Hello Writers
First of all, Happy New Year. We hope you’re keeping safe and well, and looking forward to a busy 2021.
We’ve been quiet over the past month or so, what with Christmas, New Year, and a huge relocation to beautiful rural Northumberland. (The view from our office window now is loads of fields, a river, and a few cows – it’s great!)
But now, the office is refurnished and the internet is re-established, and we’re up and running again for 2021. So we wanted to share with you some of the plans we have for this year, and how you can get involved.
First of all, of course, our quarterly competitions continue to run. The next deadline is Jan 31st, for our 1500 word short story comp.
It’s worth noting that this quarter is the last chance writers will have to enter 4 stories for the price of 3.
And if you fancy a go at flash fiction too, our next 500 word comp deadlines on 28th Feb.
Speaking of flash fiction, our most recent winners were announced. You can find the shortlist and read the winning stories here. (‘Soup Kitchen’ by Rose Walker-Taylor is a particularly pleasing read today. Have a look – you’ll see what we mean!)
And now – on to some of our other plans for the coming year… (and how you can contribute)
Podcasts. As part of our writing competitions and independent publishing arm, we’re planning to produce and release a podcast of some of the best winning stories – as well as short- and long-listed ones – from all our competitions. Kind of like our very own audiobook library. Every eligible story that’s entered into any of our comps will also be considered for the podcast, which will be released on all the usual platforms (Apple, Spotify, etc.), and will, of course, be completely free to download.
Writing resources. We’re planning to produce and build a collection of resource articles for writers on our website. ‘How To’ articles, writing prompts, tips, inspirational quotes from other writers, etc etc… You know the kind of thing. We’re proud to be a small, independent publishing house, with our writers and contirbutors at the heart of it, and this resource will be part of our commitment to inspire and encourage writers of all stages and abilities. We expect to open up for submissions for these articles, so do keep an eye on our website and social media for more details.
Author profiles/interviews. As we say, our writers and contributors are at the heart of what we do – so it’s about time we found out more about them! We want to interview our writers and find out what makes them tick. How their writing day works; where do they get their inspiration; what do they love/hate about writing; what tips can they pass on to fellow short story writers; where can you read/buy more of their work; plus lots more.
To begin with, these interviews will be done by email and published on our website. We’re hoping to get in touch with writers very soon to invite them to take part – but please do let us know by reply if you’d be interested in getting involved in the future.
There’s quite a few other ideas that aren’t yet fully formed (including a magazine-style newsletter and a YouTube channel), which we’ll be letting you know about as they develop.
In the meantime, here’s wishing you a happy, healthy, and prolific 2021! Thanks for being involved with Cranked Anvil so far, and we look forward to reading more of your work and submissions in the future.
Matt Allen
