• It’s time for your weekly five-word challenge! For this week’s challenge, can you tell a story in five words, using the word SQUASH in it somewhere? Last week, your story needed to contain the word KINDLE. You sent in some fantastic stories. Here they are: K Morris: The story blew the Kindle. Christine Mallaband-Brown: Re-kindle…

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  • Markets For Writers

    Halloween is around the corner! Have you had a ghostly encounter? Perhaps a chilling prediction has come true, or maybe a spooky dream you’ve had won’t go away. These are the type of stories Take A Break’s Fate and Fortune is looking for. If you haven’t got a story to tell, you might have a…

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  • Funny Of The Week

    This week’s brilliant ‘funny’ has been sent in by Ruth Scribbles. Thank you, Ruth! Now, this is what you call a tanning session…

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  • I’d wanted to read The Handmaid’s Tale for some time. Friends raved about it and when the TV series came out, there was a lot of talk about it and the concept. But, as many of you bookworms out there will appreciate, there just aren’t enough hours in the day to read all the books…

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  • Many of you will have come across Geoff before. I first met him at the Annual Bloggers Bash in 2015. He’s extremely talented and a very versatile author as you’ll find out from my interview with him. Q. Your latest book of short stories, Life in a Conversation was released earlier this year. Can you…

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  • It’s time for your weekly five-word challenge! For this week’s challenge, can you tell a story in five words, using the word KINDLE in it somewhere? Last week, your story needed to contain the word REWARD. You sent in some brilliant stories. Here they are: Christine Mallaband-Brown: My reward is your love… Dead or alive?…

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  • Markets For Writers

    Fancy trying something a bit different? Then why not enter the Weird Christmas Flash Fiction Contest? The closing date is 2nd November 2019. ‘It should be weird or strange or odd. It can be “Haha!” weird or “Oh, Jesus, no!” weird. It can be genre (sf, fantasy, horror/weird, bizarro, etc.) or it can just be…

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  • Funny Of The Week

    Form an orderly queue…

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  • Bite Size Writing Tips

    Got For It! Not sure about pitching an idea to an editor? Written a story, but scared to enter it into a competition? Want to send a reader’s letter out but uncertain the magazine will use it? We all have doubts and we all receive rejections. It’s part and parcel of a writer’s life. But…

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  • I met the lovely Ann Biggins at the Indie Literary Festival in Bradford earlier this year. I was very interested to hear about Ann’s debut novel, especially so as it’s set in the 1970s, which was when I was growing up. Here she gives us more of an insight: Q. Your book is called Losing…

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