Chicken Soup for the Soul submissions required

Chicken Soup for the Soul. Ongoing requirement for true, inspirational stories on various themes. $200 paid for those accepted. Current topics being sought include: Raising Kids on the Autism / Asperger's Spectrum, Making Lemonade from Lemons, Devotional Stories for Wives, Holiday Stories.

maryhealybooks: Interview with Celine Mescall

maryhealybooks: Interview with Celine Mescall:               Celine Mescall Graces and Blessings From Ireland. My guest is Celine Mescall who has recently launched her book Graces an...

Interview with Celine Mescall

              Celine Mescall Graces and Blessings From Ireland.

My guest is Celine Mescall who has recently launched her book Graces and Blessings from Ireland.

Thank you Celine for sharing your writing journey.

Celine blogs at 

                   gracesandblessings.wordpress.com

and her book is available in shops and online at

                    gracesandblessings@tictail.com

Questions

Your book Graces and Blessing from Ireland has been evolving for quite some time-can you remember when you had the idea originally and what prompted it?

The graces have been in my head and on pieces of paper for close to thirty years. The first one I consciously wrote (in my head) was the blessing for breastfeeding when my I was feeding my infant daughter but the notion of publishing my collection of Graces and Blessings is relatively recent and the final year of my creative writing course gave me the push I needed to do it.

Would you describe your book as spiritual?

I suppose graces and blessings come from that part of me which is quiet and reflective and appreciative of life. Maybe that makes it spiritual.

You have lived and worked abroad for a number of years –does this experience influence and appear in your work?

Absolutely Mary. My time in Brazil though it was many years ago had a huge impact on the person I am today. I had lived a fairly sheltered life at home and in the UK but Brazil  was a different story. With no electricity, no water and no roads everything was a challenge and trying to be effective as a voluntary worker took its toll physically. But far more importantly my time there opened my eyes to injustice and inequality and the daily struggle of the poor and disenfranchised for a decent life.

How do you structure your writing time-daily, weekly, so many words per day/week?

Structure, I’m afraid is not a word that pops up too often in my writing life. I often write on a whim or when a thought occurs to me. During the Maynooth course I had structures and deadlines which I managed to make for the most part but my writing these days could be four lines of a poem one day and a grace or blessing the next.

What are you most grateful for in your life?

I do believe that I am blessed with my children, my family and friends and my surroundings. I am grateful that my mother is well and still reciting monologues at eighty-nine and a half and that my children sleep safely at night.

I live on the banks of the Kings River in Kilkenny surrounded by hills, trees and birds. I am thankful for the heron I sometimes see, the ripples made by leaping fish which I usually miss, the colourful finches at the feeder, the tinkle of dry falling leaves and the smell of new-cut grass. I am grateful when I dig up beetroot or pick apples or bite into juicy corn which I've just cooked and slathered with butter.

I thank God for all of those thing and much more..

Are difficult life /childhood experiences good for a writer?

That’s a question which makes me stop and think. So many of the “How to” books will advise you to write about what you know and so I suppose if you’ve had difficult or traumatic experiences in life you may want to write about them. On the other hand you may never want to write of your experiences but having had them you may be better able to understand the characters you are creating in your writing and give more depth to them.

I wrote a short story about an  experience in Brazil which was published in the “Moths Against Glass” anthology and in the RTA quarterly magazine. Since then friends have suggested that I write some more about Brazil and certainly I would love to write about some of the wonderful people I met there and the effect their life stories had on my life.

What’s the best thing about seeing your published /finished work on sale?

How can I explain the feeling. When I held my little book for the first time and rubbed my hand over the pages and smelled that new book smell it was like holding a baby for the first time and smelling that new-born smell and counting fingers and toes….magical!

Now when I see it in book shops I am mightily pleased.

What made you a writer? Family/ childhood/ background /life experiences?

When we were little my mother knitted all our jumpers and socks, made our dresses and petticoats on the sewing machine while my father mended our shoes, fixed our bikes and designed all sorts of wonderful contraptions on paper, so I grew up in a house that was creative by necessity. All eleven of us have followed their example to some extent or other from creating wonderful gardens to making quilts, painting pictures, designing interiors, baking cakes or building motorbikes. We have songwriting too and monologue reciting and poetry writing so I guess it's in the blood.

What was the most difficult part of getting your book to the publishing stage?

Because I published Graces and Blessings myself I was able to manage the process and any difficulties were ironed out in-house. Helena Duggan who illustrated the book, designed it and did the lay-out  had most of the headaches but we worked as a team and were both present when the first pages came off the press. We didn’t pop champagne then but went for a good cup of coffee.

What surprised you most about the process?

I hadn’t realised the amount of work that is involved in the design and lay-out but the big surprise was the editing and word checking and spelling. We read and checked and read and checked and yet ended up with a mistake in the text. I try to ignore it!

Who/what has helped you most along your writing journey?

What has helped me most along my writing journey is the great writings I have read, not necessarily the classics but books that excited me and books that saddened me and books that made me stay up all night. We got a school library when I was in sixth class and could borrow books on Fridays, I hardly ever slept a Friday night after that because of Anne of Green Gables and Little Women and all the other books which opened doors to different worlds.

Of course the people who tutored me and nurtured me and encouraged me also played a big part both in my writing and in my life back as far as my schoolteachers. I’m thinking now of Gerry Moran and Suzanne Power and John McKenna who were my most recent teachers but before that there was David Rice and Kathleen Thorne in Killaloe and many, many others. I also think of my writing group and how we depend on each other's good will and the confidence we have in knowing that we want only the best for each other. My writing group gently tended my seedling graces, watered and fertilized them and rejoiced with me when Graces and Blessings was harvested.

Do you need to write?

A big yes to that. I’ve always written, whether letters or diaries or musings on life or angry outbursts to politicians or trying to clear my head. I've avoided some tricky situations which I might have regretted by writing it all down and then throwing it in the fire.

Putting it on paper is my way.

Advice for anyone writing?    You will do it when the time is right.

Does writing make you happy?

Absolutely, particularly poetry, be it two lines or twenty. I love to read poetry. I’ve written in the middle of the night because some words woke me and when my anthology poem “A Thinking Walk in the Woods” wrote itself in my head, I couldn’t wait to get home to put it on paper. That was an extremely happy moment.

Are you a thinker or dreamer or do’er?

 I love projects and am constantly looking around to see what I will do next. It might be knocking down a wall or putting up a polytunnel or making a batch of tomato sauce but all the while I am creating scenarios in my head or reliving scenes from the past. Doing and thinking go hand in hand but not so much dreaming, unless I include those "what if" moments.

What do you like to do to relax?

I love the garden especially growing anything we can eat and am relaxed and happy out there, much more relaxed than doing housework.

I read most days, however since doing the Maynooth course I am a bit more circumspect about my reading material and find myself being critical of things like sentence length or poor editing or over-use of exclamation marks!! (I blame Suzanne for that)

I love music and though I'm not musical myself there is music in my family and my own two are very musical. When Michael, my son, is home he will sometimes sit at the piano and play all my favourites while I'm preparing dinner or at night Kate will pick up her guitar and sing away quite contentedly for an hour or more. What more could a body ask for?

The book has been very well received and needless to say I am delighted. There was that awful moment of doubt before publication when I asked myself what I was at and was it foolish to think anyone might read my little book but thankfully I have been proved wrong. Wallowing in that good feeling is enough for the moment.

Blog at gracesandblessings.wordpress.com

Available in shops and online at gracesandblessings@tictail.com

Celine Mescall Graces and Blessings From Ireland

Poetry Competitions November 2013

WOW! Award

Deadline: 31st Oct 13

National Poetry Competition 2013

Deadline: 31st Oct 13

Pighog Poetry Film Competition

Deadline: 31st Oct 13

Desmond O Grady Poetry Competition 2013

Deadline: 31st Oct 13

Donegal Creameries North West Words Poetry Prize 2013

Deadline: 15th Nov 13

15th Francis Ledwidge International Poetry Award

Deadline: 5th Nov 13

Rubies in the Darkness Annual Poetry Competition 2013

Deadline: 1st Nov 13

Childrens Story Competition Specsavers, Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards 2013,

Our 2013 Children’s Story Competition

16-10-2013

Print this page

‘I told you not to pedal so fast!’

Do you love writing stories?
Specsavers, together with the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards 2013, invites you to write a short story inspired by our 'Lost pedalo' picture.
Enter the Specsavers Children’s Story Competition 2013 and you could win all the shortlisted books entered in the Specsavers Irish Children’s Book of the Year Award 2013.
All you have to do is write a short story based on our cartoon (pictured) and see where your imagination takes you!
How to enter

• Choose your age category: junior (under 12 on 29/11/13) or senior (12 – 16 years old on 29/11/13)
• Make sure your story is no longer than 500 words; or 250 words if  you are under 12 years old.
• Give your story a title
• Write your story (preferably type it) on a sheet of A4 paper
• Add your Name, Age, Telephone number, Address and your Parent or guardian’s phone number to the entry. If we don't have your contact details, we won't know where to send your prize.
• Groups of entries from schools are also very welcome
• The closing date for the competition is Friday 29 November 2013.

Send your entry to:
Specsavers Short Story Competition
c/o WHPR
6 Ely Place
Dublin 2
Prizes
The two winning entrants will receive all of the books shortlisted for the Specsavers Irish Children’s Book of the Year Award 2013 and their school libraries will receive a donation of some of the best Irish books from the last year.
Competition Rules
The competition is open to entrants up to the age of 16, who are resident in Ireland.
Please obtain your parent’s/guardian’s or teacher’s permission to enter.
Specsavers does not accept any responsibility for late or lost entries. Proof of posting is not proof of receipt. Only one entry per person. Winners will be contacted personally. No purchase required. Winners’ names can be obtained upon request in writing from WHPR, 6 Ely Place, Dublin 2.
Entrants must be willing to take part in all competition publicity and agree to have their story published. Entries will not be returned. Winners will be elected by a panel of judges whose decisions will be final and no correspondence will be entered into. Winners of junior (under 12) and senior (12 – 16 years old) categories will each receive all books shortlisted for Specsavers Irish Children’s Book of the Year Award 2013. Their school libraries will each receive a donation of selected Irish books from 2013. Prizes are non-transferable, cannot be exchanged and no cash alternative will be offered. Entrants will be deemed to have accepted these rules and agree to abide by them when entering this competition. This competition is promoted by Specsavers Optical Group Limited, La Villiaze, St Andrew’s, Guernsey, Channel Islands GY6 8YP Data Protection Act 1988. The information you provide will only be used in connection with your entry in this competition. The information is held by Unique Media, either manually or electronically and may be processed by them. The information will be restricted to authorised users only and is treated in the strictest confidence. The winners’ details will be passed to Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards for the allocation of their prize.
Good luck!

Eleanor Catton Man Booker Winner 2013

And the winner is...

So, Eleanor Catton with The Luminaries it is. The youngest Man Booker winner in the prize's history (she is 28 but completed The Luminaries aged 27) has triumphed with the longest ever Man Booker winning novel (832 pages). Catton is just the second New Zealander to win the prize. Earlier in the year an extraordinary 151 novelists submitted for the prize and from this rich field hers is the one head that remains standing. Life for Eleanor Catton will never be the same again. 

The Luminaries, set in 1866 during the New Zealand gold rush, contains a group of 12 men gathered for a meeting in a hotel and a traveller who stumbles into their midst. The multiple voices take turns to tell their own stories and gradually what happened in the small town of Hokitika on New Zealand's South Island is revealed. 

The chair of judges Robert Macfarlane described the book as a “dazzling work, luminous, vast”. It is, he said, “a book you sometimes feel lost in, fearing it to be 'a big baggy monster', but it turns out to be as tightly structured as an orrery”. Each of its 12 chapters halves in length which gives the narrative a sense of acceleration. It is not, however, an extended exercise in literary form. Macfarlane and his fellow judges were impressed by Catton's technique but it was her “extraordinarily gripping” narrative that enthralled them. “We read it three times and each time we dug into it the yields were extraordinary, its dividends astronomical.” The Luminaries is, said Macfarlane, a novel with heart. “The characters are in New Zealand to make and to gain – the one thing that disrupts them is love.”

Will readers be put off by the book's bulk? “No”, was Macfarlane's emphatic response. “Length never poses a problem if it's a great novel. The Luminaries is a novel you pan, as if for gold, and the returns are huge. 

What impressed the judges almost as much as the book itself was that it could have been the work of someone so young. Catton was just 25 when she started work on it yet, said Macfarlane, “Maturity is evident in every sentence, in the rhythms and balances. It is a novel of astonishing control.” It will be fascinating to see what she writes next but whatever it is may have to be put on hold: Catton is now sitting at world literature's top table and everyone will want a piece of her. 

In the end Macfarlane neatly summed up the book and Catton's achievement: “awesome”, he said, “or should that be oresome?”