Taking Flight by Fiona Glass

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He stood on the shore and stared into the void. There was a lake out there, the largest in England, but it was hard to tell. A thick mist had rolled down from the fells overnight and the valley was filled with cotton wool. The steep, wooded slopes of the far bank were only half a mile away, but all he could see were the ripples at his feet, then a flat plain where water became air, the join invisible. The fog had eaten all sound. Gone was the usual bustle – the tourists, the traffic, the ever-hungry swans. In their place, silence. The hush of air through leaves. The faint splip-splip of the water on the shore. Then, weirdly, Read More

Matariki & The Love-Torn Sailor by S S Haque

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Matariki and the love-torn sailor Sun rose regal and high in the sphere sky strong and eager winds spurred to twirl the heavens. Aukai’s crew loaded stone and tools onto his double-hulled wood canoe this day bodes well for several at sea, he thought but his body’s memory sunk into the soft wet warmth of Alaula, his dawn light, roots and earthly delight   eager sails filled with powerful gusts Aukai palmed the rock around his neck remembered what Alaula had said I’ll love you until all the dawns are spent I’ll love you in the dark of the ocean I’d fly with the fishes for you Aukai rubbed Alaula’s rock breathed sun and salt left the solid shore his Read More

How to Break Through Writer’s Block by Alex Voakes

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Writer’s Block. It sounds almost reassuring, doesn’t it? You may not be actually producing anything, you may be knotted up and despairing, or guilty and restless and convinced of your own worthlessness as both a creative and a human being, but at least a) there’s a name for it and b) that name includes the word ‘writer’. It could be caused by all sorts of reasons – writing is, if not exactly hard labour, then definitely time-consuming and difficult, and it could be that the writer is too worried about money, or is wrestling with a bout of TB, or has to look after six children under five, or is dealing with PTSD from a recent event, or any one Read More

Six things I learned writing over 75 non fiction books

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Publishing is one of those industries that has always been on the brink of collapse. The latest broadside is from (wouldn’t you know it) the Internet and the proliferation of ebooks. You can say what you like about Fifty Shades and whether it benefits humanity to just allow people to publish whatever they want, but it’s hard to think of a legal means of stopping them. Anyone with a keyboard and an internet connection can now get their work out there and call themselves an author. As a result, there is a vast, swelling bubo of cheap ebooks, most with very little quality control, market for the work or adequate punctuation. I am responsible for nearly a hundred of them. Read More