The Inland Magazine - September

Open publication - Free publishing - More september

My 'Walk in the Park' article is on Page 6 and my regular feature 'Life on the Coast' appears on Pages 34/35

Our over worked post lady

Our post lady is going to be rather overworked owing to my having won not one but two Book Army prizes. Naturally I would like to blog that these were awarded for my incredible literary output benefiting all of mankind. However that would be slight exaggeration, well OK rather a grand one.
So what did I do to merit my prizes? Well the first was for a rather punctual post regarding Victor Lodato's 'Mathilda Savitch' novel - "a poignant, furiously funny and tender page turner from an extraordinary debut novelist" says the review, so I am looking forward to reading it.
The second is rather more prestigious and personally satisfying in Book Army's words "All of your help and friendly behaviour this week" One begins to wonder if on all the other weeks my behaviour was unfriendly.
What is this prize? Well at this stage that is unclear so I can enjoy a few days of anticipation until the post lady arrives with her trolley loaded with my goodies.
Why not visit the Book Army site - but remember you must be on your best behaviour.

PS Her trolley will also be carrying additional burden as my friend and writer Simon Whaley is sending me a complimentary copy of his recently published 'Bluffers Guide to Hiking'

Why do people....

Send spam, stupid email scams or add totally irrelevant comments to blogs ? Because they have nothing better to do or lack the creative ability to contribute something more useful ? I don't know but now I have had to turn on the filters to stop this nuisance from detracting from this blog. Apologies to my 'commenters' for the inconvenience.

The weeks continue to fly by which means the September edition of The Inland Magazine will be out next week with another of my 'Life on the Coast' features and an article on the La Mata - Torrevieja Natural Park, entitled 'A Walk in the Park' highlighting the Association of Los Caminos y Las Rutas de las Sal.

Great to get Feedback

The latest version of the Writers Bureau students magazine - "Chapter and Verse" was recently published online and students have been posting messages on their forum: This from T.H. "Thank you Rob for putting together another inspirational Chapter and Verse" Also this from Catherine F "Thanks Rob, I have really enjoyed reading the published pieces" I am pleased that the students are enjoying the magazine and I expect that we will soon be receiving submissions for the next edition. (If you are a WB student reading this - the theme is open choice and deadline is October 15th - for more see the Students site)

Expat Blog

Living the Expat life involves a lot of learning new cultures and understanding local ways of doing things, every day things like renewing a driving licence or paying tax. Things we take for granted in our home country. But, when you live abroad, these mundane issues take on a new significance. Because when you understand them and achieve what you set out to do these simple tasks provide a sense of achievement. So it is only natural, especially for a writer, to want to share these new found sources of information and facts with other Expats. Apart from my regular slots in The Inland Magazine the Expat Blog is now online publishing my articles which I hope help to inform other Expats (and potential Expats) about life in Spain. Today my 5th article was published on line and I will be submitting more over the coming months. See here - a very informative site

Adventures, Success and Failure

Image by andyi via Flickr

Today a mixed bag of news from my writing world - my good friend, artist and now exotic explorer TJ Miles (eat your heart out Michael Palin) has returned from foreign parts having eaten foreign parts and explored the Beijing art district (more to follow) - check out his blog Another good friend of mine, Penny Legg, has today been offered her 4th book contract which is these financially troubled times really is an amazing achievement - well done Penny on your success! After an enforced two week absence I was delighted to catch up with my Torrevieja Writers Circle friends today - one of whom is about to submit his very funny novel to a publisher - I wish him every success. Another member is considering whether to embark on a Writers Bureau course - I thoroughly enjoyed mine and learnt a lot. I am still awaiting the solution to my technical problems (see previous blog) having failed to locate a fix, I think that I might be in for a long wait.

Computers are Wonderful things....

Image via Wikipedia

Until they don't work and you cannot understand why! Up until a week ago I was happily visiting www.bookarmy.com and www.issuu.com as regular blog readers will know. Then disaster - suddenly my PC decided to stop working with those sites. Ah I hear the computer technophobes saying, the sites are down - well no, they are up and working because I can access them from my backup 3G dial up device and so can my friends (try them - links above) Well it must be the firewall then - well no, because with firewall switched off there is still no access. Then it is a router problem, well maybe but tried every way to reset it - same result. So I have joined a site for real teckies and so far they are baffled as well!

Chapter and Verse

As well as working on deadlines for September's The Inland Magazine I have been editing the final version of the Writers Bureau students ezine - Chapter and Verse. The theme was - Reward or Rejection. I had an interesting collection of students submissions from all over the world taking their inspiration from a great variety of sources including the Jaipur monsoons. The ezine will be published on the WB Students Forum website very soon and I hope this encourages them to develop further their writing careers. I have certainly enjoyed editing their submissions, although having to reject some is the difficult bit.

Life on the Coast

...is the title of my new feature in The Inland Magazine - which appears on Pages 34 - 35 illustrated by some of my photos. Another topical article on Page 6 is my: Expats Guide to Spanish Football. You can view TIM here on ISSUU