Author | Writer | Photographer ~ Writing from the Welsh Borders
So, you’ve decided to enter a writing competition and discovered I’m judging. Well, congratulations! You’ve certainly come to the right place. (And, actually, even if I’m not judging the competition …
The May 2021 issue of Country Walking magazine has my six-and-a-bit stroll around Ludlow and Bromfield. Ironically, here we are just coming out of Lockdown 3, and I tackled this …
Nobody likes being rejected. Especially when you’ve spent hours, weeks, months (or even years, if it’s a novel) writing something. To many writers, particularly novices, rejection is not good. And if …
“Shropshire? Oooh, You’ll get a lot of weather up there!” That’s what most people in London said when they heard I was moving to Shropshire in 1997. (The next question …
My Clun Valley feature is the front cover feature of the latest issue of The People’s Friend. Although a quiet corner of Shropshire, there’s a lot going on there, and it’s easy to spend a whole week exploring the delights the valley has to offer.
AE Housman’s poem, A Shropshire Lad, epitomises the Clun Valley in the lines:
Clunton and Clunbury,
Clungunford and Clun
Are the quietest places
Under the Sun
A Shropshire Lad by AE Housman
If you see a bloke standing on a hill somewhere in the Welsh Borders, scribbling away in a notebook, then it’s probably me! (Do say hello!)
A couple of days ago, I was out wandering the hills doing a route for Country Walking magazine. (It’s okay, as far as Lockdown regulations were concerned, not only was I working, but I was staying local too, for the route was one I could begin from my front door.)
Well, I was surprised this morning to find an email in my inbox from the BBC WeatherWatcher team, advising me that my Brocken Spectre photo taken a few weeks ago …
I don’t know if I still like you. You’re familiar, yet different. You’re still the same shape. You’ve reatined your claim to fame: the world’s first. But … But. Your …
Last Friday, as part of the Church Stretton Arts Festival, I went to a talk by Phil Rickman, author of the Merrily Watkins series of novels.
As writers we’re frequently told to write for a specific genre, such as crime, romance, horror, thriller, mystery, fantasy, sci fi etc.
But Phil’s Merrily Watkins novels don’t quite fit into one genre. Although Merrily is the Diocesan Exorcist for the Diocese of Hereford, and the books clearly draw on the Church of England for their setting, conflicts and its many characters, they’re not religious books.
Check out the March 2018 issue of Outdoor Photography magazine and inside you’ll find my photo of Aberdyfi in the Viewpoint section.
