I am delighted to share with you that my coaching client, Pamela Jeffs, a fabulous and highly regarded speculative fiction short story author has won the Queensland Writers Centre 2021 Flinthart Residency where she will work on her speculative fiction novel and develop it to publication later this year. Congratulations Pamela!
I’m so excited and grateful we got to work together. During our fiction coaching partnership we worked through a set of novel blueprint exercises to ensure Pamela had a strong foundation for this novella. The process required Pamela to provide me with answers to a set of exercises and I provided coaching comments, questions, and reflection on each one. We met over zoom and discussed the feedback, how it came across and the opportunities for improvement or further exploration.
Together we worked on all aspects of the novella from finding the best the point of view for the story, understanding the ideal reader and genre target audience, developing the protagonist and their misbelief, writing an elevator pitch, writing a book jacket copy, writing a plot that worked, writing scenes that showed a change or transformation, world building, and fleshing out an inside outline that had action and emotional impact that moved the story forward in a logical way. I am sure some of the questions I asked challenged Pamela to go deeper and find threads she was yet to discover. It was a pleasure to work with Pamela on her novella and I am glowing with joy for her success.
I hope you will join me in congratulating Pamela Jeffs!
Also if you love reading short fantasy and sci-fi fiction, I can recommend Saloons & Stardust – A Collection by Pamela Jeffs. I have a copy and the first story has a great twist to it. I can’t give the surprise away but if you’re open to supporting an author, maybe pick up a copy yourself?
If you’re interested in reading a cracking collection of short stories, check out Relics Wrecks & Ruins anthology collection edited by the late Aiki Flinthart. You’ll find stories written by Neil Gaiman, Angela Slatter, David Farland, Pamela Jeffs, Garth Nix, Aiki Flinthart and many more.
Each story is a feast to read.
As an update from me, I am almost finished my fiction coaching course and I am looking forward to being able to coach more writers get the story down on the page. I am still drawing and reading, and I am in the middle of moving house. And, as you can see from this post I am focusing on fiction coaching and creative writing. Thanks for reading.
Until next time, happy creating and if you’re interested in working with me on your story go to the contact page and send me an email so we can chat.
**Disclaimer: Fiction book coaching does not guarantee winning a residency or publication, but it does support writers to write and to develop and write their stories/manuscripts.
The Creative Life 