Sad Old Man - a short story.

My story Sad Old Man, which won 2nd prize in January's Writing Magazine competition began life as a 500 word monologue that I wrote as an exercise in an Open University Creative Writing course some time ago.

I've often recycled odd snippets worked on in a class exercise or as a warm up when I get writer's block, into something new. I might just use a character, a line of dialogue, or a setting and the original idea might change beyond recognition but keeping all those bits and pieces is invaluable.

Sometimes I look back at old work and cast a critical eye and see plenty of faults, but just occasionally I surprise myself by finding something that was fresh which stimulates a new story.

My story was published online here. It is also published in Greenacre Writers Anthology Vol 3.

Mslexia, Kiva and me.

I had some good news today. My second Kiva loan has been repaid so I was able to re-loan it to someone else.

In issue no 50 of Mslexia, there was a small article on p.24 about Kiva, a US based charity which administers micro-loans. People can lend as little as $25 to those in the developing world who are struggling to get a business off the ground, or expand it, but are unable to access conventional bank loans. This is not so much aid as enabling trade. I logged on to www.kiva.org/ to discover more and made my first loan to a group of women in Senegal.

Each borrower - an individual or a group - requests an amount which is made up from any number of lenders - for example, a $1,000 loan might be from 40 lenders each lending $25, or just a few each lending larger amounts. The loans are managed by carefully selected ‘field partners’ in the relevant countries.

A few weeks after I made my first loan I learned that a piece I had submitted to the ‘Monologues’ section in Mslexia had been chosen by Val McDermid (clearly a lady of great taste and discernment) for publication in issue 51. I received a welcome cheque which I used to make a second Kiva loan to a group of women in Mali, a country I visited 5 years ago in my quest to see Timbuktu.

The e-mails from Kiva telling me the loans had been re-paid, the second just this morning, brought me great joy in the knowledge that I had helped to make a difference. I was able to recycle that loan immediately. Priscilla and Susan who are both aiming to expand their farms in Kenya are my current loan recipients.

World Book Night 2012 - April 23rd

I'm so pleased to be chosen as a giver of books again this year. This time my book is The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. My own copy is a bit battered having been read and leant out a couple of times.

The story of 9 year old Leisel, whose parents have been taken to the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, is narrated by Death. Death will visit the book thief three times, but who is the book thief?

Last year's World Book Night launch in Trafalgar Square on March 5th was a fantastic experience, meeting fellow book enthusiasts and listening to actors and great authors reading extracts of their books and those of other writers aloud. It was bitterly cold, but was such a wonderful atmosphere, we didn't mind too much. This year it should be a bit warmer!

Creative Cafe Project

The Creative Cafe Project selects new writing. All pieces of work are classified as a drink. My flash fiction is Espresso and the title is Leaving. It is now published in  Best of Cafe Lit 2012

Comprising the six prize-winning stories from our recent short story competition along with nine stories from members of Greenacre Writers, co-editor Rosie Canning and I are proud to announce the publication of our first anthology.

Copies are on sale at £7.99. E-mail greenacrewriters@gmail.com for details.

I gave Ernest Hemingway a rubbish review.

It’s true. I did it in innocence, oblivious that the page 99 I was reviewing was his, but actually I’m not a fan - have you read the dialogue in A Farewell to Arms? It’s diabolical.

You might have come across Page 99 - a website where authors can upload page 99 of their novel, and people can review it, unaware of its author, and whether it is published or not. Once rated, the reviewer discovers who the author is, and can read other people’s comments. One of my friends recently decided that she was no good at writing because she had received some pretty caustic remarks on her page 99. The truth is that she is good at writing but many of the reviewers are useless at reviewing.

So how beneficial are these websites? There are many of them out there. I’ve posted work on a few myself and each time have had a very mixed bag of comments. Some have been helpful observations - not always very complimentary and not at all what I wanted to hear but nevertheless constructive and valuable, while others have been opinions rather than reviews, and have been along the lines of ‘I don’t like this genre’ or something equally useless. Of course, not every piece of writing is going to appeal to everyone, no matter what its merits might be, but a good reviewer can recognise good qualities even if they hate the writing. It’s about objectivity. It helps to look for positive and negative in a piece of work giving a more balanced view.

In the Greenacre Writers groups, we read and critique each other's work. We don’t all sit around saying, ‘oh, it’s marvellous,’ to boost each other’s confidence because that isn’t helpful. If it is marvellous, we explain why, and if there are aspects we think need revision we say so, and again, we say why (in between mouthfuls of cake.) Constructive criticism is the way forward and I think all the members agree their writing has improved because of it. But strangers - often using stupid nicknames - on a website can be unnecessarily unkind because they don’t have to account for themselves.

I gave Ernest Hemingway constructive criticism. I think I might have suggested he try a writing group. Oh well, no doubt he’ll agree with me on one thing: some reviewers are rubbish.

Eating My Way Round the World.

I have two ambitions that happily complement one another: to become a member of the Traveller’s Century Club and to eat my way round the world. Travelling is enhanced by the food you eat along the way - there are so many local fruits and vegetables and dishes unknown in Britain - even when we import so much foreign produce and have restaurants representing all nations. Early in my travels in Rome, where I discovered delicious pasta dishes - then still relatively unknown in England where pasta meant tinned spaghetti or macaroni pudding - a fellow traveller asked for egg and chips. I was horrified at their lost opportunity to sample new cuisine. I have nothing against egg and chips but when in Rome…

My food journey has taken me from my first French breakfast at age 14, when I was given a bowl of the most delicious hot chocolate, to so many other places: the best Peking Duck was fittingly in Peking - now of course Beijing, but Beijing Duck doesn’t sound quite right. Beijing is also on the list for braised donkey. Perhaps, though, at the top of the list is my introduction to Indonesian Rijstaffel in Amsterdam, where we could barely leave the table having gorged on the most delicious selection - possibly around a million selections - of delightful dishes.

How can I choose between langoustine and potato stew eaten in a cosy Iceland restaurant in a freezing February, or fresh Capitaine fish from the river Niger, cooked on the river bank and eaten in lamplight beneath an enormous moon with shooting stars overhead? A rich stew of goat served by a Tuareg in his home in Timbuktu or a plate of reindeer stew served in a Sami tent in the Arctic Circle? Cuba, not known for its five star cuisine provided the best spit-roast pork in the world. They say appetite is the best sauce and certainly we had trekked a good few miles up on the mountains to reach it. Lobster and crocodile were also on the menu here so who cared if bread often ran out owing to short supply?

Local fruit and street snacks are just as memorable. I’ve often eaten fruit that does not have an English name and has never been seen in our ethnic shops. There were the world’s best apples in Kashmir, along with walnuts dipped in a little salt, and in Thailand, durian, the world’s smelliest fruit, and fried insects. Competing for mention are the sugared doughballs cooked in oil that looked as if it had been drained from an old bus engine, in Djenne’s Monday market in Mali, the spicy samosa from a street stall where we queued behind locals in Sri Lanka, and the plateful of borek, brought specially in from the next door restaurant for us in Istanbul where the baklava rivalled that in Jordan.

Coffee at Caffe Florian or Café de Flore? Mint tea in a Marrakesh Souk or overlooking Petra? New York’s deli breakfasts and baked cheesecake that defies the largest of appetites, or the sparse menu on the local Trans-Siberian train which dwindled day by day as stocks ran out. As prices on the menu were erased indicating the item was no longer available, we always managed to find something and supplemented it with berries sold by locals on the station platforms. And talking of platforms, there were the wonderful restaurants of the Indian Railways back in the 70s, where poor service or food was soon righted by mention of the Complaints Book. An entire meal would be re-served to avoid an entry in that! Dhal curry has never tasted so good as at the end of a twelve hour train journey in crowded third class.

It’s debatable whether I’ll gain membership to the TCC but I’m still trying and I’m up for eating my way round the world in London as well as the actual world. Egg and chips will only be on the menu if my fridge at home contains nothing else.