WIN SARAH SALWAY's NEW NOVEL!

According to Publisher's Weekly, Sarah Salway's new novel Getting The Picture, is rather good stuff. So after reading their review, here's a little comp to win a signed copy!
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Publisher's Weekly say this:

Getting The Picture refutes the adage about old dogs and new tricks in this breezy epistolary novel set in a British retirement home. Not that the residents of Pilgrim House don't know plenty of old tricks already: Salway's appreciation of her characters is refreshingly nonpatronizing—her oldsters have rich and naughty pasts, but live in the present, very much alive and eager to gossip, conspire, and seduce... relationships and characters evolve nicely in this lighthearted novel about family and lovers and the not-so-lighthearted secrets that separate them.

Sarah is a simply great writer. And something of a rarity, a generous-hearted one. (Although ALL the writers who read this blog are the same, right?!) Her chapter in Short Circuit is terrific, an object-lesson in finding inspiration. And she is running a mini-comp to publicise her new novel - about love in an old people's home...Yes! Can't wait.

What you have to do is this. Find/remember/the best quote you can about love and old age. And send it to Sarah at sarahsalway - at - googlemail.com or visit her blog HERE and even HERE at the relevant post - add it into the comments. Who knows - a signed copy of this book could be winging its way to you soon.
I thought I was being dead smooth, adding my own fave quote, which I thought was by T S Eliot. Apparently, it is also by several others... and what I hadnt noticed was ,its also Sarah's own fave. So no book for me then. (grump.)

"Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young."

It’s on a scrap of paper on my wall, scribbled as being by T S Eliot – but it isn’t! depending on who you believe, it is either by A. W. Pinero, Benjamin Franklin or even Dorothy Fisher! Hmph.
Anyway. Can I suggest, if you don't win - get your own copy...Amazon.com can send you one - HERE Salway is a special writer. But don't take my word for it - Neil Gaiman says so. Look:

“Sarah Salway is an astonishingly smart writer. Her fiction is always beautifully structured, touching and clever. She manages the trick of creating characters you care about in stories you admire. I can’t wait to see what she does next.”

—Neil Gaiman

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(The Publisher's Weekly review of Sarah's new book is is Copyright of Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.)

Lewes Needle Writers' Summer event.

Last night was the Summer event for Needle Writers, an evening performance event held in the lovely café of Lewes’ Needlemaker’s Centre.

Every quarter, three writers are invited to read, and last night was a HUMDINGER.

Sarah Salway led the field, with a double-whammy – poetry and a short story. The poetry centred round an addiction that many women suffer – ‘acquisition as love-object’ is how it came over to me. The poems were very sensual – I will look at shopping in a new light from now on! She then read ‘Toad in the Hole’, a short story from her collection Leading the Dance about a boy suffering group bullying. She whisked us into the world of young boys taunting each other, a world in which a single incident labels a boy for life in the heads of his peers, but more importantly, in his own mind. I already have Sarah’s collection, but it isn’t signed, and I didn’t take it along. So I bought another copy, and some lucky person will have a pressie soon!

Andie Lewenstein was up next, a striking poet, who read a selection of her work. Andie has a series based on images from old European fairy stories, but not as children would see them now. She span the images up and out so that the well-known merged into something totally different. She read several other works, written on a writing retreat in Iona, including a very moving piece about mourning her father. A gifted lady.

Here’s her bio from the event sheet:
Andie Lewenstein has published poems and stories in anthologies and won the Ware Poets sonnet prize. She is currently drawing inspiration from fairy tale and the forest where she lives. She has taught creative writing in Adult Education, on Emerson College’s Word Work course, and she was co-director of the annual Poetry Otherwise conference in Forest Row.

And lastly, but by no means least, Julie Corbin, whose psychological thriller Tell me No Secrets was shortlisted for the Daily Telegraph Novel in A Year Competition, and is now the first publication in a three book deal with a top publishing house.
Julie had banned her husband and kids from the event. It was her first public reading – and all I can say is – she was absolutely terrific.

She held the room spellbound with the prologue and part of the opening chapter of Tell Me No Secrets and a third part based on one of the characters.
She hadn’t bought enough books… and what she had brought sold out within a few minutes of the reading finishing.

If you would like to read the prologue and first chapter of the book, visit her website (HERE) where you can download the pdf.

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(Pics of Sarah Salway and Julie Corbin are taken from their websites, linked above.)

Coolio. I have been awarded a thingummy by two nice peeps...PEEP ONE HERE and PEEP TWO HERE. Thank you!!!

It comes with conditions...
You have to link to those who nominated you. You have to list seven things you love. And pass it on to seven blogs you love. Well, see, that’s using the word ‘love’ wrongly. I like and enjoy blogs, but I don’t ‘love’ them, I’m afraid!!


Hmm. Things I love.

1) All my family.
2) The scent of the air after rain. Go outside as the rain stops. Shut your eyes and breathe in slowly… nothing like it.
3) The sensation of being suspended in water. (I enjoy swimming, but it is the feeling of water round me that I love. Iris Murdoch loved it too. Maybe I’m going the same way as Iris…)
4) Meeting new thoughts, ideas, being challenged. Learning something new.
5) My means of writing whether paper and pencil, pens, computer and keyboard. I do not love my computer otherwise.
6) Solitude. I enjoy my own company, time to reflect, think, not think. Just ‘be’. I love going to Anam Cara Writers’ and Artist’s Retreat, seeking just that. The joy is that you can also dip your toes into good company and withdraw when it suits.
7) Reading a short story that is so good, so resonant, that I disappear totally into the fictive world for the duration of the story, am carried along in the current then thrown back into my world, gasping. No novel can do this. There’s a challenge… if you know better…

And I have to send the award to others.

But the blogs I enjoy have probably already got the award… hey. I don’t care! I award this to you lot for the enjoyment you give me, for educating me, for making me smile, for your honesty and for putting life into perspective.

Willesden Herald
Normblog
Sara Crowley
Sarah Salway
Tania Hershman
Literary Rejections on Display
Nik Perring