Image Credits:-
All images from Pixabay/Pexels unless otherwise stated with many created in Book Brush. Book cover images from Chapeltown Books and Bridge House Publishing. Screenshots taken by me, Allison Symes.
Hope you have had a good week. Weather changeable but Lady has caught up with her Hungarian Vizler pal this week and I’m doing better with my swimming. Writing and proofing work continuing to keep me busy but that is how I like it so all well there!
Facebook – General and Chandler’s Ford Today
18th September 2026
Second blog post from me tonight is my regularly Friday night Chandler’s Ford Today post. This week I look at Blog Tours and Book Events, both of which have been uppermost on my mind recently! I look at the advantages of these for writers, share tips, plus I share links to all the blogs I was on recently for my tour with Seeing The Other Side.
Again, a huge thank you to all who hosted me and to Lynsey Adams of Reading Between The Lines Book Vlog for organising things so well.
Hope you find the post useful. Even if this isn’t for you yet (and I stress the yet), it may become so later. I remain grateful for all of the writing advice I receive earlier on in my writing life which is so much a help to me now.
1
18th September 2026 – Authors Electric
It’s double blog day for me today. First up tonight is my latest post on Authors Electric on Celebrating Books. As you can imagine, this one was a particular joy to write. There is never a time where you shouldn’t celebrate books either!
I look at reluctant readers, my hopes the shorter fiction forms might help draw them into reading, and there’s a word of encouragement too. It isn’t all doom and gloom on the getting the younger generation to read front, far from it. More in the post on that.
Hope you enjoy the post before then celebrating by reading more books! (Okay, okay, I’m biased here but it is a good thing to be biased about, yes?).
Hope today has gone well. Quiet one here but lovely all the same. Sometimes you just need that, right?
It will be a double blog day from me tomorrow as, not only will I have my Chandler’s Ford Today post to share, I’ll also be sharing my Authors Electric post. Plenty of thoughts and tips from both, which I hope will prove useful. See above for both.
I’m not sure what my greatest joy from storytelling as a writer and a reader is as I think there are so many, but one which would be pretty high on my list would be the way great stories take you into others worlds (including this one funnily enough) and into characters.
Stories can be fabulous for generating empathy as you read and understand a character. Other worlds can show you what life is like on the other side (a theme I have shown in my Seeing The Other Side – there is a reason for the title!).
Reading does so much for your vocabulary and is a fabulous way to keep your brain active. Writing also does this and I know I enjoy the challenge of coming up with new creations and situations in which to put them.
Hope you’ve had a good day. Lady was delighted to catch up with her Hungarian Vizler pal and I was, as ever, pleased with the lovely job done on my hair by the fantastic Hannah. A good day here then and some sunshine too.
Writing wise, I’ll be sharing Blog Tours and Book Events for Chandler’s Ford Today on Friday. See above. As well as summarising recent events for me regarding Seeing The Other Side, I’ll be sharing useful thoughts and tips on the advantages of these things for writers. I hope if they don’t prove useful for you now, they will do later. (I’ve been so grateful for advice received like this earlier in my writing life, which is paying dividends for me now).
Have signed the recent Society of Authors petition regarding AI and author rights.
Am also currently trying to set up some events local to me regarding my new flash fiction collection. Fingers crossed time.
Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again
Hope the week has been a good one. Not bad here. Calmer after the excitement of the blog tour for Seeing The Other Side naturally but the breather is welcome too. I do hope to have other events for the book and will share when I have news (though it is unlikely to be before October now, not that this is so far away now).
Hope to pick a competition to have a go at over the weekend if I can. Next few days will be especially busy – family stuff coming up (all good!). But I do want to get back into sending things in for competition. It’s the single best way I know of practising writing to deadlines and that comes in handy in other areas of the writing life too.
The 100 word flash fiction piece, also known as the drabble, will always be my favourite form in which to write because it is what introduced me to flash fiction. It should have come with a warning those – this form is addictive! I found having discovered I could write to 100 words, could I do it again, again, again etc. Could I write to 50 words? Could I write exactly to the 1000 words upper limit?
Flash demands you’re exact so you have to consider word choice well. Have my characters shared what they needed to in the most appropriate way for their type and the story in the word count required?
Thinking about word choices has stood me in good stead for my other writing and my editing work. I find I almost automatically want to cut words which aren’t adding anything of real value – see what I did there?
With flash fiction, I find the best way in is to start with the character. Who are they? What do they want? Why must I tell their story? That is such a good foundation for any length of story.
Just as people come in all shapes and sizes, so do characters and writers can have fun with that. Indeed, you don’t even have to stick to the human race, I often don’t, but I do have to understand why my characters are the way they are. Otherwise I can’t write about them with any kind of conviction. I have to believe in my characters. I don’t necessarily have to like them or agree with them.
I’ve also found with such a wide variety of potential characters, a wide range of plots come with them. Some might say that’s handy. Some might say it’s coincidence. I don’t. I’ve long believed characters drive the plot rather than the other way around. Certainly that thought has worked, and continues to work, for me.
Fairytales With Bite – Secrets
Secrets are fun to write stories around. I’ve written many flash pieces and short tales where a secret is revealed or someone is covering up something they don’t want anyone else to know.
But it doesn’t have to be a great dramatic secret. A wish to avoid embarrassment can be enough of a motive to keep something secret, even if it is harmless or would seem to be to most. It would be the fact is isn’t unimportant to the secret keeper here which matters and which will drive the story – will they be found out? If so, what are the consequences? If they get away with it, how do they do so and what are the consequences from that?
In the fairytale world, secrets can revolved around someone’s magical abilities. Would someone try to keep quiet just how magical they are and what are their motivations here? Is it to surprise someone else (in a good way or not) or are they worried if the full extent of their powers are known, they might be pressurized to use them (and if so for whom and how)? Good story ideas would come from those thoughts.
The magical setting you’ve created may well have secrets of its own. Are there areas where magic can’t be performed because of something that happened there centuries ago? How would that be found out and, once this secret was discovered, how would it challenge your characters? I could see this discovery coming at an awkward moment and not being especially good news for your characters.
Secrets can be deadly, especially so in a magical setting. Again, plenty to write about there, I think.
This World and Others – Surveillance
Hand in hand with secrets can come the need for surveillance. In a magical setting, how could this be done effectively by the authorities given most, if not all, characters will have magical powers which could well include at least some element of mind reading?
Would your authorities have to resort to what we know as technology to get around that? Equally can they limit how much mind reading powers your characters can have to try to prevent any rebellions against them?
Which characters would your authorities want to keep under surveillance and why? Are the reasons justified? Have mistakes been made in the past thanks to surveillance not being carried out?
Do the “ordinary” characters in your setting know they are under surveillance – the government makes it clear they watch everyone – or are they unaware? How would this affect daily lives in your setting?
Food for thought there!
Second up on tonight’s menu is my YouTube story – Timings 2 (
