Inspiring Week

Gold Hill, Shaftesbury

Weather permitting, we walk to work which means walking up and down Shaftesbury's Gold Hill! Over the years I have ridden Reina up here a number of times, and walked Bracken and JD too. I have yet to train the dogs to pull me up. It takes about forty-five minutes to walk through the lanes and tracks up to Shaftesbury High Street, and gives me plenty of thinking time and means I arrive at our antiques shop ready to write. In between serving customers, obviously, although many of them also provide inspiration for future characters and story lines as I am sure you can imagine.

This week is proving to be a busy writing week, with the second draft of book two in the Yvonne Parker series 'Death on the Village Green', away with The Editor, book six in the Woodford Mystery series 'Influence of an Icon', underway, and the second short story for Alfred Radio 'Farm Shop Trauma', nearly ready to record. I am also going to be popping over to the Sturminster Newton Literary Festival to listen to a couple of local authors chatting about their writing and books.

Once a month a small number of local writers gather for a couple of hours of writing-time, away from home and work distractions. I recently joined the group, after ten years of writing on my own, and find it an inspiring and motivating experience. This week's writing focus was on the short story 'Farm Shop Trauma'. A few years ago I wrote the short story 'Snowflake, the Cat Who Was Afraid of Heights' inspired by my cat Snowflake and his habit of climbing trees and getting stuck for days, which was intended as a children's book but has proved more popular with adults than I expected. As a result I began to write other stories in a similar vein, involving friends' animals and adventures, but got a bit lost with all the advice I was being given about how to write them. Recently I joined a workshop about creating short stories, was given the opportunity to read one on the radio, and now feel a little more confident in writing.

If you would like to hear the first story, 'Plan C' featuring my dogs Spider and Bramble and a special guest Benjy, you can listen here at roughly 45 minutes in: https://thisisalfred.com/podcast/the-alfred-daily-25th-may-2025/

I'll keep you updated in the following weeks about my progress!