I talk to Jim bates about his collection 'Where the heart is'

 

Why did you decide to collect these particular stories together? What is the overriding theme here for you

I hope this doesn’t sound too weird, but I chose these stories with my dear departed mother in mind. Mom passed away in 2011. We were very close. She knew how much I loved to write, yet had been putting off jumping in and making even the tiniest of beginnings due to many reasons (family, career, the usual suspects). In one of the last conversations we had, she counseled me to ‘Start following your dream, Jim. Before it’s too late.’ You know what? She was right. I took her advice. The night after that conversation, I took the leap and committed to start writing every day with the idea in mind of trying to be the best writer I could be. I’m glad I did! This was back in 2011, and it was the best thing I've ever done. I love writing, and this collection of stories, “Where the Heart Is,” is a book I’m sure Mom would have liked. The stories are character-driven and have a positive message, both themes that my mom enjoyed in the books she read. Mom, these are for you!

I love the cover.  Why was this particular picture important?

 

I’m so glad you like the cover. I do, too! The inspiration came from one of the photos on the calendar that hangs in the small room that is my writing space. I have an appreciation for lakes, and I love to sit and look out over them and enjoy their beauty. Being on a lakeshore is also a nice time to contemplate life. The cover represents both of those quiet pastimes. Thank you to Martin James for helping me select the cover image and also for the final great design. It’s perfect!

You worked with our intern, Fatima, on this collection.  Can you tell us a little about that process? 

Heartfelt kudos go out to Fatima! She was wonderful to work with. I appreciated that she was conscientious, thorough, and she also gave me some great input. I’d love to use her again if that were ever possible!

Jim, you’re a prolific writer of short stories. How do you manage to keep finding inspiration?

That’s a very kind comment, Gill. Thank you very much. I’ll answer by reiterating that I love to write, and that I’ve always wanted to be a writer. Seven years after dedicating myself to writing in 2011, I started sending my work out for publication. You published my first story, “Remembrance Day,” in 2018, and it gave me a huge boost in confidence. Thank you so much for that! I am a very quiet person. I do not mind being by myself at all. I love to go for walks and read. Throughout my day, I’m always thinking about possibilities for stories or poems. When the idea comes to me, I’ll write it down. Today, for example, I was playing with my yo-yo. (Yes, you heard me right, my yo-yo. It’s part of my morning routine LOL!) The idea of a poem came to me as I was doing an “Around the World” move. I went upstairs and jotted the poem down in my notebook. I went over that first draft and liked it. I then wrote the poem. I still liked it. It will be added to my new poetry collection, “Quantum Moments.” Ideas like that happen to me all the time, and I’m glad that they do! It helps to keep writing interesting, challenging, and fun.

 Do you have any advice for those who are new to writing short stories? 

Yes. Try to write every day. If you have a story you are working on, keep at it. Once you finish, review it, make sure it’s the way you want it, and then write another one. Stay with it! Ray Bradbury said, “If you write a story a week for a year, you’ll have 52 stories at the end of that year. I’ll guarantee at least one of them will be good.” To that I’ll add, probably more than one. The point is, keep writing. You only get better by writing. I’ll also add this: write for yourself. Write stories that you would want to read. If you like what you’ve written, that’s the main thing. You can never please everyone, so you have to please yourself. At the end of the day, you can say, “You know what? I don’t care what others say, I think my story is pretty good.” When you get to that point, when you like your own work, it’s a great place to be.

Are you working on any new projects?

Yes. Right now, I’m doing the final edits for “The Rebels,” which is Book 5 of my Creekside Chronicles YA (and older) dystopian/adventure series. It’s almost ready to be published. I’m also in the process of publishing “Periodic Haiku,” a collection of 5-7-5 syllable haiku poems based on the first 118 elements of the periodic table. And I’m also working on a collection of poems to be published in 2026 entitled “Quantum Memories.”

Do you have any events planned?

No events planned at this time except for ‘soft releases’ on FB and my blog.

Note: Thank you so much, Gill, for the opportunity to be on your blog. Your continual support of my writing efforts is stupendous and means the world to me! Again, thank you so much. 

See Jim's web site here:  https://theviewfromlonglake.com  

Find your copy of the book here  

 

Book Club Guide for 140 x 140

1. Open the book randomly at three different places.  Which is your favourite of these three stories? Why?
2. Read through the stories for the month in which your birthday occurs. Can you find one story that makes you laugh, one that makes you think and one that disturbs?
3. Thumb through the book and find a story that includes: colour, politics or class distinction
4. Have you an overall favourite? Explain what you like about this story.
5. Random reading. Get your group to sit in a circle. The first person opens the book at a random page, reads the story out loud and passes it to the next person in the group. Continue until everyone has read a story.
6. Pick three stories randomly and analyse them. Is this a story, a vignette, a commentary, a mini-essay?
7. Identify themes in the book. Chose a favourite theme and comment on all of the stories that fit that theme.
8. Analyse one entry in depth. What is it? How is the content structured? How is language used to get the main points across? Can you find any poetic devices such as personification, metaphor, similes, alliteration etc.?
9. Use the contents page to identify three stories that appeal. Which of the three is your favourite and why?
10. Pick an entry randomly and try to work out which picture may have inspired it.        

Find your copy here     

 

Twenty Great Things about Being a Writer

 

 

1. I get to be exactly who I want to be.  
2. I get to invent lots of worlds. 
3. I have a lot of friends in my writing world.
4. Book events are fun. 
5. Watching TV, going to the cinema or theatre and reading fiction count as work.
6. Even listening to gossip at the pub feeds the hunger for stories.  
7. It’s perfectly okay that I go clothes shopping and come back with books.
8. Who needs lots of fancy clothes, anyway, if you're a writer?  
9. All the time I spend writing just makes me a better writer.
10. We change as writers all the time - you never know what's coming next.  
11. I’m in incredibly good company: Shakespeare, Dickens, Maeve Binchy. 
12. And of course Michael Morpurgo, Philip Pullman  and Jacqueline Wilson.   
13. I work from home. Remind me: what’s a rush hour?
14. And when I do venture out I find lots of stories. Journeys on busses are particularly good.  
15. Everything is interesting and tells me a story. 
16. We frame a series of events into a story.  
17. I earn money while I’m on holiday. 
18. I still earn money from work I did years ago.   
19. I don’t mind being snowed in.
20. I enjoy writing so much I even write when I'm on holiday.  

Buy these three writing craft books for £5.00

 

There are three prompts a day for the whole of 2023. Some are short and pithy, others are inspired by obscure days e.g. 8 January Bubble Bath Day, and some go into more detail on an aspect of writing craft. There are series that go over a number of days. A few prompts are about works in progress and several give you the choice of working with a text you have already created, creating something new or even editing a completed piece of work. But every prompt gives you the opportunity to write something as well.

These prompts were put together by writers published by the Bridge House, CaféLit and Chapeltown imprints, and their friends.

Happy writing!

 

What shall I do with my Creative Writing group?

Here are a list of suggestions based on what you might do over a year, whether  you meet once a week or once a month. Each suggested session plan allows you to plan an interesting session with your group, and suggests what to do in the session, what you need to prepare before the session and how you might follow it up. Suggested timings are included.     

Have fun with my Let's get Writing. Those creative juices will soon be flowing.  

 

Fifty-seven easy to use fact sheets that cover all that you need to know if you are relatively new to writing. Ideal too for the creative writing teacher.   

Topics include: 

• story structure 
• poetry forms 
• presentation of work 
• how to get your work out there
• script writing 
• networking 
• organisations that can help 
• self-publishing 
• getting new ideas 
• building characters 

The Tip Sheets have deliberately been left as a Word document so that users may customize them. 

 Gill James is an experienced writer and teacher. The Tip Sheets pass on information that she has acquired over twenty or so years.   

 

  

Today I talk to Karen Arnold about her work

 We have recently published Karen's Flash Fiction collection, Horse Dreams

 

  

 I note that we have something in common – we both grew up in the Black Country. Does anything from your childhood influence your stories?  

1.       Yes, definitely, and ways that took a long time for me to really appreciate. The Black Country is a curious, overlooked place, with strange green edges to it’s boundary (a boundary which often causes debate as to where it really begins and ends!) It was an industrial landscape when I was small, and post industrial by the time I was an adult, and that changing landscape, it’s relics and left behinds have a haunting quality. Many of the working-class people I grew up with worked hard and played hard, and that shift into the Saturday night glamour from the working week felt like a powerful ritual. There was a unique smell to the air of the Black Country which has always stayed with me, of fire and oil and heat (my father was a foundry man when I was small, and I think the smell came home on his overalls!) He was also a keen angler, so the canals that run through the landscape and the country side at the edges were as much a playground for me as the streets and edge lands of our town. But I think I also soaked up a sense of the deep age and history of the place as I grew up. Even the names of places in the town and of the town itself translate into the names of ancient queens (Ethelfleda Terrace) and Norse Gods (Woden’s Borough) Black Country people tell a good tale, with lots of urban myths (like the elephant in the mines below Dudley Zoo) Even the accent has a special magic to it for me and I will become quite irate when people ask if I am a Brummie.

 

What made you think of the title?

 The title comes from one of the stories in the collection, which was itself inspired by something from my work as a child psychotherapist. I often worked with traveller children, one of whom, a very long time ago, said in a whisper that “she wanted to tell me about the horse dreams”. The dream in the story is of course invented, but it captures that quality of magical thinking and the sense that nothing is only what it seems to be. I felt that sense of an invitation to look closer and to find a sense of enchantment in overlooked places really encapsulated the feel of the collection.

How did you come to know the form of flash fiction?

 I stumbled on it almost by accident about three years ago when I saw something on social media about something called Writers HQ. They were offering an opportunity to take part in a twenty-four days of flash advent challenge. My curiosity piqued and I read on, found out what flash fiction was, wrote twenty-four very short stories that I shared in their on line forum and I was completely hooked! I still write every week with WHQ, as well as reading and critiquing other writers' work and taking part in on line open mike sessions. It opened a door to another world for me and I never looked back. It is such an encouraging and friendly community. I went on to join the Smoke Long Fitness community as well, writing with them each week, joining writers from all over the world in an online community. It means that I write at least one new story every week and as Ray Bradbury said “it’s impossible to write 52 bad stories in a row” ( which does invite the response “ challenge accepted)

 

 What would you say are the advantages in writing in this very short form?

4.       For me, I love the creativity that is produced when there are such tight limits on the form. There has to be a whole narrative arc, whether the story is five hundred, three hundred (or even one hundred) words. Not one word is wasted and you have to get to the very heart of the story you want to tell. I have heard it described as having to arrive late and leave early, diving right into the place where your story is at bursting point. Yet even within this tight structure, there is space for lyrical, poetic language, you can create real tension, and you can be completely genre fluid. I have written flash in every genre except perhaps the western! 

 

 Do you write in any other forms?

5.       Yes, I have written longer short stories, but they have almost always grown out of a piece of flash that just needed a bit more space for the idea to grow to its full size. Over the summer I finished the first draft of a novel that has been bubbling away in my brain for several years, and I’m about to embark on the hard work of editing and filling in the unforeseen plot holes! What I have noticed though is that the experience of writing lots of flash has made me a good critical friend to myself, I’m always wanting to condense things down where I can, to give the ideas the amount of space they need rather than expanding them to fit the space available.

  

Can you tell us something about your writing routine?

6.      With my on-line groups the writing is often in response to prompts, so my writing week has a shape and a rhythm dictated by that. I really enjoy seeing where my mind goes in response to a prompt and for me the cue is almost always a visual one, a response to an image or something ekphrastic. Nine times out of ten I will get the title or a single phrase and that will start the whole ball rolling. I write really quickly, trying not to get in my own way and letting my unconscious do most of the talking. I don’t edit as I go along very much, but I come back afterwards and give it the level of polishing it seems to need. There is no particular time of day when I’m happiest to write, but I do put my writing time in my diary each week so that it doesn’t get eaten up by other things. If I feel like I’m really struggling with a particular story, I either take the dog out for a walk and let the idea stew away while I’m outside or I switch from my keyboard to writing longhand with pen and paper which also seems to mysteriously shake things loose. I write pretty much in silence or with very quiet Radio 3 when I’m writing something new but like the music louder when I’m editing. I also drink a lot of coffee! Finally, when I’m writing something longer, like the novel, or editing something that feels sticky, I use the Pomodoro method to make it more bite sized and manageable.

 

    Do you have any other projects planned?

    I am working on the next draft of a novel. I’m also putting the final touches to a second collection of flash fiction as well as a novella in flash. At the time of writing, I’m putting the final touches to the arrangements for the book launch for Horse Dreams (in the library of the local university) and I’m also getting ready to take the book to Stratford Literary Festival at the beginning of November, where it will be on sale on the local Society of Authors book table. I’m aware that it might seem like a lot of plates to spin, but I came to writing later in life and I’m busy making up for lost time!

 

    You can find your copy of Horse Dreams  here.  

 

Today Michael Barrington tells us something about his writing life

 

 

  

What sort of material do you write? 

 

I write across genres but am particularly attracted to historical novels. It probably stems from my love of history as a child, influenced by a wonderful teacher. I regularly publish short stories and again, mainly fiction, some fantasy and many based on my life’s experiences. I am blessed to have enjoyed a wonderful professional life, and worked in or visited more than 70 countries

What enticed you to be a writer in the first place?  

 As a student at a boys only boarding school, we had an hour and a half every Sunday, of writing time in which we had to produce an essay. Sometimes we were given a theme or topic, but often we could choose our own. I loved this time as my imagination could soar and take me outside a very restrictive environment. I learned to dread Wednesday mornings, however, when they were returned to us and I heard those words, “Barrington, quite good work again. Come out here and read it to the class.”  I was not popular with my classmates!

 

Do you have a writing routine?  

I realized early on that I couldn’t write well without a routine. My first novel took me almost six years, and I said never again. I was working at least 50/60 hours a week as the CEO of a company, and on weekends when I intended to write, my wife usually had other things that needed attention.

 
Once I retired, I realized I did not want to play golf every day, so decided that writing would be my work. I spend at least 40 hours a week either writing, doing research or organizing my files, but always working on my craft.  If I take time off for a round of golf or a day out with my wife, I simply make up my writing time by working longer days.

 

Do you have a dedicated work space?  

 Yes, I have my den surrounded with all my stuff: two computers, external hard drives, (I learned years ago that I needed triple backup of all my writing), ipad, printers, and my stereo music set up. My books are here as I also take time every day to do some reading.

 

Do you call yourself a writer?  

For years I was embarrassed when people referred to me as a writer, even though I had already written a couple of novels and published some short stories. I felt like a fraud. Then I joined a writers' club with one hundred and sixty members and was quickly elected vice president. I had to chair meetings, organize events and my public speaking engagements increased. I was introduced and referred to as a writer, author and I decided it was true. It was my full-time work, so yes, I needed to get comfortable with the title.
I was also approached by a member who said I needed to improve my marketing materials, including my website. I had to face the reality; I was a writer!

 

How supportive are your family and friends?  

I am fortunate. My family and friends are very supportive. My wife is a professional artist, a painter, so she needs a lot of time for her work. That works out well. Most of my friends are writers. I also have a sister who lives close by; she is also a writer. We talk almost every day. My family in the UK not only buys my books, but has become quite a sales force for me.
 

Do you have any goals for the future?  

Future goals. I am currently writing a historical fiction based on the Battle of Bamber Bridge. It took place in 1943, and there was a ‘wild west’ type shootout in the village between white US military police and groups of colored soldiers. No such book currently exists.
 

In the new year, I will be working on a nonfiction book. A colleague who has been doing research for the past twenty-five years, is only interested in making short videos. He is giving me all of his research concerning recovered German dog tags from World War II. That will be exciting but quite challenging.

 

Which writers have inspired you?  
 

By the time I was eighteen, I had read all of Dickens, Jane Austen, and many of the classics — all staple, boarding school ‘food. As a schoolboy, it was the angry young men whose writings I devoured; Kingsley Amis, John Braine, and John Osborne.  I loved Edna O’Brien, for her command of vocabulary, language, and expression. She became my muse. I spent ten years in Africa and discovered an unknown treasure trove of writers, all of whom have in some way affected my writing; Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer, and Flora Nwapa.
 

I am fortunate to read in both French and Spanish, and I can remember the first time I read Antonio Machado and the poetry of Pablo Neruda. More recently, I have enjoyed works by Mario Vargas Llosa. In French, I found Claude Simon’s writing intriguing, but it was Nathalie Sarraute who shocked me with her ‘anti-novel style’ and focus on interior monologues. 

 
 

Michael Barrington, an award winning, English author has produced 13 books, mainly historical and literary fiction. Four Mile House and No Distance Between Us are his recent novels.  Take a Priest Like You is a memoir. He has published more than 60 short stories and blogs on his website: www.mbwriter.net.