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. Many thanks to Paula Readman and Lynn Clement for certain pictures taken at the Bridge House Publishing Celebration event. Most of the pictures for that Chandler’s Ford Today post and screenshots were taken by me, Allison Symes.
Hope you have had a good week. Lady has! Delighted to hear one of my festive flash pieces will be broadcast on Hannah Kate’s Three Minute Santas show on North Manchester FM on Saturday 13th December 2025. Will share the link to the broadcast itself next week. Equally thrilled to say three other members of the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group will have their work broadcast here too. Well done, all!
Facebook – General and Chandler’s Ford Today
Am delighted to look back at last weekend’s celebration event with my Chandler’s Ford Today post, Back At The Theodore Bullfrog with Bridge House Publishing.
The post gives a good round-up of events and shares something of the joys of getting together with other authors like this (and also being with a splendid independent publisher).
I also flag up the specific celebrations for the publication of The Best of CafeLit 14 and, more recently, Magi An Anthology.
Hope you enjoy the post.
Back At The Theodore Bullfrog with Bridge House Publishing
Hope Thursday has gone well. All quiet in the park today so Lady had to put up with just me!
Looking forward to sharing Back at The Theodore Bullfrog with Bridge House Publishing on Chandler’s Ford Today – link up tomorrow. It was such a fun event, I was bound to write about it. See above.
In other news, I’m glad to share the following link re the Hannah Kate Three Minute Santas show on North Manchester FM on Saturday 13th December. I also want to add huge congratulations to the other writers taking part in this, especially three of them who are members, with me, of the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group. I’m very much looking forward to tuning in to hear a great range of festive flash fiction.
North Manchester FM: Hannah’s Bookshelf 3 Minute Santas Special, Saturday 13 December, 2-4pm
Hope you have had a good day. Lady saw her Hungarian Vizler pal so all well there. Lovely sunny day too, the kind of winter day I like.
Writing wise, I’ll be sharing Back at the Theodore Bullfrog with Bridge House Publishing on Chandler’s Ford Today on Friday. See above. Then there will be one more post after that from me (19th December) before I take a Christmas break and resume on CFT in the New Year. Just where has the year gone?!
Had a turn down from a flash competition over the weekend. Will have another look at that story in the New Year and see if I can submit it somewhere else. I have had work published doing that.
Writing Tip: Rejections and not hearing back from competitions do happen to everyone so do take some heart from that when it happens to you (and it is bound to at some point). I do try to see this as a chance to have another look at my stories and find ways of improving them. Normally I can see something and I adjust the story, which is why I think I have then gone on to have the story published somewhere else.
Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again
It’s the last day of the Friday Flash Fiction Christmas Competition and I did manage to send in two stories, one per week, for the two weeks the event ran. It was good fun to take part in this. All of the stories in this have to be 100 words exactly (and trust me it is so easy to come in at 102 words or 98 but for this competition it had to be spot on the 100). Good luck to all taking part.
Word association is a great game. I remember playing it often when I was younger. Little did I realise then it was going to become a great tool for writing prompts for me much later on. The reason it is so useful is the game makes you think of links and those are so useful for outlining characters/potential story ideas.
For example let’s take the word festive and see what can be done with that:-
Festive = Christmas = Scrooge = Muppets = films = The Great Escape = bravery.
Now on the face of it, this is just a list of fun, loosely connected words but if I was to use this for a story, it would be the last word, bravery, I would focus on. I love working with traits. They can tell you so much about a character.
Here, I would want to know who showed bravery and why (and it could be a Christmas set story too or not as I chose). Just from this then, I have the sparks of a potential idea.
Do add word association to your prompt generating toolkit if you don’t use it already. It is useful.
Looking forward to an informal chat and sharing of news and stories with members of the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group next week. We usually do have this kind of session at the year end and it is a lovely way to bring our writing year to a close before we head off to our respective Christmas breaks.
Am a co-judge for a flash competition in the New Year so looking forward to working on that. Naturally I’m looking forward to Seeing The Other Side coming out next year. It is highly likely I will be on both sides of the editing fence again. It’s an interesting experience (and useful to me both as a writer and editor. The view from the other side of the fence can be enlightening to say the least).
Fairytales With Bite – The Fairytale Flip Side
There can be a flip side to much in life so why should the fairytale world be exempt? For all of those fairytale characters who have the benefit of magical help, there are so many others who do not. Mind you, the latter can be fun characters to write about and my first story in print, A Helping Hand in Alternative Renditions (Bridge House Publishing), was about Cinderella’s youngest step-sister.
I’ve long believed there are disadvantages as well as advantages to any form of power and that goes for magic too. What would happen if magical characters misuse their powers for their own ends? (I know, I know – as if that would happen here! Oh if only!). How could they be stopped?
Even when magic isn’t misused, what effects would it have on the bodies of the characters? I’ve long thought sustained use of magic must be incredibly draining. Indeed, I can’t see otherwise being the case.
So what would your characters themselves see as the flip side to their magical abilities/their world’s magical abilities? Do your characters have to cope with, say, envying other characters with greater powers than themselves? Would they find ways of developing or, worse still, stealing those powers for themselves? How would they handle powers they’re not used to handling?
Bound to be story ideas there!
This World and Others – Policing
Now given I am sure we can all think of those who misuse their powers in this world, and therefore we must have some kind of policing to try to keep things in order (and protect ourselves as much as possible), how would that work out in your magical setting?
Who would be the police force? Who created them? What are they allowed to do? What are they banned from doing? What would happen to any police authority who misused the powers given to them (and who would have bestowed those in the first place)? What extra magical powers would they need to be able to combat magical crime?
How would policing work and is it with the consent of the people generally?
I do love the Vimes stories in Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series and if you haven’t checked them out, do as you’ll be in for a treat. Here, the Discworld has magic and magical practitioners in it, but it’s not in the City Watch and Vimes doesn’t like magic. So many interesting tales there.
I think for any successful fantasy world, the writer does have to work out first how things will work broadly at least, which will include who can use magic, what can they do, recognizing crime does get everywhere so there has to be something to combat that.
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https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js🎄 … plus Keith Jones, Dorinda MacDowell, @AllisonSymes1, @jennyhsanders, Maria Cohut, Pinky Taylor, Martin Elder, @noodleBubble, Amanda Melvin, @brennanaccordio and Carmen Walton! 🎄 https://t.co/84F3B7l1QR
— Hannah Kate (@HannahKateish) December 10, 2025
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsI’m glad to share the link re the Hannah Kate Three Minute Santas show on North Manchester FM on Saturday 13th December. Huge congratulations to the other writers taking part in this. I’m looking forward to tuning in to hear a great range of festive flash.https://t.co/UKX7cpP4oU
— Allison Symes (@AllisonSymes1) December 11, 2025
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsIt’s the last day of the Friday Flash Fiction Christmas Competition. I sent in two stories, one a week, for the two weeks it was on. All stories had to be 100 words exactly (and it is so easy to come in at 102 words or 98). Good luck to all taking part.https://t.co/4bXnFfkhuq pic.twitter.com/aiG8xyjIfX
— Allison Symes (@AllisonSymes1) December 12, 2025
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsBack At The Theodore Bullfrog with Bridge House Publishing https://t.co/Oy7Qmcvbws
— Allison Symes (@AllisonSymes1) December 12, 2025
Delighted to recall last weekend’s event for CFT. The post shares the joys of getting together with other authors (and also being with a splendid independent publisher). Hope you enjoy the post.
Allison Symes: Collected Works 