someone tell a story. Present tense is immersive, immediate. After…[Read more]

I discussed that last point with the person who recommended the series to me, and we agreed that that’s actually one of its strengths. In real-life situations of war, revolution, unrest etc good people are just as likely, or even more likely, to get killed as bad people. The atrocities that occur at regular intervals are paralleled in real life…[Read more]

I’m not sure that I’d call The Ten Thousand Doors urban fantasy, exactly, as I understand it (yes, I did go and look it up). it has some of the tropes, like fantastical elements intruding into our world, but the setting is neither urban nor contemporary.

I take your point about some modern fantasy being more original (I’ve sampled George R R…[Read more]