You don’t have to be a celebrity to get published. What you discover, when you’re having that crucial meeting with your publicist, is that her job is to make every author, however dull and obscure, sound irresistibly fascinating. Blurbs and covers can only do so much, and the chief function of reviews is to provide quotes for the paperback. But introduce the writer as a person – a person with a story – and people get curious. And who are we, as professional story-tellers, to baulk at that? So your publicist will order the Chardonnay and interrogate you until you come up with something interesting – a hook, an angle – about yourself.

If you’re a banker writing financial thrillers it’s easy. Ex-SAS writing chicklit? Better still. Even a sensitive dissection of bourgeois life in Dewsbury can grab columns if you’re a professional deep-sea diver from Tierra del Fuego. But what if your only angle is nothing to do with you?


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I didn't know it would be so quick, but am delighted that my flash stories, all five of them, are published in Pank's February issue. Click here to read them all. What a beautiful magazine, I am delighted to be part of it.

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So, tomorrow, from about quarter to twelve I will be on radio (you can listen online here). This is a first for me so it'll definitely be interesting and hopefully fun too. Here's hoping. I'll be talking generally about writing and what I do and what I'm doing for World Book Day and Book Aid and things.

***

And the lovely and talented Sarah Hilary has tagged me with this:

List at least five things you do to support and spread a love of the written word, then tag five people. (If you list something that touches youngsters, you get a bonus letter!)


so I shall oblige.



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So let's suppose you're a member of an online writers' forum, OK? Say you're trying to keep going in the face of daily threads about £50,000 deals. You gamely reply “congratulations” (with three smilies) to every post celebrating the sale of Japanese rights, and if you're particularly saintly you might even muster up a sympathetic response to a discussion titled “Damn, I've only sold 10,000 copies, now what do I do?”


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I posted this image [see full post] on my page at Six Sentences but thought I’d post it here as well. One person said she’d found it inspiring and asked if I minded if she used it as starting point for a poem. It makes me happy if people want to use my work as visual inspiration [more ...]

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She defines a blog as 'a coffeehouse conversation in text, with references as required'



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As the Israeli General Election creaks along today in the background, accompanied by storm-like conditions and great wind, I've been tagged by Lauri at Thoughts from Botswana and this is a good one so I am happy to be a taggee. Here is what I am commanded to do:

List at least five things you do to support and spread a love of the written word, then tag five people. (If you list something that touches youngsters, you get a bonus letter!)

Ok, here are my five things:


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Della Galton sold her first story in 1987. Since then she has sold hundreds of stories and serials here and abroad. She lives with her husband Tony in a 400-year-old cottage and enjoys walking her dogs in the beautiful Dorset countryside.

My first sale was…
A poem to Pony Magazine when I was eight!

My family think my writing is…
All based on them.

The best/worst thing about writing short stories for magazines is…
They’re very short. That’s the best and the worst thing.

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What do you think of the new look? I just discovered (after the rest of the world, it seems) that Blogger's own templates are not the only templates... there are loads of free templates out there for the taking. This one is called Rotterdam and is designed by Pannasmontata. I love the picture, something very calming about it.

On to the Writer Service Announcement. Here are some upcoming short story competition deadlines you might want to know about. (As usual, all links open new windows/tabs, so feel free to click all of them without fear.)

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OK, it’s not a proper top ten, it’s just that I read somewhere that top ten lists attract blog traffic. The sites aren’t specifically for writers, either, but I’m trying to get better at thinking up snappy titles.

These ten websites – in no particular order – are some of my favourites for finding historical images to help with research. Whether I need to know about clothing, architecture or interior design, want to gain an idea of Victorian sense of humour or just want to be inspired by the atmosphere of a historical print, I love using pictures to aid my writing.

I hope these resources will be useful to others too. Even if you’re not writing historical fiction, take a look – there are some fascinating images out there.



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