Hysteria 3 Anthology

My story, The Tears of the Mountain Cherry Tree, will appear in this year's Hysteria Anthology!

Hysteria Writing Competition 2014 Winners Announced

Finally, after a short delay, we now have our list of winners for the Hysteria Writing Competition 2014. I am so pleased to say that the standard was, as usual, exceptionally high and our judges all said how much they enjoyed reading the variety of entries sent through.

I’d also like to give you a sneak preview of the Hysteria 3 anthology cover. Hysteria 3 contains all ten winning entries from each category, together with some excellent advice about entering writing competitions from a number of our judges from this year and last.

The manuscript is now in production and the book is currently available to pre-order through the Hysterectomy Association website and on Amazon Kindle.

Our top ten winners, by category are:

Poetry

I do not love you – Polly Hall
Market Day Blues – Janet Dean
Cairo Chorus – Vicki Morley
DNA – Jayne Thickett
Le Castelet – Joy Blake
Kiss – Juliet Antill
On the point of leaving for Pickering……. – Janet Dean
Testing time – Lucy Williams
A mother lets go again – Camilla Lambert
November daffodils – Camilla Lambert

Flash Fiction

A brief history of cycling – Helen Chambers
The Glory Hole – Trish Leake
A day or two – Diane Simmons
A Delicate Operation – Diane Simmons
A husband’s loss – Maureen Bennie
A Lust for Blood – Alison Wassell
A perfect blend of sweet and sour – Christine Griffin
A Sleeping Beauty – Elizabeth Heasman
A wonderful life – Gayle Letherby
Adrift – Sade’ Norward

Short Story

Drowning in Lemon Juice – Tracey Glasspool
The Gift – Marcia Woolf
Green tea and chocolate fudge cake – Olga Wojtas
The Bridge – Katie Martin
Frustration – Margaret Skinner
Dover Calais – Linda McVeigh
Discipline – Alison Wassell
Breaking the Surface – Andrea Wotherspoon
The tears of the mountain cherry tree – Mandy Huggins
The Sweetie Wife – Clare Archibald

Our first prize winners in each category are Tracey Glasspool, Polly Hall and Helen Chambers, who each recieve a cash prize.

Congratulations to everyone placed and a huge thanks to everyone who entered – your writing and poetry are superb and make it very difficult to choose.

WRITERS' FORUM FLASH FICTION COMPETITION

WRITERS' FORUM started running a new Flash Fiction Competition last month, and I'm pleased as punch that my story, My Own Children, was one of two runners-up, and is in the latest edition.

The Editor, Carl, commented: 'This is a very well crafted and moving story with wonderful images and rhythm, using deliberately repetitive phrasing to describe what Rory is. This builds a sense of momentum towards its sad revelation; that Rory isn't anything.'

My Travel Piece in Reader's Digest

I'm in Reader's Digest again! This time with a short piece on Northumberland, accompanied by a photo I took on Bamburgh beach.

My Flash Fiction Story, Lost Lad, and an interview about my writing, on Helen Moat's fiction blog, Double Espresso

Lost Lad by guest writer, Mandy Huggins

In the midday sun, a lathe-thin cat toys with her lunch; a just-caught fish, its sleek scales now coated with dust. Eventually she settles under the table to eat, whilst fat black beetles hover like helicopters, their shiny bodies as thick as thumbs.

I think of the dung beetles we watched on the donkey track that day. They toiled in the shade of the olive groves, two of them, almost neck and neck, pursuing each other up the hill. You claimed your champion; the larger of the two, and you named him Turtle. I was left with the smaller beetle, the potential loser, and I named him after you: Lost Lad. The name I gave you when we met, when you told me you were a lost cause. One of the lost boys.

Turtle and Lost Lad stood on tiptoe, pushing their smooth golf balls of dung in a laboured race to the top. The balls juddered along the path, stumbling against small stones, stuttering to a near-halt as they adhered to fallen flowers and nubs of twig. Occasionally one of the beetles would stagger sideways. The ball would lose momentum and roll back an inch.

You placed a thin stalk of dry grass across the path: the finish line.

Then Turtle spurted ahead. He nearly made the stalk, and then stopped. He waited for his race mate, giving him a chance, and only as Lost Lad drew level did he set off again. Their balls touched the finish line in unison.

You turned to me then and asked if I would wait for you. You would be back here in one year’s time. We would walk up the donkey track again, side by side, serenaded by cicadas.

And I believed you, my lost lad, but you did not return. I should have seen that you were like the cat, not the beetle, and I was simply your plaything in the dust.

An Interview with Mandy Huggins

Mandy first of all, thank you for agreeing to being my next Double Espresso victim. I’m intrigued by your choice. I gave you a long list of place names and landmarks I’d taken from the Dark and White Peak District OS map. Why ‘Lost Lad’ – of all the choices given?

It’s a pleasure to be your next ‘victim’, Helen! Thank you for asking me!

The main images I have used in this story were already written, but I had forgotten about them until I saw this title choice… Both the dung beetle race and the cat with the fish were inspired by many holidays in Paxos, and a particular donkey track that I have walked many times. I tried to create a flash piece from it before but there was something missing. When I saw the title Lost Lad, it made me think of that piece and a way of making it work as a story. The entire piece is about being lost or about losing something. As well as the male character in the story being a lost cause – ‘my lost lad’ -  there is the question of who will lose or win the race, as well as whether the relationship will be lost or saved.

What I’ve loved about my guest pieces, is that almost every writer has approached the shared title in a completely different way from me. Your interpretation of ‘lost’ is also very different from mine – although neither of us, I’m pleased to say, has gone for the literal ‘lost in the woods’ kind of angle. Both of us explore the central character’s internal sense of being ‘lost’: Your character, ‘a lost cause’. Mine, a  lost mind, suffering from senile dementia. 

My story is grounded in my own experiences (as most of my stories are). How about you? (You mainly write non-fiction, I believe, and primarily travel pieces.)Is your story created purely from your imagination – or are your FF pieces taken from an experience in your life? What was the starting point for your story?

My flash stories are often based around personal experiences, and sometimes around a single image, observation, or moment that has stuck with me. There’s a strong sprinkling of imagination in there too of course!

Your ‘Lost Lad’ has all the hallmarks of a good travel piece: strong in observation, an acute sense of place, and closely observed detail, yet the piece has a well- structured narrative. What comes first for you, the setting or the story?

I think they carry equal weight, but I admit that the setting is very important to me. I try to create a place that is so vivid to the reader that they can almost feel the sand between their toes or smell the bougainvillea. I guess that if I can make them feel they are IN the story then I have them hooked! 

I’ve mentioned, Mandy, that you are also a travel writer. You’ve been short-listed in the Bradt Independent Travel Writing Competition, and this year you won the British Guild of Travel Writers New Writers Competition (deep breath!) Congratulations! Here I have to come clean and say I was pipped at the post (as runner up) – or maybe you won by quite a distance! Either way, you wrote a compelling narrative with a great twist at the end. Do you approach NF and FF quite differently? What do you think the two genres of writing have in common? 

I’ve never thought about it before, as my writing is mainly intuitive and unplanned. If it has any structure, plot or pace then it’s largely luck!  So no, I don’t think I approach them very differently at all. They cross over all the time, in that my fiction relies heavily on far-flung destinations and the effect and importance that places have in shaping people’s lives, and much of my travel writing involves a morsel of creative fiction – I never encourage the truth to get in the way of a good story!

You have also been successful in flash fiction competitions. What is it that draws you to flash fiction? And how do you rise to the challenge of writing a story within a few hundred words?

I hardly ever set out to write a flash story, it’s just what happens. Sometimes there is a single image or idea dancing about in my head that ends up as one because it has a beginning, a middle and an end… but most of my stories are quite stumpy – I think they average around 1000-1500 words, and my travel pieces are short too. I guess I’m a ‘flashy’ kind of girl!

What’s next for Mandy Huggins? What would you like to achieve as a writer?

I would love to write a literary novel or a full length travel book, but my writing time is limited – I have a full time day job too – and I can’t seem to give up the buzz of writing short fiction and travel pieces. I am trying to get a short story collection together at the moment, so that’s what I need to concentrate on right now.

Mandy, thanks for agreeing to contribute to Double Espresso. It was a real joy to read your finely crafted story and to interview you. Good luck with the future – and I hope our writing paths cross again.

Thanks for having me! This was my first ‘interview’ as a writer, so I hope my nerves haven’t let me down! I’m sure our paths will cross again, Helen. I hope so! 

To see more of Helen's blog, click on the titles above!

My Winning Article in the New Edition of Traveller Magazine

My article on Slovakia, which won the British Guild of Travel Writers New Travel Writer Award 2014, is in the latest edition of Traveller magazine.

BRITISH GUILD OF TRAVEL WRITERS 2014 NEW TRAVEL WRITER OF THE YEAR AWARD

WINNERS OF THE 2014 NEW TRAVEL WRITEROF THE YEAR COMPETITION ARE ANNOUNCED The British Guild of Travel Writers today announced that Mandy Huggins of Cleckheaton near Leeds and Helen Moat of Matlock, Derbyshire, are the winner and runner-up in its fifth annual New Travel Writer of the Year competition. The nation-wide competition is aimed at encouraging fledgling British travel writers who previously have not had paid-for travel features published. Contestants this year were asked to describe in no more than 850 words how a travel experience or destination was brought to life through a person or persons met along the way. Miss Huggins' winning feature, Pavel Rudavin, described her memorable encounter with a Russian bric-a-brac salesman at the Bratislava, Slovakia grave of one Pavel Rudavin, who, he claimed, was his grandfather. Beautifully written, it had an amusing, if somewhat cynical, twist at the end. The winning feature will be published in the April issue of the Guild'sGlobetrotter publication as well as in the spring/summer issue of Traveller magazine, published by Wexas, the Traveller's Club.  The competition was judged by a panel led by BGTW travel writers Nick Dalton and Deborah Stone, both frequent contributors to national newspapers. It also included Mike Unwin, the Guild's 2013 Travel Writer of the Year, the previously mentioned Jonathan Lorie and Amy Sohanpaul, editor of Traveller.

Wanderlust & Lipstick Travel Writing Competition 2014

MY SHORTLISTED PIECE IN THIS YEAR'S WANDERLUST & LIPSTICK TRAVEL WRITING COMPETITION

A City Through the Eyes of Love

Outside the Blue Mosque a sudden breeze picks up, and sparrows flutter across the grass like early autumn leaves. Opposite the bench where we have stopped, men sit under the shaded colonnade performing their ablutions before entering the mosque, and a carpet salesman from the nearby market tries to tempt us across to his shop.

“Not for buying of carpet,” he assures us. “Just for cup of tea. We are brothers, whether from East or West.”

Here in Istanbul, where the bridge between Asia and Europe is both symbolic and real, his words carry extra resonance. The frescoed arcades of the Grand Bazaar rub shoulders with towering skyscrapers and soaring minarets, glittering Ottoman palaces and the sparkle of Harvey Nichols.

When my partner’s grandma heard that we were coming here, she told us to visit Sirkeci Station, once the end of the line for the Orient Express. As a wide-eyed teenager in the 1930s, Anne had accompanied her Aunt Florence on the train across Europe as a lady’s maid. Now in her nineties, she can still clearly recall the sights and sounds of the city, and the cream cloche hat that her mother bought her for the journey. But a certain glint in Anne’s eye, and her obvious passion for Istanbul above any other city on their Grand Tour, made me think that she treasured something else here more important than architecture or culture.

Today the station platforms are deserted save for a scrawny cat and her ginger kitten, and the stained-glass windows scatter jewels of sunlight onto the marble floor. But it is still easy to imagine the panama hats, parasols and portmanteau, and Earl Grey served amidst potted palms in the restaurant. Dutifully, we take photographs of each other under the station clock to show grandma.

On the street, the traffic is chaotic and the air heavy with fumes and heat. We follow the road along the waterside to the Galata Bridge. At Eminonu port, tiny boats bob on the choppy waves alongside the tour boats and ferries, and seagulls swoop and dive, the underside of their wings caught in the sunlight. Amongst the noise and rush, fishermen line the bridge with their rods, men sip gritty Turkish coffee in the cafes underneath, and shoeshine boys ply their trade. Something tells me that this scene was much the same when Anne arrived in 1936, and for a moment I can picture her holding onto her cloche hat in the strong breeze at the water’s edge.

We head back up into town behind the Egyptian Bazaar. It is the eve of Eid, and shops are closing early in anticipation of the holiday. In the narrow streets, the sweet shops are busy with men buying be-ribboned boxes of Turkish delight and baklava.

Back in Sultanahmet, we stop at a tiny cafe near the Hagia Sophia for sweet apple tea served in tulip glasses. On the pavement outside, old chairs have been pushed together and covered in faded kelims to form couches, shaded by faded parasols and twisted vines.

As I sip my tea, I think of Anne. The rest of her story involved a corner cafe like this, in the same area of the city, It was there that she had her first brush with passion. Every afternoon when Aunt Florence and the other ladies took to their rooms in the heat, Anne was left to her own devices, and sneaked out of the hotel to explore the streets.

Mehmet was a medical student who started chatting to her one day outside a museum. “He asked me the time,’ she said, laughing. “It wasn’t much of a chat-up line!” But her eyes danced with delight when she described him to me, and her thin, cool fingers gripped mine.

“He had eyes full of life and mischief – and something forbidden! But it wasn’t like nowadays, you couldn’t just go out with a stranger, unchaperoned. I was taking a big chance on my reputation.”

Anne and Mehmet snatched an hour or two together every afternoon in a dimly lit cafe near the museum. They held hands under the table, and stole secret kisses behind the wooden partition. And they told each other that they were in love. But after six days, Mehmet had to leave the city to work in a hospital in a nearby town.

“He said he would write to me, but I never heard from him again,” she told me. But although she said this with sadness, her eyes still shone with remembered passion. Anne knew that it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

It is our last evening in Istanbul, and we eat dinner on the roof terrace of our hotel. In the street below, families queue outside kebab shops, waiting for them to open, the women in colorful headscarves, their daughters in twinkling headbands.

The city spreads out around us; a magic carpet woven from thousands of years of history. As darkness falls, the Bosphorus Bridge twinkles with blue and red lights as it links and separates East and West, and as the last call to prayer begins, it slowly takes over the night sky. High up on the roof we hear the chant of every muezzin across the city, entwining and colliding in an eerie fusion of harmony and discord.

The same calls to prayer will have filled the dusky streets as Anne said goodbye to Mehmet for the last time all those years ago. I can clearly see her pausing at the hotel door to watch him disappear down the street, before walking into the restaurant for dinner with Aunt Florence. I can picture her aunt chattering about things of no consequence whilst Anne’s heart ached for the man she would never forget.

She may have lived a full and exciting life since her trip to Istanbul, but she can still vividly recall the passion awoken by the young man in Sultanahmet. I feel as though I have seen the city differently through Anne’s eyes, and I reach for my camera to record the chants of the muezzin for her: the sound paints a picture far more evocative and timeless than a photo of the station clock.

*****

Photo credits:

Sunset over Istanbul: Joseph Kranak

Sirkeci Station: Karol K

Sultanahmet Square Fountain Lovers: one2c900d

Hotel Rooftop Terrace: EllenSeptember

Sultanahmet Street at Night: Ivan Mlinaric

- See more at: http://wanderlustandlipstick.com/wander-tales/middle-east/a-city-through-the-eyes-of-love/#sthash.Lzc1kkMY.dpuf

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