Wonderful Wonderwaan

Wonderwaan is an imprint of a Netherlands Science Fiction and Fantasy magazine see their website. They have accepted an odd little story of mine called The Witch’s Alien, and are translating it into Dutch. As far as I know this is the first of my stories to be translated into another language. Many thanks to Gareth D. Jones, who suggested submitting to foreign markets, as he has done with great success.

The idea for Witch’s Alien came from a computerized random title generator. There are many on the web and as a break from writing my novels, I wanted to write a horror short story. Random title generators are great for ideas even if I have to discard hundreds before one strikes me as intriguing.

The first draft was read out loud to the Chester Writers’ group. An elderly lady spoke to me afterwards to complain that it was too horrific to be read to the group. It made her feel ill. That told me the horror element was working well!

Publishing history of The Witch’s Alien: Via the UK Authors online writing group, the story was critiqued and revised during the 2008 UKAway stay in Bellapais, Northern Cyprus in 2008, and published in their chapbook. Later, Witch’s Alien, was awarded third place in the winter competition at The Grail, a forum for literary writers.

Ironic that my relationship with one Dutch publisher, Wuacademia, has just ended, as this one with Wonderwaan is starting!

The Grail

View to the Cheshire hills from my bike near Penyffordd

My fault for not checking but a nice surprise to find my short horror story, Witch’s Alien, was awarded third place in the winter competition at The Grail. This is a forum for mainly literary writers, many of whom I know from other forums such as Cafe Doom and Bibliophilia.  So what did I do with my prize money? Paid for my 2009 subscription! Congratulations to Patsy and Rachel for coming first and second in the Grail competition.

For the first Sunday for four weeks I was able to do a 30 miles cycle ride to Pontybodkin and back to Chester without rain, without slipsliding on ice and no fog! See the photo I took enroute. So I was able to rotate my legs and think of subplotting in my Xaghra’s Revenge novel in progress. Nearly finished, only a month or two to go.