Facebook – General

Hope today has gone well. Getting colder. Lady had a lovely time in the park with her Hungarian Vizler pal. I enjoyed a swim and it was warmer in the water than out of it but it is November after all.

Writing wise, have almost completed an interesting proofreading job. I need to get on with editing some flash pieces for competitions but have earmarked some time later in the week for that. I find it pays to block out time for tasks. It means I’ve made a commitment to myself here and it helps me get more done.

Character Tip: Think about what your character would have on their wish list, say the top two or three things. Could you write a story around them trying to accomplish one of them? Equally you could look at why the items are on that list – there will be stories behind that too.

Hope you’ve had a good day. A hectic one as usual but hey that’s Monday for you.

Time for a story though and I hope you like my latest one which I first shared on Substack yesterday – Lighter. Look out for my YouTube story which I’ll share shortly as that follows this one. See further down. Both were great fun to write.

Hope you enjoy Lighter and I suspect there will be a lot of sympathy for my character, Belpeth, here.

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Brrr… chilly today. Glad to report author newsletter went out earlier today. Theme was on light and dark. I shared some tips and ideas on using this theme.

Will be cracking on with flash fiction Sunday shortly. Have booked a couple of Zoom events for later this month and into December for Bridge House Publishing and the Association of Christian Writers respectively.

Looking forward to these plus my online launch for Seeing The Other Side on 19th November.

Link here for that – all welcome. Will be reading from my new collection and taking questions. Hope to see you there.

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Hope the weekend has got off to a good start. Getting colder here. Not a fan of Halloween but hope you found my Trick or Treat for Characters on Chandler’s Ford Today yesterday helpful.

Talking of CFT, I’ll be sharing Festive Flash Fiction Writing next week and I’m not too early on this one, honest! If you’re preparing festive flash for your website, newsletter etc., now is a good time to draft some (and certainly for the women’s magazine market you’d have needed to have had your Christmas stories in much earlier in the year, by summer at the latest). Anyway, more on that next week.

Author newsletter out again tomorrow. A huge thanks for your support here.

Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

Well, the longer darker evenings are here with a vengeance now. Dark by 5pm. Am so thankful writing can be done in the warm. There is something about the darker evenings which encourages me to get to my desk even earlier than usual and write more so that’s something positive at least.

I’ve been writing around the themes of light and dark recently (see my Substack and YouTube stories this week – see above and below this time!) but they are timeless themes and the lovely thing with them is you can apply them to characters and situations too as my recent Chandler’s Ford Today post discussed.

What one character sees as light, another will see in a different light, the opposite of it in fact, but you can have a great deal of fun writing stories about characters clashing on things like this.

Another busy Monday and another story from me on YouTube – Darker. This follows on from my Substack tale, Lighter. See above.

Following on from that, what does my Belpeth try now to get out of having to do something she needs to do but so doesn’t want to?

When you have bad news, could a member of your usual opposition be an unusual ally? Can any good come out of a fairy godmother consulting with a witch? Find out here.

Will shortly be getting on with flash fiction Sunday. It;’s a lovely way to spend a Sunday afternoon especially when it’s cold out! I’m so glad writing is generally done indoors. I used to take part in Flash NANO and miss that a lot. Mind you, several of my drafts from this have been published (including in Seeing The Other Side).

What I found useful about it was the daily challenge to write a flash piece (though sometimes I did end up writing two pieces on one day, life sometimes getting in the way as it will do). I also loved the range of prompts including in formats I hadn’t come across before. One of my favourites there was to write a piece in the form of an American style police report. I wrote what I call a fairytale with bite for that. Funny and fun to do.

I’ve had the privilege of contributing to books of prompts issued by Bridge House Publishing. Do check it out – link to Kindle version below. I will often take a prompt and put my own spin on it so getting even more from it.

Looking forward to flash fiction Sunday tomorrow and I hope to get on with editing some stories for competition purposes too. Has been a busy week but a good one. Enjoyed being on Zoom earlier this week for a book launch and, separately, an ACW get together. Online is useful for those times you could never meet in person and both of these events came into that category.

November will be a busy month. I’ll be back at Salisbury URC for a Christmas Fayre and there will also be my online launch for Seeing The Other Side. The link for that will go out in my newsletter but I’ll also share it here later. See above. Am enjoying the prep work for that too which I’m currently doing. It’s always a joy to be talking about flash.

Hope to wrap up my proofreading job in the next ten days. Has been an interesting one.

The flash competitions I’ve got in mind will probably be the last ones I have a go at for this year unless something stupendous comes up between now and early December. (After that it’s a case of winding down for Christmas really).

Goodreads Author Blog – Haunted

I couldn’t resist the title for this piece given I’m writing this on Halloween 2026. Now as well as ghost stories, my favourite being Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, you can have haunted characters.

Haunted not by ghosts but by other living characters, mistakes they’ve made in the past (see Persuasion by Jane Austen – both Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth are haunted this way), haunted by things left undone.

Sometimes they can be haunted by seeing how things could have been. Gollum in The Lord of The Rings is haunted by the fact Sam and Frodo have a great friendship. Gollum killed the only friend he did have to get that wretched ring and seeing Sam’s utter loyalty to Frodo brought home to Gollum, I think, what he could have had if he’d acted more honourably.

Characters with regrets always hit a chord with readers given we all have own own regrets and fiction reflects what we know (and in the case of sci-fi/fantasy what could be real if those other worlds existed).

All fiction has to have characters readers can relate to and we can relate to regrets and mistakes. What I love is seeing how those regrets and mistakes are dealt with – can the characters put things right? Can they come to terms with what can’t be put right?

So, I think, it is the haunted characters who keep us reading.