#1 - WEP GET TOGETHER, FEBRUARY 1, 2024

 

Hello fellow WEPpers and friends!

Welcome to 2024 and the inaugural WEP Get Together!

WEP has closed down, some say temporarily, but the team decided to keep in touch with each other and any of you who wish to meet each month and chat about your lives, or ask for help in publishing or anything, really. We learn from each other.

This is our inaugural meet and greet post and it may be a little shambolic until we fine tune. But we have to start somewhere.

The options for participation are - 

- create a blog post and send us the link in comments.

- put the link in our C-Box,

- write us a story in comments.

- any other suggestions??

We don't want our first of the month post to be rigid. No specific topics. The topic is up to each of us. Share what's burning in your heart at the moment. It may not be writing related at all! That's totally fine. There's no word limit, but let's try to keep it down.

The writing world changes constantly and is not without its challenges. 

For example, 

- have you discovered something about your writing/publishing journey that you'd like to share? Please tell us! 

- have you found a way around a problem that others may be facing?

- have you found a fabulous editor who gets you?

- or share an interesting factoid - have you been nominated for the Nobel Peace prize??? 

Don't forget to access the 'How-to' posts which will remain in the sidebar. I'm looking at Jemi's post on publishing wide, which is going to be a challenge for me.

THE ANTHOLOGY UPDATE:

Nila here, hi! First off a big fat thank you to everyone who submitted, we truly appreciate your creativity and your making the time to write for us. Thank you Jamie, Cara, Rebecca, Bernadette, Shilpa, Deniz, Pat, J Lenni, and Donna. 

However, not all winners/members were able to submit, due to a host of personal and family reasons. There are not enough submissions as of now,  much short of the 20 targetted. I'm truly sorry to have to tell you that the anthology is not happening at this moment in time. To those of you who submitted, please feel free to submit your flash elsewhere. We wish you all the very best with publication.

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Nila’s roundup of events:

The Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas had put up the 'JFK was here'
banners for the 60th anniversary of the assassination.  

Rather a lot has transpired for me personally since I last wrote for WEP.  I travelled to the USA, spent an extremely pleasant month catching up with family members and childhood friends, some of whom I'd last met 40+ years ago. Visited museums and national parks and river trails to my heart's content. Learnt a whole heap of things about American history, geography, culture and values...And I got to see their cities at their sparkling best for the festive season. That was the great part. 

Poster from the women's suffragette movement 
1915-1920. The NC History Museum, Raleigh.

However, 2024 so far has been the same old same old mixed bag - I lost an elder relative and then my routine visit to the eye doctor has wham!   fetched up the need for urgent corrective surgery - the first is scheduled for this Saturday. As you can imagine, not much writing is happening. 

Could have been a lot worse though...so...grateful for mercies big and small. Hoping to be back here with supersharp, corrected vision and some more life lessons in patience learnt, in March! Till then, keep safe, fit and happy. And keep writing! 

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Hi all! Denise here. My past month can only be described as:

Challenging. 

Australia, especially where I live in sub-tropical Queensland, has been in the grip of a heatwave since before Christmas while Northern Queensland has experienced cyclones, one I got caught up in as I was traveling at the time.

To writing.

"I'll think about it tomorrow!"

I had such high hopes for January but, whatever, all good things come to those who wait, eh? 

I have two novels pretty much ready to go - one completely finished romance novel, Fijian Princess. It's been professionally edited, but I've found ways to make the Prologue more interesting. Just can't decide what to do with it. Think I may try traditional publishing?? Not sure. I never submit to publishing houses, but I did bite the bullet and submit to Storm Publishing. To encourage anyone who has ever felt the sting of rejection, take encouragement from me. I've decided to go ahead and work the traditional publishing trail for just this one novel.

I have my favorite novel up til now, Angelique's Paris Cookery School, which is still on the back burner, LOL. It proved popular when I offered the first six chapters on Book Funnel. I tweak it at times, but I'm just waiting for summer to be over. Extreme heat is not conducive to writing, even when locked in an air-conditioned office. It does something to your headspace.

So whenever I want to escape, I reach for my latest thriller, or stream an episode of The Bridge, a great scandi noir crime thriller. Hopefully watching/reading scandi noir will help me finish the last half of my very first thriller. 

Highly recommended if you need help plotting. The plots/twists are superb.

I take my hat off to those of you who have powered on and published books. Go Jemi! Anyone else?

Maybe by March 1, I'll have some great news!!!!

I've been reading posts from the team as they come in. It's great to hear everyone's news and have links to follow! Thanks all! 

I have blogged my post HERE...live Thursday 1st...and it doubles as my IWSG post for next week...

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Hi everyone! Jemi here😊

We're having a very strange winter here in Northern Ontario (Canada). We've had very little snow. My front snow bank is generally over 6 feet/2 metres tall at this point. Currently, it's about 1 foot/30cm. Climate change is real and scary!!

In writing news, the last book in my Small Town Heroes series came out a few weeks ago and I'm having so much fun writing a new small-town romance series called No Fail Heroes. The first book will be out in April. I'm having a blast digging into the edits based on notes from a FABULOUS editor (our very own Yolanda Renée). She really gets the story and the characters. I still have a big mess (of my own making) to fix up, but the story is going to shine so much brighter when I'm done!

Hope everyone is doing well and can't wait to read your updates!

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Hey everyone! Renee here 👋

I received great news today: my story, Conundrum, has placed in the top ten with WOW-Women On Writing. I don't know my actual placement, but I'm still celebrating.

Conundrum is a flash that I re-wrote from a story called Be Careful What You Wish For, which was originally published with the Romantic Friday Writers Challenge in 2015. Thanks to Denise and Donna, it was a time when I learned with every submission.

So, every now and then, I pull out a story and re-work it for submission elsewhere; this time, it paid off. Other than that bit of excitement, I'm working on a new noir called Pink City, and I'm still working on finishing the edits for the 7^th book in my Alaskan series, Murder on Mount Fairweather.

Tax preparation and editing are quite different, but still loads of fun. So I'm keeping crazily busy.

Thanks, Jemi, for letting me be part of your team. You know how much I love your books! Anyone interested in a Developmental Edit just follow the link!

Sending hugs and positive vibes to our writing community. Please let us know how you're all doing!

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Hello everyone! Sonia here.

It is wonderful to share updates on this inaugural WEP Get Together. January was a very cold month for Delhi and the winter blues aren't over yet. I haven't had a very good start to the year on a personal front, but I am grateful for the kindness of those around me, and also for the online community here.

In writing news, I don't have much to show, except two blog posts. I'll Do Me is my first attempt at reading a poem, something that I wish to explore this year. I'd love for you to listen to it and leave your valuable feedback.

Understanding Life Through a Keloid Scar  is an introspection on loss and life. 

There are two things I am looking forward to in the first half of the year, even though I'm struggling to do some real writing - curating all the stories I've written for the WEP for a Kindle Version, and writing a short story for the Rama Mehta Grant, which is a scholarship and writing programme. I hope that I will have some solid updates on these when we meet next.

I am grateful to the WEP members for the community support. I wish you all a good writing year and look forward to the writing news at your end. 

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Hello everyone! It's Laura here.

I know it's been a long time since anyone has heard from me. Between demanding hours at work and raising four children, it's a wonder I ever find time for anything. That also means that writing has unfortunately fallen by the wayside over the past year. Some of that is due to a lack of time, and some is due to lack of inspiration.  However, I want to change that.

Part of that involves me coming here and saying hi to all of you and promising that I will return to blogging. My posts won't be frequent, but doing this will hopefully help motivate me. I will also try writing some short stories over the next few months.  I even had a bit of inspiration the other day, so that seems like a great place to start.

I'd like to thank the wonderful WEP team and all of you who've participated over the years. This truly is a wonderful community.

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Hi everyone! Olga here

I haven’t done anything interesting writing-wise in the past couple months, but I did play with imagery, to no one’s surprise. I was re-reading Michelle Diener’s sci-fi novels belonging to her Verdant String series. I enjoy Diener’s writing, but I don’t like her covers. So I decided I would make my own covers (strictly unofficially, for my own amusement) for the books I’ve finished this time around. There are 2 so far: Breakaway and Breakeven. Here are the existing covers, published by the author.

Here are the images I have created. I don’t want anyone to accuse me of anything, so I didn’t put the writer’s name on the covers, but I like my covers better all the same. :))

All original images come from Pixabay.com. The artists I used for my composite covers are:

• ParallelVision
• AlanFrijns
• Jcoope12
• Diversicat
• MythicSon
• BrinMacen
• Majabel

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