Check out my feature in the April 2018 issue of Coast magazine, packed full of ideas of what to do with A Weekend in Plymouth.
Freezin’ February
Well, the Beast from the East is approaching, apparently, but that’s nothing that unusual for us here in the Welsh Borders. We get snow quite frequently here – Church Stretton isn’t nicknamed Little Switzerland for nothing, you know!
Still, I missed Shefali’s use of my photo on last night’s late evening broadcast, but thanks to the BBC iPlayer I managed to catch up on the broadcast. It seems Shefali began her broadcast with my image … peeking through her opaque introductory slide …
Understanding Your ALCS Statement
I love this time of year. March is when we get our free money from the ALCS. Free money? Oh, yes! However, from the many comments I’ve seen on social media, not everyone understands their ALCS statement. Many simply look at how much they’re getting and then file it ready for their tax return. But having a clearer understanding of what you’re receiving the money for may help ensure you claim everything to which you’re entitled.
What is ALCS?
The Authors Licensing and Collecting Society collects money generated by secondary rights from various sources and then distributes it to writers. When you sell an article or a short story to a magazine, you sell a primary right – a right to publish your work, for which you should be paid. But once a piece of your writing has been published, there are legitimate ways in which it can be scanned or photocopied. Organisations and business pay for this legitimate right to copy your work.
Outdoor Aberdyfi
Check out the March 2018 issue of Outdoor Photography magazine and inside you’ll find my photo of Aberdyfi in the Viewpoint section.
Lunchtime Snapper
Having met up with friends in Much Wenlock this morning, I decided that on my way home I would stop off somewhere along Wenlock Edge to do my daily walk.
What Wenlock Edge does well is tantalising views. New trees, mainly ash and some silver birch, are thriving, and the good paths along the edge weave their way between them, which means that the vista across west Shropshire is good, but it doesn’t quite work as a photograph (your photo looks more like a view with a barcode in front of it!)
Blackcurrant Jelly
Donald drummed his fingers against the steering wheel of his Ford Focus, his eyes fixed on the school entrance.
Any minute now, those doors would fly open and hundreds of happy kids would stream out, overjoyed at their freedom. Then he would see his Suzie emerge, alone and despondent from the challenges she’d had to cope with today.
His stomach cramped as if someone had pushed their hand inside him, wrapped their fingers around his intestines and then squeezed.
Fingers. Everything was about fingers. Ever since that day three months ago.
PLR – People Love Reading
Once a year, authors receive their PLR statements. For those of you who don’t know, PLR stands for Public Lending Right and is a payment to authors in recompense for the loss of sales due to people borrowing their books from a library.
While we receive a royalty for each copy of our book bought by the library service (as we would from any other book buyer), PLR recognises the fact that that single copy is then borrowed many times over.
Hoar Frost Snapper
Found a hoar frost on the summit of Ragleth Hill this morning. Snapped a photo too, which Louise Lear used on the national forecast on BBC1 this lunchtime.
Taxing Transformations
Remember the plans for quarterly tax returns? Simon Whaley finds out what writers need to do now, in preparation.
If there’s one piece of writing most of us detest it’s completing our tax return. So when George Osborne announced in November 2015 the Making Tax Digital scheme, whereby self-employed people, such as writers, may need to complete quarterly tax returns, many feared the worst. How much of our future writing time would be gobbled up by the need to be creative with numbers?
However, plans for this were dropped from the Finance Bill that went through parliament just prior to last year’s general election. But this tax story hasn’t been buried like a murder writer’s latest victim. It’s simply sleeping, ready to reawaken in the near future. As writers, we need to start taking steps now.
Little Switzerland
Here in the Welsh Borders, we’ve had a lot of weather, recently. Well, I say a lot of weather, but, of course, what I really mean is a change in the weather.
Just before I moved to Shropshire from the London suburbs, my urban neighbours would say, “Shropshire? Ooh, you’ll get a lot of weather up there!” And they were right, sort of. We do get a lot of weather up here. But we get just as much as anyone else. It’s merely that ours tends to be a little more varied.