Merry Christmas!
I hope you all managed to enjoy the festive holidays, despite the tragic losses of more celebrities and the looming stand-off between the USA and Russia. The Trump parody of the John Lewis advert made me smile, even if the Christmas cracker jokes were terrible.
I took a break from writing this month so I could focus on reading. I chose to read three self-published books because I believe independent writers should help other writers...
The first book was Festive Treats, our free Christmas anthology for Kindle. I reviewed all 16 short stories, including my own, with tweet-sized reviews of 140 characters or less. The other two books were debut novels by exciting new self-publishing authors: period detective story In The Shadow of the Stump by R K Leatherdale and dystopian satire Grind Spark by Tamara Rogers.
The other piece of writing news to report is that I won 2nd prize in the BWG Winter Competition! This means I went home with a crisp £5 note and a glorious certificate. The judge Iain Grant gave my story about Guy Fawkes meeting Death a mighty 10/10 for enjoyableness.
I judged the BWG Summer Competition earlier in the year, so I know how difficult it can be to choose a winner. I was very pleased that Martin Sullivan won 1st place for his sci-fi story. It described how footage of Earth's lost past could be retrievable from vibrations in rock and stone.
So, a quiet month on the writing front but Christmas is the perfect excuse. All that is left to do in 2016 is look back at my writing highlights and lowlights...
Sign up to Simon's newsletter to hear more about his reading and writing projects.
I hope you all managed to enjoy the festive holidays, despite the tragic losses of more celebrities and the looming stand-off between the USA and Russia. The Trump parody of the John Lewis advert made me smile, even if the Christmas cracker jokes were terrible.
I took a break from writing this month so I could focus on reading. I chose to read three self-published books because I believe independent writers should help other writers...
The first book was Festive Treats, our free Christmas anthology for Kindle. I reviewed all 16 short stories, including my own, with tweet-sized reviews of 140 characters or less. The other two books were debut novels by exciting new self-publishing authors: period detective story In The Shadow of the Stump by R K Leatherdale and dystopian satire Grind Spark by Tamara Rogers.
The other piece of writing news to report is that I won 2nd prize in the BWG Winter Competition! This means I went home with a crisp £5 note and a glorious certificate. The judge Iain Grant gave my story about Guy Fawkes meeting Death a mighty 10/10 for enjoyableness.
I judged the BWG Summer Competition earlier in the year, so I know how difficult it can be to choose a winner. I was very pleased that Martin Sullivan won 1st place for his sci-fi story. It described how footage of Earth's lost past could be retrievable from vibrations in rock and stone.
So, a quiet month on the writing front but Christmas is the perfect excuse. All that is left to do in 2016 is look back at my writing highlights and lowlights...
Sign up to Simon's newsletter to hear more about his reading and writing projects.