40 episodes

A podcast about writers and writing

lindaph.substack.com

The Art of Being Linda Parkinson-Hardman

    • Arts
    • 5.0 • 1 Rating

A podcast about writers and writing

lindaph.substack.com

    In conversation with Chris Cottom

    In conversation with Chris Cottom

    This month my guest is Chris Cottom, winner of the Flash Fiction category of Hysteria 2023 and published in Hysteria 10. His winning entry is titled Hocus Pocus. Chris lives near Macclesfield, England, and once wrote insurance words. In 2023 his stories won the Allingham Flash Fiction Competition, National Flash Fiction Day New Zealand’s Micro Madness competition, the South Warwickshire Literary Festival Writing Competition, The Phare’s Flash Dash competition, and the Off the Rails 3 Minute Story competition (for stories to be read to passengers on the Esk Valley Railway between Middlesborough and Whitby).


    This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lindaph.substack.com/subscribe

    • 42 min
    Hysteria 10 Anthology Launch

    Hysteria 10 Anthology Launch

    The third launch event for Hysteria 10, published by Crystal Clear Books, was a great kickoff to the Christmas season occurring later than usual on the 18th of December. Despite a few hitches related to my sending out the wrong date and time to pretty much everyone lots of people joined us for an evening of readings and announcements. As usual, technical and human glitches kept us all on our toes for the first ten minutes, but once I’d logged out and back in again, things seemed to progress much more smoothly, at least at my end.
    You can pick up your copy of the anthology through the Hysteria Writing Competition website. The product page also lists alternative purchase options too
    Special guests from the reading team joined me to help read the entries and participate in a round table discussion on the finer points of finding the all-important shortlist of entries to the competition. Hopefully, you’ll find the advice shared useful when entering future writing competitions. It would be fair to say that without the reading team, this competition would not be possible and I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to them all.
    Of course, the main purpose of the launch is to announce all the overall category winners, as well as the winner of my annual Guess the Cover competition.
    You can listen to the entire event here and it’s also available through Spotify or Apple, as usual.
    Finally, congratulations go to:
    * Annette Iles, winner of the Poetry category for A Woman Who Does Not Believe In Spells.
    * Chris Cottom, winner of the Flash Fiction category for Hocus Pocus.
    * Denarii Peters, winner of the Short Story category for Soaking Wet.
    * Jacqueline Green, winner of the Guess the Cover competition was the first out of the hat guessing Hocus Pocus.
    Each of our winning entries will be added to the Hysteria Writing Competition website in the coming weeks, and I’m busy planning interviews with all the category winners so keep an eye out for them being added to the podcast here on Substack.


    This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lindaph.substack.com/subscribe

    • 51 min
    Meeting Alexandra Packer

    Meeting Alexandra Packer

    I’ve been interviewing writers just like you and me since 2012. I started with written interviews called the Thursday Throng, and maybe at some point I’ll bring that archive over into Substack. Since 2020, I changed it to a podcast. The important thing about these conversations is that these are people who have had the courage to put their words down on paper (metaphorical or otherwise). I find I learn something from all of the lovely writers and authors I speak to, I hope you do too.
    This month my guest is Alexandra Packer the winner of last year’s short story category for the Hysteria Writing Competition. Her story was titled Et in Arcadia Ego and you can can read and listen to it on the Hysteria website.
    In this month’s episode Alexandra and I talk about:
    * Et in Arcadia Ego translates to ‘I too am in Arcadia’ and inspired by the Nicholas Poussin painting.
    * How the competition readers make a decision about whether an entry meets the theme requirement.
    * How to avoid writing about a current war without writing about the Ukrainian conflict directly.
    * Writing fan fiction vs submitting original work.
    * How the story represents both the living and the dead, and how the hardest part may be waiting for the dead to return home.
    * How the events of our lives often influence our writing, as well as what may be called synchronicities and coincidences.
    * All writing has it’s basis in human understanding and experience of life.
    * The challenge of writing without having direct personal experience versus the assumptions we make about reinterpreting the totality of human experience.
    * How much time it takes to write original fiction amidst the business of life.
    * The ‘writing niggle’ to create something more and where inspiration comes from.
    * Alexandra’s love of baking and how it can weave it’s way into fiction.
    * The nature of culture and change and how it infiltrates and infuses our own ability to envision ourselves as well as the worlds we create in fiction.
    * What is, is!
    As mentioned in today’s episode
    * Bath Flash Fiction Award
    * National Flash Flood
    * Writer’s HQ
    * Sussex bake down - Facebook
    * Banana loaf a recipe for solace
    You can meet Alexandra on Twitter @alexandtheweb
    If you’d like to join me on The Art of Being, just leave a comment below.


    This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lindaph.substack.com/subscribe

    • 48 min
    How to win a writing competition

    How to win a writing competition

    Do you want to learn what it takes to win a writing competition?
    You’ve entered your short story, flash fiction or poetry into all sorts of writing competitions but the ultimate prize has always eluded you. You read the winning entries and wonder what they had that you didn’t, what made them stand out, whilst you faded into the background. Sometimes it’s obvious, even you would have picked them out for a top spot, but most of the time it’s hard to tell why they won and you didn’t.


    This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lindaph.substack.com/subscribe

    • 2 min
    Meeting Caroline Jenner

    Meeting Caroline Jenner

    This month my guest is Caroline Jenner, winner of the Flash Fiction category of Hysteria 2022 and published in Hysteria 9. Her winning entry is titled ‘At peace with myself in the midst of the chaos of half started projects’. I suspect this is a sentiment many writers would like to adopt, I know from my own experience that I would certainly love to be at peace whilst all around me are the things I believe I must do!
    Caroline is a retired English teacher and would be short story writer. She lives in South London and particularly enjoys the challenge of micro fiction and exploring the concise nature of a complete story in a few words. Her work has been published by Free Flash Fiction, Sweetycat Press and Pure Slush. She has been longlisted for the Retreat West Monthly Micro Fiction Competition, and shortlisted for Globe Soup, Cranked Anvil, Writers Magazine, Secret Attic and in 2021 came second in the Hastings Writing Room Two Halves Flash Fiction Competition.


    This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lindaph.substack.com/subscribe

    • 45 min
    In conversation with Kerri Aab

    In conversation with Kerri Aab

    I’ve been interviewing writers just like you and me since 2012. I started with written interviews called the Thursday Throng and maybe at some point, I’ll bring that archive over into Substack. Since 2020, I changed it to a podcast. The important thing about these conversations is that these are people who have had the courage to put their words down on paper (metaphorical or otherwise). I find I learn something from all of the lovely writers and authors I speak to, I hope you do too.
    I ‘met’ Kerri when I took part in Michael Neill’s Creating the Impossible challenge this year. Kerri is a master Reiki practitioner and teacher. Our conversation ranged across many different aspects of what it means to be human in today’s world. It offers an insight into how easy it is to live a guided life, rather than our usual way of operating, which is assuming that we know what the future is and can control it.
    * Reiki is a form of hands on energy healing that can be practised in many different ways.
    * Kerri has had four Reiki teachers and each has given her a different perspective of how self healing and hands on healing works.
    * Works on herself every day to connect with the deeper energy that we both believe we are all part of. This grounds, energises and supports herself.
    * She works with clients locally and at a distance.
    * Personally, my belief is that we are all connected to a field of all that is.
    * Originally, Kerri was taught that Reiki is it’s own energy, today she feels that it is a part of from all that generates an all encompassing sense of oneness.
    * We talked about the rising consciousness of humanity and an increasing openness to talk about being part of something more than our physical experience of life. We acknowledged that this could also be due to echo chambers and cognitive bias.
    * I have a project in mind related to how we write words that heal. The words we write have meaning for us, and they may have meaning for others too - but not necessarily in the way they were originally intended by the writer.
    * Kerri’s website, Soul Speak started in 2016 after she was diagnosed with complex PTSD. She had been studying Reiki and felt a calling to use Reiki for other people. She began writing down the words that were coming to her as she practised. In later years she has seen those words coming back to her from others who read her work.
    * Energy goes where it needs to flow. Like attracts like.
    * Kerri’s journey into Reiki began following the birth of her daughter and has taken her on a constant expression of expanding of self in a deeply spiritual life.
    * There is nothing to fix … No-one is broken at their core.
    * Kerri’s Creating the Impossible project was getting a Broadway contract within 90 days. She had no attachment to the outcome and doesn’t need to achieve it to feel complete and whole. She doesn’t need it to ‘fix’ her, rather could it just be fun to try?
    * The energy of gratitude is a more powerful prayer than a prayer asking for something to save us or change us.
    * Three Small Smiles began because Kerri wasn’t seeing much gratitude in her life. It’s put out as a counter to the overwhelming amount of negative news we are bombarded with on a daily basis. This has become a regular practice of gratitude.
    * Since CTI started TSS has become the place that Kerri documented her journey of seeing and doing 90 days to Broadway.
    * What we need to transform already exists inside us, but it’s easy to forget this and look to something external to ‘save’ us.
    * Life is an immersive, multi-faceted experience. There is only ever now and more now. We cannot go back to ‘fix’ the past and we cannot control the future.
    * Life is about bringing an essence of joy to our experience of being here on earth.
    As mentioned in today’s episode
    * Lynne McTaggart - The Field
    * PTSD
    * Creating the Impossible - Michael Neill
    You can meet Kerri on her website: www.kerriaab.com.
    If you’d like to join me

    • 1 hr 4 min

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