Kristell Ink Publishing Open Door

There are still a few days - well two left for Kristell Ink Publishing Open Door.

They are particularly keen to see:

• Urban Fantasy – make it original, please. No Dresden Files clones. Strong characters, rich stories, and twists and turns galore!
• Science Fiction – all forms, but a good space opera makes us feel warm and fuzzy…
• Epic Fantasy – hero(ine) focused quest novels considered, but don’t be boring and clichéd. Give us something new

Deadline is April and full details can be found here at their site.

Flash Fic Opportunity

A new flash fic opportunity is out with The Wheel of Osheim Writing Contest.

For more details follow the link.

Writers Workshops Events Coming Up

There are a series of writers workshop events coming up in London hosted by the Writers Workshop. These are taster sessions to the larger conference that they hold in York in September every year.

The workshops are as follows:

Friday 29th April: The Transformational Arc - Using one simple writing tool to add meaning and urgency to character, plot and theme. In this talk C.M.Taylor will be using a tested, jargon-free writing process to show you how to identify your theme, then to use that theme to get your plot and your character development working together to give emotionally powerful meaning to your story.

Friday 27th May: Showing and Telling and Storytelling -Show, don’t tell – or so we’re told. But once upon a time we told stories, didn’t we? And in practice, any successful piece of storytelling needs to balance both showing and telling. In this workshop we’ll look at examples of both narrative modes, and find ways to blend them into our own writing.

Friday 24th June: Point-of-view: The Writer’s Invaluable Friend. - Point-of-view may be one of the less frequently discussed elements of the novelist and short story writer's process, but there’s no doubt that it’s also one of the most significant. It might even be the most significant, given that it tends to be the component of the prose that binds all the other elements (e.g. plot, voice, character development) together into a psychologically consistent whole. Relevant to writers in all genres and to beginners and more experienced writers alike, Jeremy Sheldon will spend this session discussing point-of-view in depth and use practical examples to show how control of its many possibilities can lead to more focused, more coherent and more affective narrative voices on the page.

Friday 29th July: Self-Editing Your Novel. - Encapsulating their acclaimed online Self-Edit Your Novel course, Debi Alper and Emma Darwin will discuss how you can make your plot more compelling, your characters more vivid and their voices more engaging, so that every word counts. 

More details and links to book on each course can be found here.

Richard and Judy Competition

Richard and Judy (TV Show Couple) are searching for a best seller and are encouraging people to submit their manuscripts. Full details can be found here but please note that they are not currently looking for science fiction, fantasy, children’s and teenage fiction; and that all submitted works should be 80,000 words or more.

Other World Theatre Looking For New Plays

Otherworld Theatre's 2nd Annual PARAGON: The Largest Science Fiction and Fantasy Play Festival in the World, is back in September. It will feature 40 One-Act, Sci-Fi and Fantasy plays in 48 hours and is taking submissions for these plays.

Original plays need to be between 5 – 60 minutes long and can be comedic or dramatic. Once written they need to be submitted tohttp://www.otherworldtheatre.org/#!paragon/c2280 by 31^st May. Playwrights retain full-rights and ownership of any plays they submit.

40 plays will be selected and performed. For more details, head to the website.

A Road to Thule and Twisted Power by David R Lee - News

'The Road to Thule' paperback by David R Lee - 'Mad Max Meets The Wicker Man'! - is discounted NOW, for a limited period.

The new prices (which are very close the minimum Amazon allows) are:

$9.95 from Amazon.com,

£7.95 from Amazon.co.uk,

E9.50 from the European Amazon outlets.

The links above are still showing the old price, I imagine the refresh will happen at some stage.

Now - news on 'Twisted Power': The paperback will now be available somewhat earlier, from Monday 4th April, so you can order it and get it around the release date. There will be no pre-ordering. (Amazon cannot guarantee fulfilment of orders with my business arrangements, so I would not want to disappoint people!)

A synopsis for The Road to Thule is as follows:

The Road to Thule: A techno-magical dystopian novel set in a flooded world, with eight songs. 'Souls such as ours bear within them the terrible energies of cosmic fire and ice, the anvils of the giants. We are of the Allfather's brood, and were forged for something greater, something that reality shatters on. You are of that bloodline, Alex, and you will come to know it.? Exiled from his pleasant life in the heathen Kingdom of Wessex, Alex Tyler embarks on a journey through the flooded British Isles? archipelago of tiny nations, to the far North. There, he is swept up into the power of Thule, masters its secret magical technology and becomes the warlord who will save his people. As Wessex and the other nations of the British Isles lurch into outright war with monotheist fanatics the Pure Light, the outcome will depend on two strange technologies. The problem is, one of them is deadly for any but a tiny, genetic elite to use, and the other, only Thule knows about.

One million word update

The collective total of words this month is 46677. That makes a cumulative total of 289302 since the one million word target started in November. And that makes a further 710698 to reach the goal.