How to be Happy

I wrote a short story, once, with that title - How to be Happy. I know - pretty shocking for something with 'happy' in the title to come from my pen, but there you go. It's still in draft form, so I may even get back to it at some point. I chose that title …

Lockdown 2 – Electric Boogaloo

It's Sunday morning, in my world (although you're reading this on Monday or maybe even later than that). Usually by now, I've got my post written and scheduled because I work on Monday mornings and it's one of the few things I'm organised about. This week has been manic, with seeing family, friends, work, my …

Five Years

For my birthday in 2019, I was given a 5 year diary. It's a tiny little thing, with only 5 lines per entry - akin to a Tweet, I suppose, where you can just blurt something out and don't necessarily have to dwell on thoughts and feelings. I did enough of that in my teens …

Interview with… Jayne Martin

It's interview time again, and this month I'm joined by Jayne Martin. Jayne lives in Santa Barbara, California. She is a Pushcart, Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfictions nominee, and a recipient of Vestal Review’s VERA award. Her collection of microfiction, “Tender Cuts,” from Vine Leaves Press, is available now through all online book sellers.  …

Asking for help!

When I started writing - in the dark ages, before the internet, possibly using slate (so my kids would have you believe) - writing was a solitary profession. I must have shared my vision of writing with you: sitting in an attic, with fingerless gloves, looking as unkempt as Fagin? No? I've actually got the …

BACK TO WORK!!!!

For those of you who don't know, I've been on furlough since the UK lockdown started in March, and this week I found out I'm going back to work. My life is a bit backwards - I consider my writing to be my career, and my gym job is a hobby which pays my bills. …

And just like that, summer was gone…

Well, not quite. Let's say it's in flux, as crispy brown leaves litter the pavement and no one's quite sure if they should wear a jumper, sunglasses, raincoat, or shorts - or a jaunty mix of all four. Last Monday it was hot... so hot. Artoo and I slouched around Churchtown because it looked like …

Interview with… Melanie Faith

It's time for the second in my new series of interviews with amazing authors. Today it's the turn of Melanie Faith. Melanie was born in December and has a birthday-twin niece. She is a craft-book author, editor, poet, photographer, and professor. Her writing and photography are forthcoming or were recently published in Menteur, Verse of …

“I just want to sell my books!” says one author to another

It's - loosely - advice week here at the Fountain Pen, but I'm going to use this time to have a little rant about Facebook. Hopefully it will be a useful rant, a helpful one. On Saturday morning, I was scrolling through the stats for my Facebook page. If you don't have one, it shows …

Stuck in Covid

I've got eleven days to write, edit, polish and submit a short story to a very prestigious short story competition, the Manchester Fiction Prize. Well, I've got something written, but I'm not sure it can actually be called a short story - it's currently a jumble of words with the Covid pandemic as its central …