To round off the year I have a piece of fiction called ‘Doctor’s Surgery’ about to be published in Structo magazine issue #7.
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Author: Craig Pay
Maker, writer, player.
‘Quarter Cherry Lips’ Now Available Online at Litro Magazine
Today I have a spot of toothache. This may have been caused by some overzealous crunching on a bag of sour apple cubes I bought on Saturday from my local sweetshop.
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cutaway
Today I get to help pull the lever on a project I’ve been working on for the last few months with writing buddy Dave Schofield. This project is a new literary magazine called cutaway.
We will be open to submissions from the 1st January 2012 through to 1st March 2012 and the magazine will be published in May or June 2012. We will blog regular updates via the cutaway website and you can also find us on Facebook and Twitter.
‘Silver Sixpence’ Now Online at DSF
Very quick post because I’ve gone on about this far too much already. My short story ‘Silver Sixpence’ is now available to read online for free at Daily Science Fiction. This story started out at a themed writing evening for a local writing group here in Standish.
Three Weddings and a Funeral
OK, bad news first. As you may have already heard, Murky Depths magazine has decided to shut up shop. My short story ‘Whisperer’ was published in Murky Depths earlier this year in their #17 issue. Quite possibly a number of different reasons for this (economic climate etc.) but I’m going to huff about the lack of interest in the short story format in the UK. Seems the US are much more accepting of the short story format in both the genre and non-genre worlds. Very sad.
But on with the good news . . .
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‘Five-A-Day Friends’ now in print
A few weeks ago I mentioned winning the NAWG David Lodge trophy. My winning story Five-A-Day Friends is now available in the competition anthology The Write Path . . .
The Write Path is available for just £5.99, payable by cheque. Click here for more details.
Why I’m (probably) not joining in with NaNoWriMo (again)
Next month is NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, and this is why I’m (probably) not joining in.
First of all, what is this NaNoWriMo thing all about?
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‘Five-A-Day Friends’ wins the NAWG David Lodge Trophy 2011
Very pleased to announce that during the NAWG Annual Writing Festival gala dinner last night I was awarded the Professor David Lodge Trophy for my short story Five-A-Day Friends.
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‘Five-a-Day Friends’ short-listed for the NAWG Annual Writing Competition 2011
I’m chuffed to announce that my short story ‘Five-a-Day Friends’ has been short-listed for this year’s NAWG (National Association of Writers’ Groups) Annual Writing Competition in the ‘Final Line Category’. The winner will be announced during an award ceremony held at the Gala Dinner on Saturday 3rd September during the NAWG Annual Festival weekend. This year’s festival is being held at Nottingham University (2nd-4th September).
For those of you who came along to my reading at the Bolton Octagon theatre, yes this is the one with the pumpkin! The story has also been through the Manchester Speculative Fiction group–thanks you lot!
I’m really pleased to have been short-listed because this is one of my not-really-speculative-fiction stories, though it’s still a bit on the weird side. Good luck to the other short-listed authors!
Writing Dialogue
Yeah, I know you’ve heard it all before: dialogue “makes yours characters come alive!” and whilst I happen to agree with that statement, I think throwing around writing advice like that is about as useful as spitting out random Nietzsche quotes. Without context, it’s meaningless.
So let me get started by stating quite clearly . . .
I am not an expert in writing dialogue.
There, disclaimer done. But I reckon I know a few cheap tricks. Whether this makes me a good writer or just a bit of a conman, I don’t know but it works for me. So here we go with 10 cheap dialogue tricks . . .
Craig Pay 