Now appearing at Alfie Dog Fiction

Have you seen Alfie Dog Fiction? There are hundreds of stories to download, in all  kinds of genres. Contributing authors receive royalties based on the number of downloads. The process of submitting work is very straightforward, and is all explained on the website.

I am happy to say I have recently had two stories accepted by Alfie Dog. The first is now available, called 'The Mischief Game', and the second is scheduled for publication on February 20th.

With small press markets shrinking, and fiction slots in established magazines becoming ever more competitive, it's great to find new opportunities for publication. Great work, Alfie Dog!

Snow

There are some things snow is good for. Dogs digging...

Changing everyday places into spooky, shadowy spots that you're a little unsure about venturing into...

And making you really appreciate the dashes of colour you stumble across in the white, white, landscape.

But I'm slightly bored with it all now, and would be quite happy for life to return to normal. However... Big excitement! I've just seen the postman walk up the street. Maybe he'll bring me something nice. Like snowshoes.

Harvey's Christmas crisis

Harvey here to wish you all a yappy New Year!

Mr and Mrs Boss sneezed and sniffed their way through Christmas, as if there was no end to the supply of tissues. To round things off the three of us made an emergency visit to the vet's last weekend, after I had an altercation with a piece of wood in the park.

A nice tasty piece of wood it was too. I was just getting my teeth into it for a really good chew, when, quite unprovoked, a lump of it wedged itself across the roof of my mouth. Jammed fast between my molars, it was. Pesky thing.

Mr and Mrs Boss couldn't fix it, so off we went in the car. The vet had a peer between my jaws, stuck a needle in me, and my eyes grew heavier and heavier. When I woke up, the wood was gone. I was all staggery on my legs, like Mrs Boss when she's drunk too much. And they didn't even let me keep the piece of wood as a souvenir. That was pretty strange, since Mr Boss kept saying what a very expensive piece of wood it was.

Mr Boss says my New Year's Resolution should be to stop eating wood. Mrs Boss says hers is to write more poetry. Sounds like a fun filled year, then. I can hardly wait.

Still here...

Sorry I am not around in Blogland so much lately. My energy always takes a dip during the November darkness, but picks up a bit as Christmas approaches. I ventured out of my hermit's cave this week, to visit Birmingham's German Christmas market. The bull in the Bullring is all ready for a fancy dress party. In fact, he's so excited that he's been penned in with a sturdy red rope to prevent escape!



The market is full of pretty things, as always. I think I will have to go in again before Christmas to have another look at the beautiful coloured glass. I usually come away wishing I'd bought more. But then, it's not very practical to collect coloured glass with a large dog in the house.

Hope you are all enjoying your Christmas preparations.

Some people seem to be shopping like maniacs, while others queue at the many food banks that seem to be springing up around our towns and cities. Strange world.

Writing news, and a hot tip for cosy toes.

After a quiet summer, some writing news. A couple of weeks ago I went to the University of Wales Trinity St David in Carmarthen, to read at the prizegiving of the Ifanca Helene James short story competition. I had a lovely couple of days, featuring a scenic train journey, a male voice choir, and lots of walking uphill (never down).

I also found I had been shortlisted for the Doris Gooderson short story competition, run by Wrekin Writers.

I have entered more writing competitions than usual this year. In part this was because I wrote several pieces as homework for the writers' group which were too dark or strange for the magazines I submit to. Next year I plan to enter less competitions. It's lovely to win anything, or be shortlisted, but I have felt for some time that I should be focusing on a bigger project. I have a couple of novel ideas, but neither of those seems to be happening right now. So I have decided to see if I can put together the short story collection on a theme, which I've been contemplating since last year. It seems more manageable within my bitty work schedule.

With two recent short story sales to My Weekly, I shall not be giving up magazine writing though. I find it an excellent antidote to my workaday world.

On a different note, I saw Willy Russell's fabulous show Blood Brothers this week. You can not imagine how wonderful it was to see 'Tell Me It's Not True' performed so brilliantly, after my hours spent trying to learn even the most basic version on the piano! All the cast were great, but I must give a special mention to Niki Evans. Apparently she was an X Factor contestant a few years ago. She was absolutely outstanding as Mrs Johnstone, the woman who gives away one of her twins so she can afford to feed the rest of her family.

Finally, with dark nights and chilly temperatures, how would you like to win some lovely socks? Librarian, who blogs at From My Mental Library, has a mother with a talent for knitting. She sells some of her products via an Etsy shop. To win a free hand-knitted item from the range on sale, all you have to do is visit Librarian's blog and leave a comment on the 'Cold Season Giveaway' post. I love socks so much, I can barely close my sock drawer. Count me in!

The Ifakara Bakery Project Competition and Anthology: a guest post by Sharon Bradshaw

Today I am happy to introduce my writing friend Sharon Bradshaw.

Sharon is organising a writing competition to raise funds for a charity close to her heart.

I'm handing over to her now, to tell you all about it.

"I started to fundraise for the Ifakara Bakery Project Charity in 2010 when I met the organisers, Margaret and Eugene Schellenberg. They were giving a presentation about the work which the Charity was doing in Tanzania. It was difficult to listen to some of the things they were saying and to see the photographs of the hardship which the children, disabled and others, had to undergo. It's now a well told tale about Africa, but Margaret and Eugene had done something different. They built a bakery in 2001 which is currently run as a successful business by the local people and ensures that no-one need starve when there are problems with the maize crop, but there are still so many who have to survive without basic necessities.

They have continued to give Ifakara 'talks' and others have become involved in the fundraising so that the Charity is now able to provide additional money for irrigation, electricity, and education. There is an emergency fund too for when crops fail completely due to adverse weather. The Charity provides bread for the orphanage, nursery schools, hospital patients, those with leprosy and learning difficulties.

I have been a Solicitor since 1981 and started to write poetry a few years ago. I didn't realise at the time that writing can take you to so many different places, and I'm now running a writing competition to help raise funds. I asked David Howarth, editor of Park Publications, if he would support the project, which he has done by advertising throughout his magazines, Scribble and Countryside Tales.

I'm asking writers to send me their 'Hopes and Dreams' as poems or short stories with £2.50 per entry or £4.00 for two. A selection will be published by Park Publications in an anthology early next year. There's also prize money: £150, £75, and £25. I've managed to raise the prize money by various other fundraising activities and have had a stall at a local bric-a-brac fair to sell unwanted items, so that after the printing costs are paid all of the funds raised will be sent to Ifakara. The Charity does not deduct administration charges.

I would like to be able to help the children in Mhutanga to have clean water. Their school has grown from 30 to 90 children and has to be run on a shift basis. They have bread and a mug of sweet tea after lessons. Many of them have had to walk a long way to get to school, with little or no breakfast. Parents have then to walk a lot further to get the water for the tea as they cannot access good water where they are without a bore hole.

I've written articles about the competition for Writers' Forum and Writing Magazine and the entries have been coming in, but it would be lovely to receive more. An anthology for Ifakara would mean so much to the children, and you can help by letting me have your words before the closing date on November 30th, 2012. It's not yet the end of the story.

For more details on the work being undertaken please visit the Ifakara Bakery Project website. And for full details of the competition, please see the Park Publications competition page.

Thank you, Sharon, for sharing this with us. I do hope some visitors to Zigzag Road will feel inspired by your enthusiasm, and send in a story or a poem. Personally, I think it's refreshing to see how a small number of determined people can make a real difference to the lives of others.

Jo's new desk

I wanted to show you my new desk, but you know how a certain dog pops up everywhere. Harvey's rather full of himself at present, as he is to appear in a Christmas story later this year. He doesn't mind that I changed his name for the purposes of the story, since he has already had friend requests on Facebook from people he doesn't know. How do these people find you? It's a mystery. Of course if genuine friends of mine wish to befriend Harvey, that's fine. He's a pretty friendly dog.

My desk cost twenty pounds in a charity shop. Maybe my grandparents had a similar one when I was small. There feels something very familiar about all the neat compartments inside the fold-down front.

Apparently the young folk refer to a charity shop as a 'chazza'. Does anyone else know this expression? It was a word I'd never heard before, but now I'm using it all the time, being such a chazza addict.

Nostalgia seems the theme of my life lately. I've been re-reading a childhood favourite, 'The Secret Garden' by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It's a lovely escapist book. I think you can read it at any age and still be uplifted by it.

And two other nice books I bought from the chazza recently for a couple of pounds: H.E. Bates' 'The Darling Buds of May' and 'A Breath of French Air'. The latter seemed particularly appropriate after my little excursion this summer. I love the 1950s style of the covers, and have enjoyed reading them both, although it is hard not to picture David Jason as Pop Larkin.

That's it for now. The desk awaits!