Image Credits:-
Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos. Many thanks to Hannah Kate from North Manchester FM for kind permission to use the Three Minute Santas photo. Book covers of Evergreen – an Anthology and The Best of CafeLit 11 are from Bridge House Publishing. Screenshots taken by me, Allison Symes. The Merry Christmas image is from CFT archives.
My, how does the time fly! It’s time for some festive flash fiction and news about my writing year. It’s been a busy but fun one.
Festive Flash Fiction
This is about the only seasonal writing I do and I love it. By its nature, it has to be fun. Hope you enjoy the following.
Moral Support
It’s not just a once a year job, I’ll have you know. He starts a couple of days after the big event of the year. He really does need the rest of the year before the big event to prepare properly.
It’s not all magic and fairy dust. Someone has to load his sleigh. Loads of someones actually. And someone has to organise that lot. Mind you, keeping them well fed, well paid, and being top of a rather special list does help a lot.
This is where I come in. I get the behind the scenes stuff done. You could call me a kind of general manager.
I prefer to be known as Mrs Claus.
And on behalf of my better half and I, Merry Christmas!
Ends
Allison Symes – 5th December 2022
Getting Ready
‘It’ll be fine. We won’t need the maps. It’s tricky reading at night anyway. See that great big new star. We’ll follow that. It’ll be interesting to see where it leads. Our charts confirm it is the star for a new king. We must go and find out.’
‘You like riding camels. Mine is a bad tempered old biddy.’
‘Doesn’t get enough exercise. This trip will sort that! Now we’ll just pick up Melchior and we’ll get cracking. What could possibly go wrong?’
‘I wish you wouldn’t say things like that.’
‘You could try wishing that on the new star!’
Ends.
Allison Symes – 11th December 2022
News
Last year, I had a story broadcast on Hannah Kate’s Three Minute Santas show on North Manchester FM, an internet based radio station.
I’m glad to say the same again happened this year and I am delighted to share the links to her special festive flash show here. Hannah’s show comes in two halves on the Listen Again service. My story is the first one in Part 1 but do take time to listen to them all. There are cracking stories here.
Mine is called First Night on the Round. Hope you enjoy it. I am glad to say others from the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group (which meets monthly on Zoom and is run by yours truly) have had stories on here in the past (four last year) and again for 2022 (three of us this time!).
Flash NANO – A New Challenge
My First Night on the Round was one of my responses to challenges set by Flash NANO in November. What’s Flash NANO? It’s the flash fiction writer’s equivalent of NaNoWriMo where novelists are encouraged to write 50,000 words over the month of November. That comes in at just under 1700 words a day.
For Flash NANO, you receive thirty prompts over thirty days but there is no word count limit here (other than for the top end of flash which is always at 1000 words). I loved responding to the challenges set each day last November and I now have a good stock of stories to edit and polish and in due course get out there.
I also had the joy of talking to Wendy H Jones on her The Writing and Marketing Show about this. See link here.
Flash Nano – The Writing and Marketing Show
https://wendyhjones.buzzsprout.com/807761/11656217-flash-nanowrimo
The challenge of writing a flash fiction story a day was an interesting one. It has given me a cracking start on my next flash fiction collection. Talking of which…
Submission and Publication News
Am pleased to say I’ve submitted my third flash fiction collection to Chapeltown Books. It will be a while before I hear back on that. Meantime, I’ve had short stories published in The Best of CafeLit 11 and, more recently, Evergreen – An Anthology. The latter is this year’s annual anthology from Bridge House Publishing and it was a joy to write about their Celebration Event for last week’s CFT post.
In sadder news, I was sorry to hear of the death of Ron Clark who was behind Chat and Spin Radio (which has now closed. This was another internet radio station and gave a voice to authors to talk about their stories and books. I made two appearances on here and it was great fun to do).
I am now the flash fiction editor for US-based online magazine, Mom’s Favorite Reads, which regularly hits the top spot in various Amazon categories. I write a column here and set a monthly challenge which goes up on their Facebook page. A deadline is set. After that I look at and edit the stories and they then go on to be published, along with my article, in the next edition. I also write a piece of flash to go with my column. This is useful as doing this often illustrates a point I’m making.
The December issue was the fiftieth edition of the magazine. Do check it out. It is free to download. The latest edition is always at the top of the page and, yes, I do have to make myself use the US spellings! Does not come naturally to this Brit – I so want to put the “u” in favourite!
Social Media News
Something I started earlier this year was a monthly author newsletter which I send out on the first of the month. (Good date in a month to remember to get a newsletter out!). I share news, tips, links to stories I’ve got online, the odd exclusive every now and again, and so on. It has grown steadily over the year and the “open rate” is good for it.
Anything over 50% is considered very good and I’ve achieved that, not every month but the majority of the time. This does seem to be the pattern for author newsletters. The big usefulness of it is it gives me a way to legitimately speak to potential readers directly and that will be useful when I know about any publication date for future books.
What is nice about this is I can add in bits of news, useful tips and so on throughout the month ahead of sending it out and save it ready to go out on the first. So when I’ve odd pockets of time, I will often add bits to my newsletter.
I use Book Brush as a graphics design program and they have now set up a Readers’ Hub page for authors. Mine can be found here. To quote a well known supermarket, when it comes to marketing, every little bit helps!
Workshop News
It has been a productive year here too with workshops run by me held at The Writers’ Summer School, Swanwick and for the Association of Christian Writers’ Golden Jubilee weekend in the summer. I’ve also run some online to writers groups and at the London Jesuit Centre. Good feedback on all of them – and lovely to earn from this too. Very much hope to develop this further.
As mentioned, I also run the Flash Fiction group monthly meeting via Zoom for the Association of Christian Writers. Again fun to do and it has been lovely seeing some of the writers here go on to have stories published on Friday Flash Fiction (as well as on the Hannah Kate show). Those stories started life as homework I’d set. Yes, I do the homework too. Gives me more to put towards a further collection!
I was also at the Scottish Association of Writers Conference back in March and had a lovely stay in a posh hotel for this. Enjoyed that. I ran a workshop for them on flash fiction and judged their Margaret McConnell Women’s Short Story competition.
During the conference I announced the winners and gave a brief speech on what I’d been looking for in the stories submitted and why I’d chosen the top three I did. I also got to sit at the top table on one of the evenings (my bragging right basically! All the judges loved this!). Loved the train journey up here too. Expenses were paid and I earned a fee for the workshop and for judging the competition. I would like to do this again at some point! Easily my biggest gig to date.
Conclusion
I’ve mentioned before the writing journey is full of twists and turns. Some of them are fun. When they can be fun and earn some income, even better! As for 2023, well it is far too soon to predict what might happen, though I do have a workshop booked to do in January, but I do know it will be fun finding out!
Have a great writing and reading year. Happy Christmas!
Related Posts:-
Read interviews with Chandler’s Ford writer Allison Symes: Part 1 and Part 2.
Read blog posts by Allison Symes published on Chandler’s Ford Today.
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