Wigtown Poetry Competition

The 2010 Wigtown Poetry Competition is now open for entries.

Please click here to view full details and to download an application form.

The Wigtown Poetry Competition is the largest in Scotland with a first prize of £2,500, runner up prize of £750, eight additional prizes of £50 each and a Gaelic prize of £500. The winning poem and runner up will also be published in the Scotsman, or its sister paper Scotland on Sunday and the winner will be invited to appear at the Stena Line Wigtown Book Festival 2010.

To download an application form click above, or alternatively email poetry@wigtownbookfestival.com or send an SAE to:

Wigtown Poetry Competition
County Buildings,
Wigtown,
DG8 9HL.

If you know anyone who would like to be added to this mailing list please send their full email and address to mail@wigtownbookfestival.com.

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That's it, Folks!

The first issue of Words with JAM has now been sent out to all subscribers. If you don't receive your copy in the next couple of hours, please email editor@quinnpublications.co.uk and I'll email it to you (whilst also hitting my head on the desk trying to figure out why you didn't get it to start with).

I hope you enjoy it! Please do leave comments here or email me.

JD Smith

Editor

Ta Much, Everyone!

The Words with JAM team would just like to says thanks to everyone who subscribed, and particularly all those who asked people they know to subscribe, too.

We will be sending the first test issue out shortly and would love your feedback. If you have any comments at all, please wiz an email over to editor@wordswithjam.co.uk with NOVEMBER ISSUE COMMENTS in the subject bar. We will be publishing some of your comments and feedback in the next issue.

Hope you all enjoy it!

The Man Behind Sherlock Holmes …

An article by Gillian Hamer

When the latest incarnation of Holmes hits the screen on 25th December 2009, with Robert Downey Jr taking the lead against Jude Law’s Dr Watson – Guy Ritchie as director will be hoping to do for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, what Peter Jackson did for JRR Tolkien.

A look at the man behind Sherlock Holmes in the first issue of Words with JAM ...

We have a WINNER!

The winner of the Christmas prize draw, for a copy of Bits, Bobs and Baubles, has been drawn at random and will be announced in the first issue of Words with JAM. The copy will be posted out at the beginning of December to arrive before Christmas.

We will be having another prize draw for the next issue, so please do keep subscribing, as you are all eligible.

Best of luck!

Christmas Prize Draw Closes Tonight!

We would like to remind everyone that to qualify for the Christmas Prize Draw, to win a copy of Bits, Bobs and Baubles (a compendium of Christmas tales, recipes, stories and more) you need to be subscribed to Words with JAM by midnight tonight.

If you miss the cut-off, don't worry. We will be having another prize draw for the second issue, to which all subscribers are automatically entered.

New Address

We would just like to let everyone know that you can also visit our blog using the following address: http://www.wordswithjam.co.uk - don't worry, the old one still works, too.

On Meeting an Agent

This is becoming huge on the net - Roland Denning's promotional video: On Meeting an Agent ...

Writing for Children - Successfully!

An Article by Anne Stormont

In over thirty years as a teacher, I’ve read, discussed and recommended many children’s books.

I admire children’s writers. Everything that applies to writing for adults applies even more so when children are the intended readership.

With children you have to get it right first time, every time and there are many wonderful authors who do that. But there are particular pitfalls for children’s writers. For the unpublished, lack of awareness of those traps can mean failure to get a contract. For published authors it can mean poor sales.

The full article in the first issue of Words with JAM!

Douglas Jackson - History in the Making

Doug Jackson, author of Caligula and Claudius, talks about what inspired him to write about ancient Rome, and getting a six figure deal with Transworld:

I suppose you could say my new career as a writer began thirty-odd years ago in a large hole in the ground.

I’d left school in Jedburgh a few weeks before my sixteenth birthday, and, like a lot of kids that age I had no idea where my future lay and no immediate prospects. Luckily a friend worked in the local employment office and found me a place on a Youth Opportunities Scheme.

It was just pure luck it turned out to be restoring a Roman marching camp vandalised by the Forestry Commission, who then had a remit to tear up any part of Scotland they liked - a bit like the people who build wind farms today, but with evergreens.

Along with a bunch of hard-bitten labourers, I was transported each morning out into the bleak but beautiful Cheviot Hills, given a large shovel and put to work replacing the long avenues of peat the commission ploughs had churned up. It didn’t take me too long to work out that I was more or less doing what the Roman legionaries had done 2,000 years earlier, but in reverse ...

Full article in the first issue of Words with JAM.

What Not to Tweet

An article by Dan Holloway

Becoming a self-publishing pariah, virtual or otherwise, is very simple if you remember the prime directive, and let everything you do flow from it. Self-publishing is about writing a book and selling as many copies of it as you can. The poor deluded fools who tell you it’s about engaging with your readers, about a long-term strategy, about building a base of loyal fans over several years, and selling progressively more copies of each of several books, are just that. Poor deluded fools. It’s about this book. The one on your hard drive. The “book you had in you”. And flogging it. To as many people as you can persuade to part with their cash. After all, tomorrow takes care of itself. Right?

Social Media and the self-publisher

We’re in the heart of a technological revolution. We have more gadgets and widgets at our disposal for Flogging Our Book (fobing) than ever before. The key to becoming a virtual pariah is to use them all. As much as possible. After all, you want to fob as many people as possible, so you’d better use as many tools as possible, and spend as much time as possible doing so, because that way you will have the widest audience possible and the most people possible will buy your book ...

Full article in the first issue of Words with JAM!

Flash Fiction Competition

Writelink's Tinsel Tales is calling for flash fiction stories of no more than 250 words (including the title!)

Christmas blessings, Christmas nightmares or just Christmas Grumbles, the theme is wide open, but you must set your story against a Yule tide backdrop.

Tinsel Tales is open to ALL WRITERS irrespective of where they live!

You can register on the website now and then submit your entry before the closing date, 31st December.

A Father Worries

A Quite Small Story by Derek Duggan

Joseph swept the floor. It didn’t need to be swept but he was trying to delay going home. The workshop was as clean as it could be. The table and chairs for Julius sat by the door ready for delivery the following morning, and they had turned out very well, even if he did think so himself. Things had been good lately, in general. He had just finished a big fencing job that had paid a tidy sum and once the Roman had paid the balance on the furniture he would be set up for the next six months or so.

But none of this could take the edge off. None of this changed the fact that his son, his only son, had decided to leave the family business ...

To read the rest of the story, sign up to the to the first issue of Words with JAM, due out on the 28th November 2009.

FREE Christmas Prize Draw - 10 days left!

Quinn Publications' first venture into the world of literature, was to produce a collection of work, compiled from writers all over the world, to be given to their loved ones this Christmas. Whatever that indefinable something is that makes Christmas special, you’ll find within Bits, Bobs and Baubles. From an unforgettable chilli experience to recipes of times gone by, from grannies getting revenge to heart-warming traditional tales, from daft odes to moving poems, from grown-up stories to those created especially for children, there is something for every member of the family.

Words with JAM are pleased to announce they've got their hands on a copy of the book (which is pretty good going, considering only 125 copies are being produced).

To celebrate the first issue being out for December, we are going to get the compiler to autograph, gift wrap, and stick a bow on it, and post it out to one lucky subscriber in time for Christmas. The winner will be announced in the first issue, and contacted by email for their postal address.

To be eligible, you simply need to subscribe to Words with JAM.

Closing date: Saturday 21st November.

Feeble Excuses, Procrastination and Displacement Activities

(Things I do when I should be writing.)

An article by Perry Iles

This autumn I will be mostly thinking about Cheryl Cole. Not with any sense of prurience – a man has to know his limitations, as Clint Eastwood once said, and I’m reliably informed that I’m hung like a hummingbird and have the sexual imagination of a fencepost, without any trace of its attendant rigidity. But dear little Cheryl has achieved a kind of asexual, robotic perfection, which was aptly, if unconsciously, parodied on last week’s X-Factor when she did that military dance routine as she mimed to her appalling new song. What I mean is, is she actually human any more? Time was, long ago, when the combination of attractive womanhood and a Geordie accent used to flick my lust-nipple for some totally inexplicable reason, but it now no longer does, and it’s all her fault. Soon you’ll be able to buy your own Cheryl Cole on the internet, and she’ll be everywhere, and familiarity will breed contempt so you’ll need a puncture repair kit so you can make her better every time you batter her senseless for not getting your dinner on the table by five o’clock.

The X-Factor, which I’m watching every week instead of writing ...

Read the full article in the first issue of Words with JAM, due out 28th November 2009

UPPERCASE Nightmare!

I have, for many years, sworn ferociously as time and again people have sent me documents typed with the caps lock on. IT'S VERY ANNOYING WHEN YOU NEED TO USE IT ON SOMETHING IN LOWERCASE - PLUS IT'S QUITE DIFFICULT TO READ!

Anyway, I came across this a while ago and thought I'd share: http://www.convertcase.net/

It's a lifesaver!

JD Smith

Three Days in Syrupville

An article by Danny Gillan.

Not for me your package holidays, with the sunshine and the beer and the food and the dysentery. Not interested. Nor do I entertain the notion of a couple of weeks travelling this or any other country in search of new cultures and experiences. Pah.

I’m a writer you see, and that means, above all else, that I have no money.

Normally the closest I get to a summer holiday is avoiding incompetent suicide bombers as I drop various members of my family off at Glasgow Airport then pick them up again two weeks later, pretending not to be bothered about their tans, stories of adventure and stress free state of mind as I break the news that I’ve forgotten to re-stock their fridge, water their plants, record CSI Miami or feed their pets (or children, in some cases).

This year was different though. I actually left the city for more than an hour. I took it upon myself to suggest to a dear friend and fellow writer that we might venture forth on a trip to the fine hamlet (I should point out at this time that I have no idea what a ‘hamlet’ is) of Wigtown, which is somewhere in Scotland but quite far away from Glasgow and therefore counts as ‘travel’.

Wigtown is known as ‘Scotland’s Book Town' ...

Read the full article in the first issue of Words with JAM. Sign up now!

"I hurt ... to know they yearned for freedom, fought for one last flight ... And when I draw them, I too, am free."

The pale avians show clear against the early clouds. They whirl and spiral on vagrant thermals, wing tips almost touching. They own the sky, strong winged and fearless while smaller fliers roost in the terran pines or cower in cliff scrapes envious of the giants’ claim. I watch from my hide in the pines, high above the dugouts where my fellow troopers wait, and I long for such freedom.

I follow their silent swooping, rejoicing in their no-sound dance, using my sighter to bring them close. Another day, I’d attempt a sketch, but not today. Today I wait, my trigger finger poised. Another survey of the terrain shows no movement. Perhaps the info was wrong, perhaps the rebels will not come this way. But if not here, where will they cross? They must break through, ford the river, escape the closing net ...

Extract from Watching, by JW Hicks

Full story in the first issue of Words with JAM. Sign up now!

FREE Christmas Prize Draw

Quinn Publications' first venture into the world of literature, was to produce a collection of work, compiled from writers all over the world, to be given to their loved ones this Christmas. Whatever that indefinable something is that makes Christmas special, you’ll find within Bits, Bobs and Baubles. From an unforgettable chilli experience to recipes of times gone by, from grannies getting revenge to heart-warming traditional tales, from daft odes to moving poems, from grown-up stories to those created especially for children, there is something for every member of the family.

Words with JAM are pleased to announce they've got their hands on a copy of the book (which is pretty good going, considering only 125 copies are being produced).

To celebrate the first issue being out for December, we are going to get the compiler to autograph, gift wrap, and stick a bow on it, and post it out to one lucky subscriber in time for Christmas. The winner will be announced in the first issue, and contacted by email for their postal address.

To be eligible, you simply need to subscribe to Words with JAM.

Closing date: Saturday 21st November.

Ask Away ...

Co-author of The Writer's ABC Checklist, and author of The Greatest Moving Abroad Tips in the World, Lorraine Mace will be answering your questions on writing ...

To save us dreaming a few up for the first issue, if you have a question, please post or email to editor@quinnpublications.co.uk

Sitting on Offence

An article by Derek Duggan

Words. That’s what we think we deal with. They’re just words. But it’s what they stand for that can often cause the problems. A word that means nothing to one person can deeply offend another.

Initially we’ve got the difficulties involved with localisation. The bonnet of your car is a bonnet, unless you travel across the Atlantic in which case it becomes a hood. A cupboard in most of the world is just that, but in Ireland it’s a press. And so on.

Then there are words that sound and are spelled the same but the meaning changes. Americans are quite happy to mention their fannies but travel back to Europe and although the word remains the same, the geographical location of the object slips forward a few centimetres. And one thing you don’t want to do is confuse your fannies. There’s a chance I’ll receive a letter from Irate from Chester for just mentioning it ...

Full article in the first issue of Words with JAM. Sign up now.

Libraries: What's in it for me?

An article by Catriona Troth

For all the concern expressed about the decline of libraries in recent years, there are still more than 4500 public libraries in the UK, lending out over three million books per year to thirty five million library card holders. So how can you, as a newly published writer, make the most of the library system to access that readership? And how can you use that readership to generate an income? ...

Read more in the first issue of Words with JAM. Sign up now to receive your copy (due out end of November 2009).