Patricia M Osborne

My guest today, Simon Elson, is my youngest author I have featured on Patricia’s Pen. At the age of twenty, Simon has recently had his debut dystopian novel, Hades Forest published. Here’s what he has to say.

Hades Forest

Simon Elson

The dystopian genre has always been my favourite type of fiction, yet I feel that some areas of the genre remain unexplored. Therefore, Hades Forest represents my attempt to bring the dystopian novel into the 21^st century. I have attempted to do that by exploring ideas around mental health, disabilities, and climate change. How do these very modern concepts exist within a dystopian society?

In addition, I took a great deal of satisfaction in creating a protagonist quite passive in his behaviour. Once more, I think this introduces a different dynamic to the events that take place. Perry, my protagonist, doesn’t choose rebellion; he stumbles into it by accident. 

Therefore, I really like that the hero of my story isn’t actually a hero at all – he’s not attractive, he’s not strong, he’s not particularly brave. But yet, I think he represents 99% of us, and I would certainly argue that the majority of us are inherently unpolitical, and only choose to be political when we absolutely need to be. That’s certainly the case with my protagonist.

My main inspiration for Hades Forest was George Orwell’s 1984. Although, my novel is slightly less bleak.

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To find out more about Hades Forest check out the blurb below.

In a dark vision of the near future, the Holy State of Borea is indoctrinating its citizens. No one is allowed to speak out against the government.

But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire for freedom – not for Perry Benson, at least. Whilst his wife falls more and more in love with the state’s regime, he searches for a way out.

His path forward becomes clear, and he escapes to a distant forest. The repressive state cannot find him here – yet he is not the only one living between the trees.

Perry must fight for his life, and unravel the government’s secrets… before he is killed by one of the five tribes of Hades Forest.

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Please Note:

Hades Forest contains explicit scenes and acts of graphic violence which some readers may find disturbing.

About Simon Elson

Simon Elson is a 20-year-old writer living in Chorleywood, a village near London in the UK. Despite achieving the best grades possible (A*) in his final school exams, Simon chose not to attend University at Oxford or Harvard, instead entering employment to give himself the time (and financial cushion) to pursue his dream of becoming a writer. He is now working on the sequel to Hades Forest.

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It is a pleasure to welcome back, a poet and friend, Brian McManus with his brand new poetry collection Solastalgia to be published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press. Brian has come along today to chat about his writing and in particular, his brand new collection. Without further ado, let’s go over to Brian.

Many thanks to Patricia for inviting me onto her site today as a guest blogger.

I’ve been writing poetry more seriously now for a number of years. Always an avid reader of poetry my interest in writing was triggered by my prolonged involvement in the aftermath of the Lockerbie bombing in 1988 with the death of 270 innocents, resulting in my book of poetry, prose and photographs recounting my experiences. Nowadays I have stepped away from the world of work and concentrate on my poetry and my research interests, and I’d like to talk about both of those today.

I come to you just as my new collection Solastalgia is being published to follow my pamphlet Liar Liar. The latter is a comprehensive commentary of the trauma of the Covid pandemic and the ineptitude of our government to manage it while Solastalgia further reflects on a time in our lives when we have all had to deal exponentially with the often complex and challenging vagaries of life, love, extreme loss and debilitating uncertainty in our once predictable and understandable world.

Reflecting, and remembering, is important. However, although we wouldn’t wish  to disassociate ourselves from our past, neither should we mourn it. There is a balance to be struck between paying homage, and around identifying the questions and the answers we need to work with as we move forward. The moment we are in is the only life we have.

So, in Solastalgia let us reflect then one last time on the aftermath of some of the soul-crushing events of our recent lifetimes, and pay our final respects to those innocent souls who were caught up in the tumult. Then, the old days are the old days, let’s move on.

I have a very special offer available on both of these books at the moment where you can buy both for the price of one (£5.99) postage free in the UK from my website – GO HERE TO PURCHASE THIS SPECIAL OFFER

What the future holds for my writing

My research interests now centre around the work and philosophy of the renowned Scottish poet and thinker Kenneth White. His philosophy of what he calls Geopoetics encapsulates a new way of living, a recasting of self and world outside the carnage of the present, which he offers as a freshly drawn cartography of existence, a reconnection to our Earth and the Cosmos.

I have started to introduce the Geopoetics philosophy into my work in progress and I have been honoured to contribute a little of it to compliment Patricia’s breath-taking nature poetry on a collaborative project we are working on together. We’d like to think we will have that published at some future point but safe to say there is a great deal more to uncover around Kenneth White’s philosophy and indeed his poetry and I look forward to discussing it with you again. In the meantime keep well, and stay safe.

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Thank you Brian. If you would like a reminder of Brian’s last visit on Patricia’s Pen where he discusses his writing methodology – go HERE

What a bargain – two books for the price of one. If you fancy taking up that offer then go HERE

About Brian

Brian McManus is happily married and lives north of Glasgow with his wonderful wife.

They have two grown up children of whom they are immensely proud and three lovely grandchildren.

Brian has stepped away from the world of work now but spent most of his days in public service and latterly in a senior leadership role with a major media company.

Most of his days are now spent reading and writing poetry, researching the subject matter to provide him with the material around which he writes.

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It was a pleasure to be invited over to fellow Swanwick Writer, Val Penny’s, blog today to discuss Why I Write Fiction.

Why not pop over HERE and read the article?

It gives me great pleasure today to welcome author, Dawne Archer, over to Patricia’s Pen to chat about her book, Trekker Girl Morocco Bound, and help raise awareness of thrombosis. Without further ado, it’s over to Dawne.

My Writing

Trekking the Sahara Desert

Dawne Archer

I wrote Trekker Girl Morocco Bound for a number of reasons, including commemorating the Sahara Trek which is something I will never forget. Despite the practical difficulties, it is an awe inspiring environment, starkly beautiful, exciting and dramatic.

I also wanted to raise awareness of thrombosis and as a kind of memorial to my Dad who died of a blood clot in his lung.

The trek was a big deal for me. I was in my early 50s and reasonably fit but it was a real challenge, taxing me emotionally and physically in ways I had never expected. I actually walked slowly and painfully, wearing a back brace and using two hiking poles to drag myself up the sand dunes, munching high doses of painkillers. You’ll have to read the book to find out why I was in such a state though, as that would be giving too much away!

In addition to this, I have inherited a clotting disorder which makes me prone to blood clots in certain situations. For instance, we are all at risk of a clot after an operation due to being immobile. I am 88 times more at risk so it is something I have learned to live with.

It was hard to relive my blood clot journey which was dramatic and emotional. Then I talk about losing my Dad and you can imagine how hard that was. Yet I felt it was essential to bring home to readers the reality of thrombosis and how it can affect anyone’s life, often without warning. Awareness is key to saving lives.

There is an underlying theme in my book which is that of an important friendship, renewed in later life and now deeply cherished. My friend Sarah and I jointly decided on this trek and the book tells you about meeting up again and our decision to do something important together. I can honestly say that it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Why do I support Thrombosis UK? This is what they have to say:

Our priority is for everyone to KNOW the Risks Signs & Symptoms of VTE and to support research to extend UNDERSTANDING into the PREVENTION and BEST MANAGEMENT of VTE. (VTE is Venous Thrombo Embolism, essentially blood clots in the veins such as DVT in the leg or a Pulmonary Embolism in the lung.)

Thrombosis UK is a registered charity in England (1090540) and I donate royalties to them.

Statistics on the subject are frightening. Did you know that 1 in 4 deaths worldwide are thrombosis related? Or that one person dies every 6 seconds from thrombosis around the world? I could go on but, as writers tend to be sedentary creatures, perhaps I should leave you with the thought that we lose 50% of the blood flow in our legs after sitting for only 90 minutes. I keep an alarm clock on my desk which rings every hour to remind me to get up and move around, grab a glass of water to keep well hydrated, anything to keep that lifeblood flowing.

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Thank you, Dawne, for such an informative blog. You are an inspiration and what a wonderful tribute to your dad.

About Dawne Archer

Dawne is lucky to be alive, having survived blood clots in her leg and lung aged 26. She vowed to live life to the full and has indulged her curious nature in travel as well as interviewing interesting people on the radio. Often roles are reversed and she becomes the interviewee in her quest to raise awareness of thrombosis.

Trekking the Sahara Desert may have been a step too far in her fundraising for Thrombosis UK but it was just the start.

Dawne tried her hand at writing and her first book Trekker Girl Morocco Bound is the result.

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I thought I would share a poem with you for this special day. Divine Marriage is published in Taxus Baccata published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press 2020.

When reading the poem I hope you can imagine the images and become part of it.

If you like what you read and fancy a signed copy or pdf version then visit my online shop.

Taxus Baccata is half price at the moment at £3.99 plus p&p or ONLY 0.99p for the pdf version.

Order safely via PayPal HERE.

It gives me great pleasure today to invite author, Valerie Poore, over to Patricia’s Pen to discuss her non fiction writing. Without further ado, it’s over to Valerie.

Writing Memoir

Valerie Poore

Anyone can write a memoir.

That’s a bold statement, isn’t it?

Even so, I think it’s true – although most people I speak to are convinced their life hasn’t been interesting enough to write about. I’d actually challenge that though. In my encounters with the great variety of individuals I meet in my job as a freelance teacher, I’ve learned that nearly everyone has some kind of interesting story to tell. And if that’s the case, then in theory everyone has the potential to write a memoir. I have to say I love reading them too, which in turn means that I also enjoy writing them.

But what was it that inspired me to write my own memoirs and why did I do it?

My first book, African Ways, was inspired by Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence. I read it in 2005 after I’d been living in the Netherlands for a few years and as I read, I was reminded of the wonderful rural people I’d known and loved while living in South Africa during the 1980s and 1990s.

It occurred to me that rural people are similar wherever you go, whether in France, England, Spain or Africa. I knew I’d had a special introduction to South Africa on a farm in what is now KwaZulu Natal. So, when I finished Peter Mayle’s book, I realised I wanted to write about the people I’d known there and what it was like to move from the mod-cons of 1980s UK to a somewhat primitive rural environment.

This idea was my prompt to start writing, and since African Ways, I’ve written two other memoirs about my life in South Africa and five about living and travelling on a barge in northern Europe. Each of these books covers a specific period but none of them is a complete autobiography so I’ve been able to focus on different aspects of where I’ve lived and what I do.

I can’t say I set out to lead the life I have as I’m something of an accidental traveller. I also didn’t actually intend to write so many memoirs.  But what I’ve noticed is that people are interested in other people’s experiences if they’re different from their own, so transferring from a remote African farm to Johannesburg, South Africa’s biggest, baddest city was another adventure to share. And then moving back across the world to land up (or water up) on an old barge in the Netherlands was added fuel for my writing hobby.

My destinations have at least been unusual and because I adored South Africa, I could write about it with immense affection. The same goes for my watery world. Restoring an old and decrepit Dutch barge and converting it to a home was a huge learning curve, but I loved and still love it. In fact, my latest boating travelogue about our pre-Covid travels to France is just about to be launched and I write about our boating life regularly on my blog.

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About Valerie Poore

Val Poore was born and raised in England but at the end of 1981, she moved to South Africa where she and her family lived for nearly twenty years. She adored South Africa, but had to return to Europe in 2001. Since then, she’s been working as a freelance ESL writing skills teacher in the Netherlands. Val shares her time between a 120-year-old barge in Rotterdam and a cottage in Zeeland, both of which seem to take an inordinate amount of time to maintain. As a distraction from teaching, she writes and has written a total of eleven books.

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To celebrate this great review from Ingénue Magazine I have reduced Taxus Baccata for a limited period. You can now purchase a signed copy half price @ £3:99 plus p&p or a pdf copy @ 0.99p

Go to SHOP to take advantage of this limited offer.

You can read Ingénue Magazine online here

It delights me to feature poet, Matt Duggan, today on Patricia’s Pen. Matt has come along to chat about his poetry so without further ado, it’s over to him.

Thank you for inviting me to talk with you today, I suppose I’ve been writing on and off for over twenty years now, and I like to class myself as a working-class imagist poet who writes about themes that matter in the world, about social issues like politics, climate change, history, identity, but also, I like to write on the emotive side of human nature and a world to travel, my work can be surreal, political, personal, and imagist, yet I’d like to say relatable and I’m very pleased with what I’ve produced over the last ten years or so, with two full length collections and four pamphlets under my belt, with another collection and pamphlet nearly ready to submit.   

I started submitting poems back when I was eighteen with very little success at all, with several rejections from journals but continued to write and improve on my writing by reading more and more poetry, and involving myself in writing groups and night classes until I believed that I had found my voice, and the way I like to approach my writing. It was after watching ’V’ film poem by Tony Harrison that turned me on to writing political poetry I then started to get poems accepted and thought I would try and enter a couple of competitions and ended up winning the erbacce prize for poetry in 2015 from over 5,000 entries with my first collection Dystopia 38.10, and also winning the Into the Void Poetry Prize in 2017. I always believed that as a writer we must keep changing, shedding skins and faces with each book, improving our poems as we need to keep reinventing and playing with form, I strongly believe that as a writer we need to live a life before we can write about our experiences. I also work for erbacce press where I read entries for their annual competition, and I also interview poets for their journal, which has introduced me to many new up and coming poets. My influences over the years have changed as has my taste for poetry, favourite poets range from Weldon Kee’s, Tony Harrison, Charles Bukowski, Kent Johnson, Jeremy Reed, Brendan Kennelly, Frank O’Hara, and Penny Rimbaud.    

My work has been accepted in various journals such as Ambit, The Poetry Salzburg Review, Osiris, The Potomac Review, The Lit Quarterly, Here Comes Everybody, The Journal, Into the Void, Ink, Sweat, and Tears, and The High Window, and I’m currently working on two new poetry projects my third collection ‘Everyone is Waiting for Tomorrow’ (with a possible 2021 release) and a new pamphlet titled ‘Kindness in an Age of Pestilence.  

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I’m sure you’ll all agree that Matt has a very impressive portfolio. Below you can find out more about Matt and how to purchase a copy of one of his books.

About Matt Duggan

Matt was born in Bristol U.K. 1971 and now lives in Newport, Wales with his partner Kelly and their cat ‘Pablo’. Matt regards himself as a working-class poet and activist with left leaning political views, he is the editor of The Angry Manifesto zine, his poems have appeared in many journals including Ambit, Into the Void, The Poetry Salzburg Review, The Chiron Review, The Potomac Review, Dreich, 14 Magazine, Here Comes Everyone, Oxford Magazine, The Seventh Quarry, Osiris Poetry Journal, The Poetry Village, The Journal, The High Window, The Ghost City Review, L’Ephemere Review, Marble and Polarity. In 2015 Matt won the Erbacce Prize for Poetry with his first full length collection of poems Dystopia 38.10 (erbacce-press) and won the Into the Void Poetry Prize in 2017 with his poem ‘Elegy for Magdalene’, and was highly commended in the ‘Road to Clevedon Pier Competition’ with his poem ‘Walking with Coleridge’, he has previously published four chapbooks: One Million Tiny Cuts (Clare Song Birds Publishing House) A Season in Another World (Thirty West Publishing House) The Kingdom (Maytree Press) and Ten Truths from Wonderland ( Hedgehog Poetry Press) a bilingual collaboration with Spanish Poet Maria Castro Dominguez. His second full length collection Woodworm (Hedgehog Poetry Press) was published in July 2019. He has read his work across the U.K. including Greece, the U.S.A and has appeared at various festivals such as Poetry on the Lake Festival in Orta, Italy, A Casa Dos Poetas in Portugal and also the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. Everyone is Waiting for Tomorrow is Matt’s third full length collection of poems.

One Million Tiny Cuts (Clare Song Birds Publishing House) (SOLD OUT)

A Season in Another World (Thirty West Publishing House) (SOLD OUT)

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The Granville Legacy : A Family Saga, has been picked to be one of the contenders in the All Author Cover of the Month contest – April 2021.

If you like the cover, please consider popping over to All Author and voting HERE

My guest today is, Lynne Shelby, author of women’s fiction and contemporary romance novels. Lynne has come along to ‘Patricia’s Pen’ to chat about her writing. Without further ado, let’s go over to Lynne.

My Writing

Lynne Shelby

The question I get asked more than any other as an author is: where do I get my ideas? There are all sorts of ways a writer can generate story ideas, such as rolling a dice to determine what their characters do next or looking at paintings or photos and asking a series of questions – who are the people in this picture, and what are they doing? – to kickstart their plot. I’ve also heard of writers who base their novels on news items – with the characters heavily disguised, of course. But for me, ideas are often sparked by something I see or hear quite by chance.

Some years ago, me and my family were travelling back from Paris on the Eurostar. There was a young Frenchman sitting across the aisle who spent the whole journey telephoning his English friends, telling them he, François, was coming to England, and suggesting they meet up, but unfortunately none of his friends wanted to meet him. By the time we got to St Pancras, I felt very sorry for poor François, but I had the idea for a story about a Frenchman who comes to London where he is very much welcomed by an English girl. This became my debut novel, French Kissing. Conversations overheard on trains, on buses or in restaurants are a great source of inspiration – I always carry a notebook to jot down any gems.

The plot of the first novel in my Theatreland series, came to me out of the blue when I was in a shop in London’s Piccadilly Circus and spotted a famous Hollywood actor travelling down an escalator – he was appearing in a West End show at the time – his progress marked by excited members of the public taking his photo on their phones. He appeared unperturbed – presumably he was used to fans and paparazzi recording his shopping expeditions for posterity – but it seemed to me that it must be very strange to be the focus of such unrelenting attention. From this incident came the plot of The One That I Want, about a girl who is suddenly thrust into the public eye when she dates an A-List film star.

I had the idea for my latest novel, The Summer of Taking Chances, while I was watching an amateur drama society perform in a small local theatre. The actors were very talented, and it occurred to me to wonder why they hadn’t chosen to pursue a professional acting career. What if one of them had wanted to go to drama school but something had prevented her…? By the time the curtain came down, I had the outline of a plot. A visit to a seaside village where I used to spend summer holidays as a child gave me the book’s location, and the characters that form the close-knit community that lives there.

I find that stories can be inspired by absolutely anything and at any time – usually when I least expect it.

Blurb for The Summer of Taking Chances

When Jake left the seaside village where they both grew up, he took Emma’s dreams with him. Now, ten years later, he’s back for the summer…

Does first love deserve a second chance?

About Lynne Shelby

Lynne Shelby writes contemporary women’s fiction/romance. She has done a variety of jobs from stable girl to child actor’s chaperone to legal administrator, but now writes full time. When not writing or reading, Lynne can usually be found at the theatre or exploring a foreign city – Paris, New York, Rome, Copenhagen, Seattle, Reykjavik – writer’s notebook, camera and sketchbook in hand. She lives in London with her husband and has three adult children who live nearby.

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