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New Year Writing Resolutions - Canterbury Tales and Crime Novel Series

12/27/2011

Vice and Virtue

After several years working on short stories (with somewhat patchy success), in the New Year I'll be getting down to some other projects.

First up of course is my 'Lost' Canterbury Tales project as part of my PhD in Creative Writing with Napier University (Edinburgh). I've been re-editing some of my earlier tales and quite frankly find it hard to credit I wrote them. I just hope I can revitalise whatever mojo I had when I wrote them as I begin on a new batch of Canterbury Tales.

That said, I've already managed to knock off a couple of 40-line 'abridged' Tales which should work well as the basis for fully fledged narrative poems.

The other project I need to look at (possibly over the summer, if my wife and kids are away) is my Maddox Trilogy of crime novels set in Saudi Arabia. Only the first in the trilogy, Vice and Virtue, reached the bookshelves - and that was in German translation, published by Pulp Master) as Laster und Tugend. I'll be re-editing the three books in the trilogy and hopefully publishing them as e-books.

http://www.pulpmaster.de/z/25.shtml

Anyhow, that's it for the year. I'm sure I'll write the odd short story in 2012, but my focus has to change if I'm to keep my work fresh and original.

Below are links to my two Global Short Story Competition winners, my short-listed story for the National newspaper, Abu Dhabi, and my Canterbury Tale published by Coscom Entertainment:

http://coscomentertainment.com/?p=159

http://www.globalshortstories.net/winningstoriesjuly09.pdf

http://www.globalshortstories.net/winningstoriesdec09.pdf

http://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/short-story-a-day-for-decisiveness

Happy writing!

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And the Winner is ... Meeeeeee! With 'Lost and Found'

12/18/2011

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Phew! After winning the first three rounds of the Slingink Scribbling Slam (Slingink's short story competition), I featured pretty low down the scoring in the final three rounds.

Fortunately my lead proved enough to hold off the chasing pack, though. My last story, Lost and Found, came in at sixth place to secure the title of Slingink Scribbling Slam winner (fiction), 2011.

Lost and Found is a story founded in fact and based on my best friend's visit to a London gym in the 1980s. When he returned to the locker room after a workout, he discovered that all his clothes had been stolen, so the staff at the gym generously offered him the choice of clothing from the lost property room.

Dressed in colourfully mismatched clothes, looking more like a tramp than a medical expert, he took the underground train home, garnering very odd stares from fellow commuters.

Taking this true story, I worked up a Detective Inspector (DI) Williamson mystery based on the scenario and got myself 84 points - enough to win the competition.

Anyhow, the scribbling slam's over for another year, the stories are out with publishers and editors, so it's time to get down to my 'Lost' Canterbury Tales to make them more of a cohesive whole.

Below are links to my two Global Short Story Competition winners, my short-listed story for the National newspaper, Abu Dhabi, and my Canterbury Tale published by Coscom Entertainment:

http://coscomentertainment.com/?p=159

http://www.globalshortstories.net/winningstoriesjuly09.pdf

http://www.globalshortstories.net/winningstoriesdec09.pdf

http://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/short-story-a-day-for-decisiveness

Happy writing!

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Short Story Writing Markets and Advice

12/12/2011

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Short Story Writing

Last month the Abu Dhabi Writers' Group asked me to give a talk on short story writing. Below is the handout which accompanied my talk, featuring both markets and advice.

Short Story Writing

Markets and Competitions:

Ask yourself why you’re writing short stories. Is it for your own satisfaction? Is it for publication and / or exposure? Is it for money?

When I write a short story, I usually have a paying market in mind, which means concessions need to be made on word count, subject matter and submission guidelines.

* If you write romance, humour, ghost stories or light crime stories, the ‘womag’ markets could be a happy hunting ground.

http://womagwriter.blogspot.com/

(Guidelines to various ‘womag’ publications are on the right hand side of the site linked above – just scroll down a little)

* One market with a token payment, but with a fairly active and at times argumentative forum is Everyday Fiction. The comments and observations made on the daily diet of featured fiction (up to 1000 words) can be entertaining, useful and at times petty – but usually instructive in one way or another.

http://www.everydayfiction.com/

* There are a number of competitions out there, almost all of which have an entry fee. The one I enter most regularly is the Global Short Story Competition (GSSC), which *ahem* I’ve won on two occasions.

http://www.globalshortstories.net/index.html

Stories I write for the GSSC are usually passed on to other markets if I the story isn’t the winner or runner up - as soon as the results are announced.

* Submission guidelines for all genres of short stories, for all sorts of magazines and anthologies, and for payments from ‘for the love of’ / ‘exposure’ to professional rates can be found at ‘Duotrope’s Digest’.

http://www.duotrope.com/

* For your information, The National holds an annual short story competition around January and February every year.

* There are a number of writers’ forums on the internet. However, many writers are averse to sharing market news in case fellow forum members get published at their expense.

General Information:

My short story writing is influenced a lot by O. Henry’s work. I tend to write popular fiction with twist-in-the-tale endings.

I write crime fiction, horror, ghost stories, humour, and have even been known to write the occasional, light-hearted romance.

Popular fiction usually involves writing a lot of dialogue to move the story along. I learnt how to punctuate dialogue properly by studying pages of books from popular modern writers.

Short stories of 1,000 to 2,000 words shouldn’t really have more than three main characters in them, and those characters’ names should all start with different initial letters to avoid confusion.

Passive sentence construction and overuse of the past perfect tense make the action less immediate and should be used sparingly.

Writers are particularly prone to being discouraged by rejection. Personally, when a story gets rejected, I send it out again as soon as possible. My short-listed story for the National newspaper’s short story competition this year went around the block quite a few times before it made its mark.

Below are links to my two Global Short Story Competition winners, my short-listed story for the National newspaper, Abu Dhabi, and my Canterbury Tale published by Coscom Entertainment:

http://www.globalshortstories.net/winningstoriesjuly09.pdf

http://www.globalshortstories.net/winningstoriesdec09.pdf

http://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/short-story-a-day-for-decisiveness

http://coscomentertainment.com/?p=159

Happy writing!

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Pink Undies! 'In the Pink' Bombs in Round 5 of the Slingink Scribbling Slam

12/5/2011

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Pink T-shirt

Round 5 of the Slingink Scribbling Slam saw my story about pink undies (and a pink football jersey - see picture) come in eighth. I'm still leading the pack though, one point ahead of my closest rival - more about my closest rival once the competition's over!

My Round 5 story, In the Pink, was based on a true life incident. Somehow a bright red item of my wife's clothing got in the washing machine with the whites, leaving all my six-year-old son's underwear pink. At first he was horrified, what with all the doll marketing on TV portraying pink as a girlie colour; but eventually he got over it - in spite of me calling him 'Pinkie' once or twice.

In the Pink revolves around a teenager's newly purchased red football jersey getting in the wash with the whites (i.e. his and the rest of the family's underwear) and everything coming out of the washing machine pink. From that point on, life's one teenage crisis after another.

As usual, the story's been submitted for possible publication. Meantime, we await the final round results of the Slingink Scribbling Slam short story competition.
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Read my Canterbury Tale, Robin Hood and Friar Tuck, Zombie Killers (aka The Monk's Second Tale) at:

http://www.amazon.com/Robin-Hood-Friar-Tuck-Canterbury/dp/1926712234/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323180805&sr=1-1

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New Year Writing Resolutions - Canterbury Tales and Crime Novel Series

And the Winner is ... Meeeeeee! With 'Lost and Found'

Short Story Writing Markets and Advice

Pink Undies! 'In the Pink' Bombs in Round 5 of the Slingink Scribbling Slam

Paul A. Freeman

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