Authors Electric

It's been a busy few weeks with the emphasis being on anthologies and short stories.  Belonging to the Coventry Writers Group and running my own creative writing class, Focus on Fiction , which meets every Monday evening, both groups have put together anthologies of short stories and both have been launched this week. I'm excited about both, but I have to admit that I'm really excited about the Focus on Fiction anthology, Winter Tales as the majority of my eight students have never seen their work in print. And their enthusiasm in getting this book together has been fantastic. I got to know this group of novice writers at the beginning of the year when I started running a new creative writing course. The course was supposed to last just six weeks, but something clicked and my band of eight didn't want the course to end, and so it's continued throughout the year.  A couple of months ago I set them an exercise to write a wintery/Christmas short...

Coventry Writers' Group, the wonderfully supportive and excellent writing group to which I belong, has just, for the second year running, put on a performance of our work as part of the Coventry Literature Festival. We performed at the Criterion Theatre, Earlsdon, Coventry, who very kindly hosted us and even made some of our costumes. We read and acted out a variety of short stories, short plays, poems, factual articles and timely advice from Coventry City Council on how to deal with a zombie invasion. And that was just the start! The photo below shows us in action at our dress rehearsal. Photo by Derek Medcraft My offering was a short and (I hope) humorous poem about the trials and tribulations of an aspiring writer who is rather premature in trying to sell her work. She is enthusiastic and slightly mad (so lots of acting needed there!) It has some slight relevance to what we Electric Authors are trying to do... so my apologies and please don't be offended, anyone. I...