February '24

Forthcoming attractions...

Prologue

It’s late January and once again I’ve been going through the Why? and What? of my writing - this time driven by thoughts of perhaps studying for a PostGrad qualification. It’s a lot of time & £££, so the Jury’s still out...

One thing that has surfaced, however, is a desire to modify my Substack content a little.

So I’ve decided…

• 17 Alma Road will now finish serialising on 16th Feb., the day before the paperback goes live;

• I may stop serialising readings from not the Sonnets (after sonnet 100) on the basis that they don’t seem to have been particularly popular - unless you tell me otherwise;

• I will cease publishing ‘old’ short stories - with the exception of the last two stories from An Irregular Piece of Sky (and make the title story free to all) - again, unless you tell me otherwise.

Instead I will attempt to try the following:

• a monthly retrospective ‘meander’ through my past writing month (for which this post is a precursor);

• more frequent insights into my works-in-progress (I shared early drafts of some of the Grimsby Docks poems, and the collection is ready and also published on 17th February);

• the odd mentor-type post e.g. suggestions of writing exercises;

• more ‘share your work’ opportunities for premium subscribers;

• and more off-the-cuff thoughts and insights into my writing life.

One current w-i-p is an extended short story / novella (currently at 30k words) which, when it’s ready, I’m thinking of producing a) as an ebook only, and b) making copies of it entirely free. Watch this space…

Of course it will be interesting to look back in about five weeks and see where all these good intentions went, but for now…

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