For Writers

BEST PAGE FORWARD

I seldom recommend specific services to authors but Bryan Cohen has to be an exception. When we had major Amazon KDP problems it was he who helped sort it with Amazon. Anyway his Best Page Forward teaches ads, writes blurbs, and does a whole lot more that’s completely invaluable. Find out how they can help you using this Facebook link:
https://www.facebook.com/bestpageforward

WEST YORKSHIRE AUTHORS

Meeting venue now The New Inn, Barwick-In-Elmet – The Arabian Horse has closed – hopefully temporarily

The 16th April  2021 New Street Authors meeting for which Andrew Sparke forgot to prepare a suitably wild story about how he lost his front tooth.

AUTHOR CITY 2023 (BIRMINGHAM)
A subset of New Street Authors known as Author City has been established to create major events for authors and readers to come together. We are hosting Birmingham’s biggest and best author signing event ever. The date is Saturday 15th July 2023 from 9am to 5pm in the amazing Banqueting Suite at Birmingham Council House (in Victoria Square behind the Floozie In The Jacuzzi) followed by an evening’s fun and games for attending authors including Authors Afloat, an alcohol-fuelled narrowboat tour of a city with ‘More canals than Venice’. Details available from andrewsparkeauthor@gmail.com

BULWER-LYTTON.COM
Bulwer Lytton annually challenges writers to compose the opening sentence of the worst novel never written. Personal favourite: ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times – though any decent statistician might net those two factors together and conclude that things were fairly average all round.’ (David Meech)
And the 2019 overall winner: ‘Space Fleet Commander Brad Brad sat in silence, surrounded by a slowly dissipating cloud of smoke, maintaining the same forlorn frown that had been fixed upon his face since he’d accidentally destroyed the phenomenon known as time, thirteen inches ago.’ (Maxwell Archer)

WEST MIDLANDS BASED WRITING GROUPS
Since being a writer can be fairly anti-social and there can be significant benefit in sharing thoughts and problems with like-minded souls, we engage with the following writing groups:

THE OLDSWINFORD WRITING GROUP
For the Stourbridge area, the group meets Wednesdays 12-2pm at The Crabmill, 199 Hagley Road, Stourbridge, DY8 2JP (except in December when Xmas lunches render the venue madly busy). The group’s purpose is to encourage every member to write and hopefully progress to the point where they have something finished worth publishing. Members include a retired journalist who’s returning to a long abandoned Scots memoir, a young trainee nurse writing a vampire series, a thriller writer, and an over 80 year old working on his short stories and novellas. Its already published authors include Lee Benson, Robert S.Field, Michel Henri, H.R. Beasley, Michael Harvey, Catherine Cowell, Helen Pitt, Paul C. Walsh, Pete Merrill, Andrew Sparke, Jaki Thompson and AJ Woolfenden.

NEW STREET AUTHORS
New Street Authors is an author collective and support network for indie publishing and marketing our work. Currently published members include David Wake, Andy Conway, DJ Torrens, AA Abbott, Lee Benson, Jaye Tomas, Tony Cooper, Martin Tracey, David Muir, Jaki Thompson, Wanda Pierpoint and Andrew Sparke and focuses on publishing and marketing issues. The group are hoping to revert in 2023 to meeting every third Thursday in the month around Table number 5 at The Brass House, Broad Street, Birmingham, B1 2HP but during COVID lockdown established 7-9pm weekly Zoom meetings instead.
See http://www.newstreetauthors.com

ARTS LAB
The poet PHIL THOMPSON hosts a monthly event in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter which is multi-media involving music, film and readings. Details from The 1000 Trades pub.