Vanessa Wester is bilingual in English and Spanish, since
she was born and raised in Gibraltar. With a degree in Accounting and Law, she initially
embarked on a career in Chartered Accountancy, but after a couple of years it
became obvious she was not cut out to work in an office. A change in vocation
led her to become a Secondary School Mathematics Teacher, which she loved.
For many years, she has been a stay at home mum and gives up
a lot of her time towards voluntary organisations. She still teaches maths as a
private tutor and has many hobbies which include swimming, walking and reading.
She is also a qualified A.S.A. Swimming Teacher and volunteers on weekends at
her local swimming club.
Writing is her passion. The day she decided to start writing
was the day she found an outlet for her imagination. It is the best way she can
think of to express herself and escape from everyday life.
Her
debut novel, HYBRID (The Evolution Trilogy) was
released in March 2012 via Smashwords and May 2012 on Amazon. Since then she
has published COMPLICATIONS,
and has just released the finale to the Trilogy, RETURN.
She has also published a short story called FIRST
DATE, based on her true story.
In addition, she publishes adult and children’s anthologies
to raise funds for a range of charities via SHORT STORIES GROUP and KIDS4BOOKS.
She now lives on the Isle of Wight, UK.
The Evolution Trilogy: www.theevolutiontrilogy.blogspot.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/vanessa_wester
About Jules Anne Ironside
Jules Anne Ironside started writing as a child, though she is only counting from when her spelling improved enough to be recognizable as English. She grew up in Dorset in a house full of books, fed on a diet of myths, legends and spooky tales,
Jules is a keen martial artist having studied more than a dozen martial arts. Her great love however, is Okinawan Goju Ryu karate which she has now been teaching for fifteen years together with traditional weaponry. In her free time she likes to read, go for long runs and add to her collection of dead or little use languages.
Jules is a keen martial artist having studied more than a dozen martial arts. Her great love however, is Okinawan Goju Ryu karate which she has now been teaching for fifteen years together with traditional weaponry. In her free time she likes to read, go for long runs and add to her collection of dead or little use languages.
Writing is her true passion.
She also has stories published in the anthologies; ‘Reading is Magic’ and ‘Stories for Homes’ as well as a recent piece that was released as a podcast on episode 99 of Cast of Wonders; little wonders III.
Twitter: www.twitter.com/J_AnneIronside
About Katherine Hetzel
Katherine Hetzel is
an aspiring children’s author.
Trained as a pharmaceutical
microbiologist, she turned her hand to writing silly stories and even dafter poems
as soon as her children were old enough to enjoy them.
After working with reluctant
readers at the children’s primary school, Katherine became determined to write stories
which would enthuse and entertain children, creating in them the same love of books
she’d always had.
Katherine is currently
working on several novels, and continues to pen shorter pieces for her own enjoyment
and development as a writer.
She is an active member
of The Word Cloud, operating under the name ‘Squidge’.
About Malcolm Beanland
After a career spanning over 40 years in the
telecommunications industry and retiring as board secretary of Gibtelecom
Malcolm wrote, in 2001, a history of telephone Services on the Rock called “Gibraltar Calling”, which coincided with
the 125th anniversary of the invention of the telephone.
Happily married to Marie-Carmen for over 43 years, they have
three wonderful daughters, Catherine, Allison and Vanessa, and five
grandchildren.
Among his interests are reading and music. He is also avid
Manchester United supporter.
He is currently the President of the South District Senior
Citizens Club of Gibraltar, which provides social activities for its members.
The history and culture of Gibraltar has always fascinated
him. He is a member of the Gibraltar Heritage Trust, where he has written
articles for its “Journal” relating
to the Beanland family in Gibraltar.
About Matthew Willis
Matthew Willis is a writer of fiction and non-fiction with a
fascination for history.
His first novel Daedalus and the Deep, telling the
possible story of a real historical sea-serpent encounter in the 19th century,
was published in 2013 by Fireship Press. Two of his short stories have also
been shortlisted in competitions this year.
He studied English literature at
the University of Kent and wrote his MA thesis on the influence of science on
late 19th and early 20th century novelists.
He currently lives in Southampton.
About Britta Jensen
Britta’s writing credits include poetry in The Foreign Object (Vol.1-2), and the
production of her plays: In the Heights,
Through the Pipes, Beloved Country, Gossip, and Lost in the Haze
in New York City, Korea and Japan.
She is currently editing her first YA
fantasy novel, The Curse of Beal Atha
and working on a second novel, Searching
for My Dragon Slayer.
Britta resides in Amberg, Germany, where she teaches
Creative Writing and English Literature to ages 12-15 on an American army base.
This is her ninth year of teaching. She hails from Yokosuka, Japan.
Word Cloud:
Britta_Murasaki
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Britta_Murasaki
Facebook: Britta
Jensen
About Madeline Dyer
Madeline Dyer lives on a farm in Devon, England, and has a strong
love for mythology and folklore; this in particular has inspired her to write fantasy.
She is currently working on her fourth young adult fantasy novel,
and has had fourteen short stories accepted for publication by Linguistic Erosion,
Yesteryear Fiction, Mad Swirl, Mirror Dance Fantasy, Iron Bound and others.
Website: http://madelinedyer.co.uk/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MadelineDyerUK
About Sara Price
Sara Price lives in Waterlooville, Hampshire with her
husband and four very noisy children.
She started her career in the hairdressing industry and ran
a successful freelance business for many years before taking a break to have
her children.
Sara has
always loved to read books in many genres and attempted to write a novel in her
early twenties, but it is only recently, with her children now at school, that
she has returned to writing.
She writes
mainly in the fantasy/science fiction genres, and to date has written several
short stories and the first book in a fantasy romance trilogy.
Currently she
is working on a series of chapter books for young children.
Stephen Mark was born in Bristol some years ago. He has pursued
the path of a swashbuckler from an early age but fate has invariably intervened
to deny him the greatness he so richly deserves. Forays into the worlds of music
and acting have met with a marked lack of success but that is another story. Being
a determined sort, Stephen has not allowed himself to become disheartened; instead
he has blundered on through thin and thick, leaving a trail of unsatisfactory endings
in his wake.
The long and winding street of disappointment has seen him chasing
the next ‘big idea’ across various European countries: he is presently holed-up
in France with his long-suffering wife, Cat and their bilingual son. Ineptitude
and declining interest has yielded little besides a growing expertise in blind cheese-tasting
and twelve-hour lunch breaks.
Passionate about music, Stephen plays numerous musical instruments
but in true ‘Jack of all Trades’ fashion has mastered none of them.
Writing then, is a last-ditch effort to bring to fruition the
dream of retiring to a place unaffected by Global Raining – somewhere where inspiration
can be found under a sun that shines in defiance of a deeply confused jet stream.
If this venture fails, it will be someone else’s fault.
About Karen
Ginnane
Karen Ginnane is a long
time scribbler who has always written for fun and therapy, but is now getting serious
about the craft.
An Aussie, who was a long time Londoner, she now lives in Melbourne
with her half-English, half-Australian family and a growing assortment of other
living things. She works on the family tour operator business when not writing and
has just finished her first novel. This is her first published story.
Twitter: www.twitter.com/kjginnane
About Baz Baron
Baz Baron is a Yorkshire man who lives close to the east coast
and writes children’s stories. Several years after starting his working life as
a Master Baker and acquiring his own baker’s shop - adventure and the great outdoors
beckoned.
He then spent the next twelve years in the Royal Engineers rising
to the rank of Staff Sergeant. Travelling throughout Western Europe with the army;
keeping the peace during the latter part of the ‘Cold War.’
During the late seventies he spent two years as the lead singer
with a local sixties revival club band, taking lots of bookings in the then, miners
and working men’s clubs of West Yorkshire which he thoroughly enjoyed. Due to marriage
and helping to raise four wonderful children he needed to settle for a life of domesticity.
Always a people person, in his spare time he engaged on a Social
and Behavioural Studies degree course at the University of Hull. He believes that
it was whilst researching and writing assignments for the degree, a spark ignited
the fire for writing.
After early retirement he took on the part-time post of care-taker
at a local primary school where he feels like the surrogate grandfather to three
hundred children. He enjoys walking and camping in the wild and beautiful landscape
of the Scottish Highlands.
He is a member of the online Writers Community Workshop where
he enters short story competitions and is working on his first children’s novel,
‘The Dragon and Turkana Boy.’
About Sylvia Petter
Sylvia Petter is an Australian writer based in Vienna, Austria.
Her stories appear in the charity anthologies 100 Stories for Haiti, 50
Stories for Pakistan, A Pint and a Haircut, 100 Stories for Queensland
and New Sun Rising: Stories for Japan, as well as in her collections,
The Past Present (2001), Back Burning (2007) and Mercury Blobs (2013).
Website: www.sylviapetter.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/SylviaAPetter
Twitter: www.twitter.com/blobs
About Kathleen Watkins (1908-2002) By Michael Middleton
Kathleen Watkins told stories and dispensed them with the
same charm that she dispensed tea and biscuits in her home in suburban Kent.
She is sorely missed.
I recall Aunt Kathleen from my childhood. She and her
husband lived in a flat above us in a large Victorian house in South London. I
was a tiny tot then. One day my brother and I were being cared for by my aunt,
when the fire in the grate flared dangerously. The fire brigade was called and
firemen stampeded up three flights of stairs with their foaming hoses. My
mother had been furious. “Oh, what fun,’’ Kathleen had apparently said, after
the firemen departed.
I did not know that Kathleen led a secret life. At that
time, she attended a writing class at the ‘City Lit’ in London run by Naomi
Lewis. Kathleen always recalled her classes with great affection and the
feeling must have been mutual for Kathleen was a very entertaining story
teller. What fun they must have been.
All the stories she told were collected into a volume titled
‘Speak of the Spring.’ They recall
her childhood in the suburbs of Manchester and it was these stories that we
later heard, along with the tea and biscuits.
‘Cherries’ is the
first of these stories. It is an escapade from her youth and one that “I have
never, even yet, quite forgiven myself.” She also wrote poetry for very young
children.
Kathleen Watkins was born 11
February 1908 at Stockport, England. She passed away on March 2002 at Petts
Wood, Kent.
About S.P. Moss
Flying and travel are in Susan Moss’s blood – she visited four
of the world’s continents before starting school. She read avidly and wrote
determinedly in between plotting to become a spy and building brother-proof
camps.
She studied Psychology at Trinity College, Cambridge, taking
part in some interesting experiments in parapsychology as well as playing
trumpet in a Big Band.
A chance meeting in an Austrian ski hut resulted in more travel
– this time to Germany, where she now lives in a small town outside Frankfurt
with her husband and son.
She still makes use of her trumpet-playing, spying and
camp-building skills in her busy life as an author, mother and freelance
marketing consultant.
The Bother in Burmeon
was her debut novel. This original
adventure story, which manages to be enchanting and exciting at the same time,
was the winner of the Earlyworks Press Novels for Children or Teens Competition.
Now, as any writer knows, whether you’re writing a book or
making a film, there are always scenes that don’t make it into the final cut.
Sometimes they just make the story too long. Or maybe they get in the way of
the exciting action that’s going on. Susan is honest and admits she hates cutting these bits out of her
stories. Unlike a film, you normally
don’t get a chance to see these in the “extras” part.
So for GURNARD'S BOOK OF DELIGHTS, we are lucky enough to get an exclusive
– two scenes from The Bother in Burmeon
that ended up on the cutting room floor.
If you’ve read the story, you’ll know it’s about a boy who
goes back half a century in time to have an adventure with his Grandpop, a
young RAF pilot. These two scenes are about the chaos that ensues when
Grandpop lands in the present day – and finds that things are rather different
to 1962!
About Gary Alan Henson
Gary Henson was born in Levelland, Texas, among the dust storms, tumbleweeds, swamp coolers, cattle ranches and oil fields. His family moved to Boulder, Colorado in the mid 60’s and yes, he does remember it. He joined the US Nuclear Navy at 17, married his lovely, childhood sweetheart, Debbie, and then ‘saw the world’ for 9 years. It was a somewhat oddly shaped world; seen through the periscope lens of a submarine. He was also a software developer for over thirty years.
Storytelling is an everyday part of his life. He has a tiny, but insistent, muse sitting on his shoulder always feeding him new and sometimes ‘challenging’ ideas. The good ones he tries to put to paper, the rest he tries to bury very, very deeply.
Gary enjoys reading and spoiling his granddaughters.
About Chris Lakin
Chris Lakin was born on the banks of the frozen river Trent
in 1962 or close to.
From school, he joined the army and after a brief time came
out to marry his first wife. Since then,
he has been married three times.
Tragically, his son from his first marriage was killed in a road
accident in 2001. He has three children
from his second marriage who have all grown up and moved on with their lives,
to his deepest regret.
Chris has driven HGV’s for twenty-seven years. He started and ran a successful HGV and
forklift driver training company for eighteen years, which he unfortunately
lost after being in a lorry fire in 1994.
He met Tina, third Mrs Lakin, in 2004 and discovered a love
of boats, so bought a narrow boat, renamed her ‘Christina’ and lived aboard
until 2011 when disability became too much to safely handle the locks.
Chris started writing in 2009, when his grandchildren (by
marriage) bought him a teddy bear in a coast guard’s uniform. He came up with the idea of Captain Griswold with his crew and friends
on a night drive down the M5 – these stories are yet to be published.
About Gail Jack
Gail Jack
wanted to be an astronaut or at the very least, a spy, but since she didn’t
have the qualifications for either job she took a job offshore instead.
She is a
cat person (not a dog person) and very partial to fig rolls and chocolate ice
cream. The Importance of Birdsong is her
first published story.
About Jody Klaire
Jody has worn many hats, from police officer to recording artist. As the latter she has released two albums, is played on BBC radio and has performed in many festivals including: Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Brecon Jazz festival, the Hay-on-Wye festival.
It was in the Hay-on-Wye festival her mother suggested that she ‘have a go at writing.’ And, because you should always listen to your mother... she did! Soon the competition was long forgotten and Jody was bitten by the writing bug.
That was in 2011, and now, two years later, she has written over 10 novels, mainly thrillers, and numerous short-stories. Upon The Crest of A Moon is her first foray into writing for children and is dedicated to her nephews and niece.
Jody has many furry friends: her Golden Retriever Ollie, a host of gerbils, a hamster, two cheeky voles, a resident squirrel and the neighbour's cat. She loves all things creative, laughter, sport, her family, chocolate and making people smile.
You can find her music on iTunes and all major download sites as Kara Tobin. www.myspace.com/theofficialkara
About Stewart MacCalum
Stewart MacCalum
has had two short stories published to date, both are included in The Empty Guitar Case and other short
stories. His first novel, THE STRATHBUNGO CELLIST, is available on Amazon in Kindle &
Paperback.
He is married with
three children and four motorbikes, and lives in Glasgow.
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