A Beginning, amazon, book, books, catching up, communication, competitions, confidence, eBooks, editing, Fantasy, ideas, My Work, NaNoWriMo, new book, Poetry, Quargard, reading, rewriting, self publishing, Short Story Collection, The Land Far Away, The Tower and The Eye, writing

September Summary: Publishing, Prose and Poetry

This was the month that The Tower and The Eye: A Beginning finally made it back onto the market!
It took me quite a while to get the story to how I wanted it and it wouldn’t have made it had it not been for the wonderful people in my Beta Reading Group, my two patrons and an Editor friend…
I’ve made a start on the re-write of Book Two – A Party at Castle Grof – and have also written a short story that will be put into the Quargard Chronicles. I’m in the middle of a second story for QC as well. Hopefully that one will be finished by the end of the week…

But because I love all my fans, I’m going to post the first short story in my Fan Group on Facebook for you to read! If you’re a Patron then you already have access to the new story on my patreon page and in the group. If you haven’t joined the Fan Group already, then just request an invite.

* * *

I’ve also been working on a couple of Land Far Away projects, one for the Sketchbook Project and one of my WIP’s, currently titled “Fingle and Springle” (That’ll change when I get to the other end of it!) so I’ve been working on my poetry writing… it was this that inspired me to take part in a Poetry competition.

I wasn’t expecting to win anything – Poetry isn’t really my thing. I tend to stick to rhyming couplets and I don’t pay much attention to the meter or any of the technical aspects that true Poets agonise over.
The challenge was this:

This week you are asked to produce a Cinquain.

The cinquain, also known as a quintain or quintet, is a poem or stanza composed of five lines. 
Examples of cinquains can be found in many European languages, and the origin of the form dates back to medieval French poetry. The most common cinquains in English follow a rhyme scheme of ababb, abaab or abccb.

See link here: www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/cinquain-poetic-form

and the Subject was Regret… so I had a go.  This was the result.

Summer

As Summer comes to a graceful end,
Children prepare for the return to school,
Parents breathe out relief as they send;
Their offspring back to education’s rule,
Hoping that they don’t look the fool.

Teachers sigh for the freedom of Summer,
With no alarm clock ringing out the hour,
Laden down with lesson planned mummer,
Hoping that their students haven’t got dumber,
And that their efforts will show fruit and flower.

I don’t think I did to badly on the form, but I didn’t get the feel of Regret I was looking for! As I predicted I didn’t get even a single vote, but that doesn’t matter much to me. It was the challenge to my writing abilities that I did it for and it was definitely a challenge!

Next Month is the run up to NaNoWriMo. I’m still not certain exactly what I’ll be working on for it, so watch this space!