When I started to write my first novel, I was entirely seduced. It was like being caught in a spell – seeing real words appear on the screen, the story unfolding before my eyes. And, never knowing what twists and turns the plot might happen to take – well, that only added to the thrill of creating an entirely new world of my own.

But then, perhaps I was too selfish. The Diamond was all about me, the sort of novel I wanted to read, with no thought of maintaining a consistent genre and no concept of sales and marketing teams and, despite securing an agent, my story was only published in Russia. Not that I’m ungrateful for that, and I think the cover is ‘Brilliant’ which by chance is the name in translation! But, to write a whole book and then be unable to read a word unless I do a crash course in Cyrillic – well, that’s quite a cruel irony, don’t you agree?

It was set in a sinister Victorian world of dark circles and amoral tricksters. It had a maharajah, a cursed diamond displayed in a golden cage, and...Oh, there I go again. But, it’s been so hard to let go of that book when I didn’t just write it, I lived it. I peered into every dingy room, and smelled the acrid candle smoke, and walked every gas-lit cobbled street as if I’d become my heroine: that naive crinolined narrator beset by ghosts and dissolute cads.



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We’re drinking tea and chatting, my sister and I, at the kitchen table. It’s been ages since we’ve seen each other. We’re talking about my six-year-old son, who, earlier, marched us all into his bedroom to watch his ‘Animal Olympics’. The competitors were a series of toys, including a stuffed dog, a dinosaur and a Ninja turtle who were hurled across the room or over a series of obstacles for the glory of their designated countries. [I think the dog - who has the rather prosaic name ‘Doggy’ - was Team GB]. Later, there was a lengthy award ceremony and heaven help anyone who wasn’t giving the proceedings their full attention.
So my sis was marveling at the little chap’s total focus and how absorbed he was in the minutiae of his carefully crafted game.
‘He reminds me of you when you were little,’ she said. ‘You’d play for hours with your dollies. It was like you had a whole world going on in your head that no one else could see…’


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Not to exaggerate or anything, but we've just had the Biggest Snow Storm Since the Dinosaurs.
Here are some pictures.

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Well, I think I’ve battered Chapter One into the right kind of shape. Now I can push through the next four chapters to get to the muddy bit; the bit that hadn’t been written/created before I dived into Nano. This is where I have to take myself in hand and do the Billy Connolly impression – ‘Appreciate Cunningham, appreciate!’ to which I must reply, ‘Sir. Yes sir!’

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It's that time of year when some of the biggest writing contests open for entries including, of course, the Bridport Prize (accepting flash fiction for the first time). Then there are impending deadlines for the Fish One Page Prize, the Bristol Short Story Prize, and then Exeter, Yeovil - the list goes on. All of which has me thinking: what's your strategy for deciding which contests to enter and what influences that process?

Do you, for instance, consider the odds?If you're a newish writer do you tend to enter smaller contests and build up to the bigger ones? If so, I admire your pragmatism; I could never resist jumping straight to the big fish (in this case Fish itself, where I got lucky in 2008).

Bridport is a longer shot than ever with a 40% increase in entries for 2009: 17,000 entries, including poetry! I wonder, was this the result of Ali Smith's judging role, or could it be that the exchange rate made Fish seem more expensive than ever to enter? (Terrific prize money, of course.) To what extent does the entry fee affect your decision to submit to a certain contest? At all? Somewhat? Only in relation to the prize money?


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This blog post has an international flavour, beginning with the wonderful-looking lit mag I received from Zagreb this morning. Called Autsajderski fragmenti, this is apparently its "Book of Love" issue, to which I was invited to submit any of my flash stories which related in some way to love. I was delighted, I had such a great email from the editor, and now here are 5 of my stories in Croatian. All I can tell is... one of them is Plaits, but not sure about the others! My name is there, and a link to my website, so we'll see if I get some Croatian hits. This is lovely, the first time I've been asked for stories to translate into another language, and they say they'd like more. I must find someone who speaks Croatian...

And now to the main part of this post, the latest in my series of Writing&Place guest blogs, this time from Sylvia Petter.On her website, Sylvia introduces herself as "an Australian in Austria and I write fiction, essays and poems," so already there is a sense of ex-pat-ness about her! Sylvia, who blogs at Merc's world, had these answers to my questions:
..........

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Writers around the world have always been in the forefront of the fight for freedom of expression. Here in the UK, of course, we have that right, enshrined in the Human Rights Act and article 10 of the European Convention. Which means that as a novelist I can write whatever I want. Can’t I?

The thing is, though, that with rights come responsibilities. I was brought up on the feminist writings of the 1980s (Carol Gilligan, Nel Noddings and others) which critiqued the traditional, liberal, rights-based ethics with which we are all so familiar, proposing that the moral regulation of human conduct should be founded less on individual rights and more on a recognition of community, of interrelationality, of responsibility: a so-called ‘ethics of care’.

Oops, slid into lecture mode there for a moment. I can hear you muttering: what on earth has this stuff got to do with writing commercial women’s fiction?

Well, freedom of expression means that an author is free to write about whatever characters she chooses, and to endow them with whatever views and attitudes she wishes. Besides which, we have to be true to our characters, don’t we? We have to reflect the world as it exists. A novel is not a soapbox.

But my personal version of the ‘ethics of care’ tells me that the flipside of freedom of expression is responsibility for what we choose to express; that as writers we have a duty to think about the potential impact of our work on those who read it. Societal attitudes are influenced not only by upbringing, family, friends and workmates, and by the news media, but also by the ambient culture: by film and television, and by the books we read.



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One of the downfalls of being an aspiring author and blogger is that you constantly read interviews with other writers, but no one ever, ever, ever asks you to do one! And we at Strictly are just as guilty of this. Regardless of talent or experience, we have only ever invited published writers to answer our Quickfire Questions. I don’t know why – gifted yet unpublished authors have provided us with great guest blog posts.

So, you know what? Today I am going to interview myself. It’s very exciting for me, and I am going to relish it as it may be the one and only time I get asked! Yes, it’s rather self-indulgent, but I reckon I deserve it after all these years of sweat and tears.

So please, published, but especially unpublished writers out there – if you comment on this post, do choose one question and answer it for yourself; I would love to see some other responses.


Three famous authors, dead or alive, you would invite to dinner.
Enid Blyton, Stephanie Meyer, Sophie Kinsella

Email or phone?
Email – far less nerve-wracking.

Top three dream agents?
Anyone who likes my work will do – that’s how it seems sometimes. But, on a good day, when I’m feeling choosy? Ooh, difficult – so many lovely (in my experience), highly qualified agents out there. If pushed, Darley Anderson, Broo Doherty or the Ampersand Agency.



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So, the good news is... we've sold some copies of my e-story The Glassy Roll of the Eye!
That's a few more dollars towards the Haiti relief effort by the Red Cross.

I could really do with some more reviews, especially by anyone who'd like to buy a copy but is put off by the out-of-States price. ($1 within USA, more outside because of e-book red tape). Hopefully some favourable reviews (hey, you could even just say you like the photograph of the desert!) will help drum up some support.

Thanks to everyone who has bought it so far.

On a related note, 100 Stories for Haiti have just announced the contents of their book - lots of familiar names in there! They must have been working their socks off to get it all together so quickly. I'll put up another link when it's available to buy.

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