Carmen’s short story ‘The Wanderer’ can now be found on the Bromsgrove Standard’s web site!
Monthly Archives: February 2015
‘Winter Words’ under way
Well, it is almost Carnival time…
In case you’re wondering where this gorgeous carnival mask came from, it’s on sale at the shop in Pitlochry Festival Theatre. The theatre itself is always well worth visiting. As well as the auditorium with its dramatic and musical events, there is the shop, the bar, a restaurant, and an exhibition of paintings. At present the annual Winter Words festival – Scotland’s first literary festival of the year – is under way. It finishes next weekend, the 21st and 22nd of February, so if you are in or near Scotland, there is still time to plan a flying visit. You may be lucky and get a ticket for one of the events, but don’t forget there are also bookstalls and free events in the Theatre.
One of the free events is the late-evening ‘Fearie Tales’ session, where actors Helen Logan and Dougal Lee read the stories of the eight winners of the year’s competition for spine-chilling fiction. Paul has been to two of these so far, to support clients who have been among the winners, and oh what tales he has heard! A hen-pecked husband finds a replica of his boyhood home down a Scottish lane, where it has no right to be; a young woman captured by a dragon-worshiping cult; a boy encounters the fairies that have ‘tidied’ his lonely family life, and wonders whether to ask for the sister he never had; an Australian scientist goes looking for voices on the top of a remote Scottish mountain…
There will be four more next weekend. Go along, and prepare to be terrified!
Helen Logan reads ‘Voices’ by Marie Marshall – Dougal Lee obviously knows something she doesn’t!
By the way, Paul hopes to be at the StAnza poetry festival in St Andrews from the 5th to the 8th of March, so look out for him there.
Marie Marshall and Lucy P Naylor do it again!
We have just this minute learned that our clients Marie Marshall and Lucy P Naylor have both had winning short stories in this year’s ‘Fearie Tales’ competition, at the 2015 Winter Words festival in Pitlochry. Lucy’s story ‘The Dragon Stone’ will be featured on Friday 13th (!) and Marie’s ‘Voices’ on Saturday 14th. Here’s how Marie broke the news. Both writers received emails within minutes of each other, it seems.
The picture below is actor Helen Logan, who will be reading both stories.
Carmen Capuano interviewed
Carmen Capuano’s latest interview at Book Reader Magazine.
Carmen Capuano in the Bromsgrove Standard
Our client Carmen Capuano was recently asked to write a short story for The Bromsgrove Standard, her local newspaper, and came up with a tale called ‘The Wanderer’, a lovely depiction of infidelity with a twist at the end. Carmen said this about the Standard:
I remember the very first time I ever read the Standard. I was house-hunting in Bromsgrove and it seemed like a good idea to read the local newspaper to get a flavour of what life could be like here. It was also the first time I had encountered a local newspaper, since none of the cities I had lived in before [Glasgow, London, Birmingham] had published anything so closely linked to the lives of its inhabitants.
The distinction between a national newspaper and a local one, is more than just a difference in the types of articles they cover, for the disparity lies not just in scale but in proximity. The Standard knows its readers [‘demographics’ to other newspapers] better than just by their bank balances and the size of their homes – it knows their hearts, the things that make them tick, their whims and their foibles and it knows this because the people who write for it are local too.
If you click on this link you can navigate to the Standard. ‘The Wanderer’ is on page 12. Enjoy.
Bookseeker Literary Agency 