Stumble across rather than search or even browse; can old technology still win?

Last century and the beginning of this one we regularly attended the Nuffield Theatre, Southampton.  There were always a lot of leaflets on display about performances at other theatres and for a few other cultural events,

It was there that I picked up a leaflet about Writers’ Register, run by the Continuing Education department of the University of Southampton.  I joined at once and there I met people who told me about the Winchester Writers’ Conference which is where I heard about the MA in Writing for Children.

Would I even be writing this blog today if I hadn’t stumbled across that information at the Nuffield Theatre?

There is a wealth of information on the internet but we need to know what we’re looking for and how to search effectively.  It’s harder to just to stumble across something. 

There are now fewer community notice boards where we can see what’s on offer.

I’d like to flag up a couple of exceptions, however.

In my town there is a quite impressive art venue: the Bury Art Museum.  In the foyer there is always an old –fashioned blackboard displaying the day’s activities. There is also a nice café in the museum, and members of my German conversation group often go there for lunch after the session. One lady spotted a watercolour workshop for beginners- all materials supplied. It took place that very afternoon. She decided to attend and at the next German conversation session she was able to show us two very nice watercolours she had completed.

Though I worry a little about the paper we’re wasting I do appreciate the opportunity those local free publications offer for us to ‘stumble across’ something new. I’ve read through one this morning and found out about an event I’d like to attend.

It’s not so easy to replicate this electronically. GDPR ensures that we only receive news when we’ve signed up for it. I subscribe to quite a number of newsletters and often delete then unread. In some ways it’s the ‘same old, same old’. Every day I open my inbox with some trepidation – will there be some bad news?- and some anticipation – will I ‘stumble across’ something interesting? Social media perhaps works a little better but the bots only offer what they think I’d like to see. How well do they actually know me?

Can we somehow allow ‘stumbling across’ with the new technology?             

 

Anyone care to review this book?

 

Each story in this little volume is the right length and quality for enjoying as you sip the assigned drink in your favourite Creative Café. You need never feel alone again in a café. So what's the mood today? Espresso? Earl Grey tea? Hot chocolate with marshmallows? You'll find most drinks in our drinks index. 

Contact me if you're interested in reviewing. I can provide a PDF or a  file for your e-book reader.

Let's Get Writing Excerpt

 

Here are the first few pages of my book for creative writing teachers, Let's Get Writing: 

Introduction

A flexible resource

This is designed to be a very flexible resource. It would be very rare indeed for a writing group to meet fifty-two times in one year. Many only meet once a month.  Even those who do meet weekly often don’t meet over the summer or for a couple of weeks around Christmas time. You can of course pick and choose which sessions you use, or simply work through each one in order and keep going until you run out of material.

Timings

You will notice as you go through the resource that the timings add up differently for each session. You may be meeting for an hour, two hours or an hour and a half. With or without a break.  You may also be combining these activities with other writerly activities. Members may for instance bring work to share each week in addition. Or you might do the writing exercise one week, and then work on them for the next session where you share the work. You might simply find that you don’t need quite as much time as suggested for each activity – or indeed that you may need a little more.  The timings are just a guide.   

Feedback

There are many ways of giving feedback. The activities here suggest a light touch. A full description of how feedback might work is offered at the end of the book.  If you feel this is right for your group you may wish to supply a copy of this to members. 

Providing materials

You might consider emailing to members copies of any documents they need for the sessions.  They can the print them off or upload them to a laptop, tablet or phone.  

Who are the members

And what do they want? You will know your members and may adjust the suggested activities accordingly.  Do you want just to celebrate each other’s work?  Are members looking for really detailed critical commentary? Are they aiming for publication or is writing just a hobby?  This might usefully be negotiated in an opening session.

Order and inclusion

Some sessions are a little more demanding than others. Some are more serious and some are more fun. A few need advance preparation.  It’s a good idea therefore to read the whole resource from cover to cover and decide which sessions you will include with your group.  

1.     Character Magic Exercise

Preparation

Provide copies of the questionnaire below. 

Set up (5-10 minutes)

Get everyone to think of the four main characters in their story:

·         The hero – the person whose story it is e.g. Harry Potter

·         The friend – totally on their side but just or almost as powerless e.g. Ron, Hermione, Hagrid

·         The mentor – someone who can help and who does teach them e.g. Dumbledore

·         The enemy – Voldemort

Sometimes the mentor and the enemy may not be human.

 

Working on the characters (20 minutes)

Now your group members should think about their hero and one of the other characters. They should make notes.

They must know:

·         What their characters are like physically, emotionally, intellectually

·         What their personality is like

·         What they most desire in the world

·         What they are most afraid of

·         What is their motivation in this story (if you don’t have a story yet, what is their motivation right now)

You might consider providing a questionnaire:

1.       What does she look like?

2.       How old is she?

3.       What would she like to eat?

4.       What doesn’t she like eating?

5.       What type of sport would she like most?

6.       If she lived in our world, what sort of clothes would she wear to relax in?

7.       What does she most like to do in her free time?

8.       Which newspaper would she read?

9.       What might be her favourite type of TV programme?

10.   What is she good at?

11.   How does she get on with other authority figures?

12.   What is her ideal job?

13.   What makes her happy?

14.   What makes her sad?

15.   What makes her angry?

16.   Which quality does she admire most in others?

17.   What is she most afraid of?

18.   What is her greatest wish?

19.   What is her main motivation in this scene? 

 

Writing a scene (10 – 30 minutes)

When they know their characters well, they should put them together in a short scene and see what happens. Spend no more than thirty minutes writing. They may even have enough within ten minutes.  See how it goes.       

Discussing scenes (20 minutes)

Now participants should swap scenes.  They should ask each other what they’ve understood.  Does the reader get the same picture in their head as the writer started out with? 

Then get them to ask some specific questions about the characters, INCLUDING MATERIAL YOU’VE NOT SHOWN IN THIE BRIEF EXTRACT. For instance, they might ask what colour hair they have, even if this hasn’t been mentioned it.

Now, here is the spooky bit. If they’ve spent enough time on the characters the readers will get at least 70% of the answers right. I’ve used this exercise for ten years and only had one fail. Most people get more that 70% right. That extract carries all the DNA of your character.

Follow up work

Can they expand the story? Can they write more scenes that include these characters? Or add more characters to the story?  

Find out more about the book here 

 

 

 

 

All Schellberg Books for £20.00

 

Clara will not be daunted. Her life will not end when her beloved husband dies too young.  She will become a second mother to the young children who live away from home in order to visit a rather special school. When life becomes desperate for a particular class of disabled children growing up in Nazi Germany she takes a few risks. Is her ultimate faith in the goodness of human beings a fatal flaw that leads to her tragedy, or is her story actually one of hope? 

Renate Edler loves to visit her grandmother in the house on Schellberg Street. She often meets up with her friend Hani Gödde who lives nearby. This year, though, it is not to be. Just a few weeks after a night when synagogues are burned and businesses owned by Jews are looted, Renate finds out a terrible secret about her family.

Käthe wants to be a scientist. She sees herself as more than a housewife and a mother. And she is in her own eyes definitely not Jewish.

Life in Nazi Germany sees it another way however. She has to give up a promising career and her national identity. She has to leave the home she has built up for her husband and daughter. But she is not afraid of challenges. She enlists the help of a respected professor to help her fulfil her ambition, she learns how to use a gun and how to drive a car. But what will she do when she finds herself fact to face with the Führer or, indeed, with the challenges of modern life?

Face to Face with the Führer is the fourth novel in Gill James’ Schellberg cycle.

"Girl in a Smart Uniform" is the third book in the Schellberg Cycle, a collection of novels inspired by a bundle of photocopied letters that arrived at a small cottage in Wales in 1979. The letters give us first-hand insights into what life was like growing up in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s.

It is the most fictional of the stories to date, though some characters, familiar to those who have read the first two books, appear again here. Clara Lehrs, Karl Schubert and Dr Kühn really existed. We have a few, a very few, verifiable facts about them. The rest we have had to find out by repeating some of their experiences and by using the careful writer's imagination.

Gisela adores her brother Bear, her gorgeous BDM uniform, and her little half-brother Jens. She does her best to be a good German citizen, and is keen to help restore Germany to its former glory. She becomes a competent and respected BDM leader. But life begins to turn sour. Her oldest brother Kurt can be violent, she soon realises that she is different from other girls, she feels uncomfortable around her mother’s new lover, and there is something not quite right about Jens. It becomes more and more difficult to be the perfect German young woman.

We know that BDM girls set fire to the house in Schellberg Street but got the children out first. This story seeks to explain what motivated the girls to do that, and what happened to them afterwards.

News 1 April 2025

 

A busy and rewarding month

I’ve dipped my toes in the water of book fairs and I was pleasantly surprised. Bridge House was invited by the Northern School of Writing  to a book fair in the Clifford Whitworth library.  I sold half the books I took along but more importantly gained a lot of contacts: people who want to join our author mailing list, our reader mailing list and or who want to review for us.
So book fairs and other fairs are on the agenda now.      

I was the official photographer for the Lancashire Authors’ Association at ‘What’s Your Story Chorley’. All sorts of groups perform across the town. This includes a free event at the Chorley theatre and brings together local writing groups to share their work. I thought our ‘performers’ did rather well.


Last weekend I visited the Elizabeth Gaskell House It is so easy to imagine the life that Elizabeth Gaskell and her family led in this house. It really feels like a home. They even have an antique Broadwood grand, the same age as ours.  The one here is a baby grand and ours is a boudoir grand, so ours is bigger.  They have tried to replicate the furniture that was there at the time that the Gaskells lived in the house. Apparently they actually owned a boudoir grand and not a baby grand.  As you wander form room to room you will find that the guides are very well informed about the house and the family.  Naturally I had to try the tea room and I had to buy a book!

Elizabeth Gaskell was encouraged by her husband to write after their infant son died.  Her husband William was quite a modern man; Elizabeth often went to stay with friends and left him in charge of the family.  She needed to get away from domesticity in order to write.

Writing news

I’m continuing with my work on the seventh Schellberg book. As ever, despite being carefully planned, it is taking on a mind of its own. Sauerkraut, Death in Venice   and women in trousers have appeared.  

I have four reviews on Talking About My Generation:
 
Escaped Alone and What if Only -two challenging short plays by Caryl Churchill.


Shirley Valentine at the Octagon theatre Bolton, with a fantastic performance from Mina Anwar.      

 
Attention All Shipping a talk /performance about the shipping forecast – how could I resist?   


The Thrill of Love examines the story of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in England. There is a lot about this case in the media at the moment.

On 15 March I attend the AGM of the Lancashire Authors’ Association and was thrilled that my short story ‘Too Many Cooks’ came second in the short story competition and my piece of flash fiction ‘Moonshine’ was commended. I’m perhaps even more delighted that one of my U3A creative writers Eva Rybicki’s  ‘Beginnings and Endings’ was commended.   

On My Blog  

I have some offers on some of my books: an eclectic mix including Natascha’s Story, January Stones and Clara’s Story. 

There’s also an offer of my other flash fiction collection, 140 x 140, and two collections by other writers

I have an interview with Mehreen Ahmed about her latest collection White Moon. 


You can hear a reading of my story ‘Gone’ in Lancashire Writers of Today 2024. 


I also outline how to write an effective review for Amazon, Good Reads and Storygraph without taking up too much of your precious time:

The Young Person’s Library

I’ve added three book this month, all of them YA and all of them with strong fantasy / supernatural elements.  Embers’ The Wings of War,  has multiple supernatural beings – demons, Watchers and Shapeshifters. Ransomed hearts   and Hearts’ Home  are books two and three of Jeanette Greaves’ ‘Ransomed Hearts’ series about a werewolf community . All fantastic reads.      

Recommended read

This month I choose Ransomed Hearts mentioned above. Yes, it’s about werewolves but in this book we also see some young adults growing up.  
 
The challenge of survival continues for the pack.
 
Cousins Mark and John are brought up by their mothers after their fathers have abandoned the family in order to protect it. They are now used to their werewolf status. With some other friends they form a rock band that after a while enjoys huge success which also brings some tensions and danger. Relationships are complex and lead to tricky situations. Then Mark and Diana meet and their world almost explodes.
 
Jeanette Greaves supplies us with pace, tension and well-drawn characters in the second book in her Ransomed Hearts series: Ransomed Hearts.   
Find your copy here.   

Giveaway  

This month I’m giving away a copy of So Now You're Published. What next? 
I have recently revised this.  It is a manual for nrwly published writers about what they can do to help market and publicise their book.
 
The last thing most writers want to do is spend a lot of time on marketing. Yet books don't sell themselves by magic, no matter how good they are. Publishers do what they can but time and money is limited, and inevitably they have to move on to the next project. If you can adapt a few useful routines, especially ones you find palatable and fun, you'll hardly notice you're doing it. There are heaps of useful suggestions here and handy check lists to keep you on track.
 
Grab your copy here. You’ll find an e-book file and a PDF plus a lot of other free materials here.
Please leave a review on Amazon, if you’re allowed to, on Good Reads and anywhere else you can.

The Schellberg Project

The posts may be helpful for teachers who are familiar with the Schellberg stories or who are teaching about the Holocaust.  They may also be interesting for other readers of historical fiction.

More and more ideas creep in as I write Schellberg 7. As well as Jews, homosexual and lesbians were persecuted during the Holocaust. This will feature in the nol as wellas Germn resistance. I explore this a little here. https://www.thehouseonschellbergstreet.com/2025/03/gay-men-lesbians-and-death-in-venice.html       

Some notes about my newsletters and blogs

They do overlap a little but here is a summary of what they all do.

 

Bridge House Authors For all those published by Bridge House, CaféLit, Chapeltown or The Red Telephone or interested in being published by us. General news about the imprints. News for writers. Links to book performance. Sign up here.

 

The Bridgetown  Café Bookshop where you can buy my books and books published by Bridge House Publishing, CafeLit, Chapeltown Books and The Red Telephone.  Visit us here.     

 

Gill’s News: News about my writing, The Schellberg Project, School Visits and Events. Book recommendations and giveaways. Find it here.   

 

Pushing Boundaries, Flying Higher News about conferences and workshops to do with the young adult novel. (infrequent postings) Sign up here.  

 

Red Telephone Books News about our books and our authors. Sign up here.

 

A Publisher’s Perspective Here I and some other editors blog as a publisher. Access this here.   

 

The Creative Café Project Listings and reviews of creative cafés. See them here.   

 

CaféLit Stories Find these here

 

Gill James Writer All about writing and about my books. View this here.

 

Gill’s Recommended Reads Find information here about books that have taken me out of my editor’s head and a reminder of the ones I’ve highlighted in this newsletter.    

 

Gill’s Sample Fiction Read some of my fiction here.

 

The House on Schellberg Street All about my Schellberg project. Read it here.

 

Writing Teacher All about teaching creative writing.  Some creative writing exercises. Access this here.  I also invite other writers to provide prompts and work for critique.     

 

Books Books Books Weekly offers on our books and news of new books. Find them here. 

 

The Young Person’s Library The children’s book catalogue. Access it here.

 

Fair Submissions  Find it here.   

Opportunities for writers are added several times a day. Roughly once a month I send it out to a list. If you would like to be on that list, sign up here.  

Happy reading and writing.