The buzz at the RA Summer Exhibition was more than usually raucous, especially in the crush of the smaller galleries where hundreds of paintings crowd the walls in haphazard layers. In part it's the reaction to a surprisingly upbeat collection.



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I need to find a small independent publisher who would be interested in my mini coffee table style book to raise funds for Macmillan Cancer Support.
If there are any publishers out there or if anybody can recommend a publisher would be eternally grateful if you could contact me!
Many thanks.

I am hoping to publish a mini coffee table style book to raise funds for Macmillan Cancer Support with literary and artistic contributions from people who have been touched by cancer in some way. I would like to dedicate the book to the memory of loved ones we have lost and to show our solidarity to people who are living with cancer and in remission.
If you would like to contribute towards this project please contact me for further information.
annie_morgan68@hotmail.com

The team have been eagerly waiting for Susannah Rickards to join the Strictly Writing blog. She is a busy bee but has finally carved out time for us and we look forward to her first post - no pressure there, then, Susannah!


Here's a short word from the woman herself!


"I'm from the North East but now live in Surrey with my twin boys and my husband. I write mainly short stories and have had them, and poetry anthologised, broadcast and won/placed in a few awards...

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Some pictures of red kites...

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Diane Kruger as Lisa resembles a young, low-key Catherine Deneuve , and Vincent Lindon has the kind of baggy-eyed, lived-in look that Frenchmen have perfected.


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1. A writer is born not made. I believe rather that we become writers. However, all the writers I know are usually people who start life with a love of words and who also love reading. They generally prefer to observe life rather than participate in it too. Actually, all writers suffer from arrested development, very likely. Well, I do. I’d much rather play with my imaginary friends than go and work in an office with a lot of nasty grown ups.

If a love of words was all there was to it, though, there’d be far more writers than there already are – and that’s saying something. Only call yourself a writer after you’ve put in a good few years of practice, can paper your smallest room with rejection letters and then, even after you’ve put your last ounce of strength into your novel or story only to have it rejected again, you are willing to dig even deeper inside yourself to find more strength to unpick it and put the pieces together one more time. Or however many more times it takes to get it right. (See below: 7)
2. Writers are sensitive souls. No. It’s been said before but while others are trying to take in the broadcast of a piece of tragic news, like the one that’s come to light this week about the couple who threw themselves off Beechy Head because they couldn’t cope with the tragedy of losing their son, you are the one already writing their final dialogue. (See below: 3)


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There's a pair of menacing black thugs (cue cameo from facially tattoed Mike Tyson petting a tiny pooch, like Lenny in Of Mice and Men) and Asian gangsters who present an odd mix of violence and effeminacy.


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Just a little something I came across today.

I was reading an article in the Comments section of The Times Online about the male pill. The article was quite amusing, discussing the attitude of dog-walkers to un-castrated dogs, a study in China where only about four fifths of the men remembered to take the pill even though they were (presumably) being paid to take part in the experiment, and the tendancy of both men and women to lie about contraception. All interesting reading over a lunch hour.
Being the online version, comments had been posted at the bottom of the page. One included the phrase 'i loled when I read about your dog'.

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This insanely hot weather is making me all funny (in a humorous way) so I've brought some giggles (hopefully) to the blog this week. I've just watched a Paris Hilton film too, so my brain is not really geared up to tell you all about the shakers and movers in the publishing world! This film, The Hottie and the Nottie, tells the story of Nate who moves to L.A. to track down Cristabel, the woman he's been in love with since childhood, only to discover that his plan to woo her has a hurdle to overcome - what to do with June, Cristabel's not-so-hot best friend? It's a movie of opposites - good and bad, beautiful and ugly, and with this in mind, I am employing the idea 'hottie and nottie' to this post.

Below are two covering letters, one hot (well, I wouldn't go that far as it was written by me, but it gives you a rough idea), and one not so hot. The letters have been written to imaginary agents, by a Mr A. Moron and a Mrs I.M. Smart (that's me). Hopefully this blog is self-explanatory, but in case you are a little worn by the heat, the first is a covering letter which you wouldn't send to an agent - not even in your wildest dreams - while the second is my own sent to a top agency, who, in their rejection e-mail complimented me on a 'very good covering letter.' Now I don't want to get all big-headed about this, but it should give the novice writer a rough idea of what an agent is expecting to receive. Mr Moron wrote his letter in green biro on the back of a soggy cereal-stained Cornflakes packet, while Mrs Smart typed her letter out and printed onto nice white paper.




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