Despite the Siberian weather conditions, seven hardy souls gathered for the first of the year’s manuscript evenings. The group decided that Mike Walsh’s reading of his winning Catherine Cookson Cup short story should be put back until there was a larger audience to hear it. Two of the planned manuscript readers were marooned by snow and ice, so Eileen Masters and Jill Fricker brought extracts from current writing instead.
First to read was Ezzie Gleeson-Ward, from the last chapter of her novel, ‘Cormorante’, a Sci-fi fantasy. In the excerpt, the heroine faces up to an evil being who embodies a whole race of ‘fire elementals’. Some great descriptive writing took us into this strange and enchanted world that Ezzie has created.
Eileen has started to write a fascinating memoir of her eventful time as an aid worker in Afghanistan. Any thoughts of moaning about a little discomfort from the weather in wintry Hastings were blown clean away after we heard about Eileen’s first-hand encounters with the Taliban, as she unwittingly travelled into Kabul during one of the worst periods of civil war and bombardment in 1992. We were gripped!
Jill finished the evening with an excerpt from a short story, ‘Blue Genes Day’, which has been through a few revisions since she entered it in the Catherine Cookson competition last year. Set in parts of Hackney and Islington, the story deals with the longing of a young man to discover who his father was – in the extract, an overheard conversation sends him jumping to the wrong conclusion…
Possibly no happy endings in sight, but a very useful and enjoyable evening, which gave opportunities for in-depth feedback and reflection on the work presented.
For more information about our group please visit www.hastingswriters.co.uk or email Amanda Giles, our Membership Secretary, at membership.hwg@gmail.com
Just a minor detail for the sake of perfection. The Taliban weren't active until 1993/4. My story involved a pre-Taliban sect. Thanks. Eileen.
ReplyDelete