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Garrie Fletcher

~ writing and all that

Garrie Fletcher

Category Archives: News

It’s Out! Songs For The Elephant Man in shops now.

09 Monday Sep 2019

Posted by fletcherski in books, News, Publication, Short Stories, Short Story, writing

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Anthology, books, fiction, Mantle Lane Press, short stories, uk

I received my copy of Songs For The Elephant Man the other day and its a beauty. This great collection of short stories is yours for mere pounds – £8.99 for eighteen stories!

You can order this from any good bookshop or buy it direct from the publisher’s website by clicking here.

As always, let me know what you think.

Submerged in the West Midlands

07 Tuesday May 2019

Posted by fletcherski in Birmingham, Birmingham Writers, books, Event, Mantle Lane Press, News, Short Stories, Short Story, writing

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Alan Beard, Birmingham, books, fiction, Garrie Fletcher, Lisa Blower, Peter Haynes, readings, short stories, Submerged, West Midlands, Wolverhampton, writing

You have two chances to hear me read from my latest book, Submerged, next week.

First up is City Voices in Wolverhampton. It all starts at 7:30 at The Lighthouse a few minutes walk from the train and bus stations. City Voices is one of the Midlands’ finest spoken word evenings and never fails to delight with its range and quality of work on offer. I will be selling books.

Secondly, will be the official Birmingham launch of Submerged, and it’s going to be a corker, but don’t just take my word for it check out the line-up here.

Summer round up

25 Monday Jul 2016

Posted by fletcherski in News, Short Stories, Tindal Street Fiction Group, Writers, Writers Group, writing

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Alan Beard, Birmingham, Charles Wilkinson, Flash Fiction, short stories, Tindal Street Fiction Group, uk, Writers, writing

 

The Tindal Street Fiction Group have been mighty busy:

black-static

Stories accepted: Alan Beard has a story ‘November’ forthcoming in Spelk – in November. Sooner than that, Charles Wilkinson has a story coming out in the next issue of Black Stati…

Source: Summer round up

Kit de Waal’s book launched in Birmingham

14 Tuesday Jun 2016

Posted by fletcherski in Birmingham, Birmingham Literature Festival, Birmingham Writers, Event, News, Reading, Writers, writing

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Birmingham, Book Launch, Kit de Waal, My Name Is Leon, Waterstones

Following events in London and Leamington, Kit’s wonderfully reviewed book gets a Birmingham launch at Waterstones, 5th July 2016 at 7pm. 2016.

leon

more details here.

 

The Brum Radio Lives!

31 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by fletcherski in Arts, Birmingham, Culture, Live Music, Music, News, Radio, Reading, Writers, writing

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Birmingham, Book Club, Brum Radio, Johnathan Coe, Local Bands, Local Writers, Mazzy Snape, Mixcloud, Music, Ocean Colour Scene, Steve Craddock, uk

At last, Birmingham has its very own alternative radio station, Brum Radio. The station covers local bands, including an interview with Ocean Colour Scene’s Steve Craddock, and events as well as a Book Club programme that looks at the work of local authors. Their first guest was Johnathan Coe talking about his new book, Number Eleven. The show has teamed up with Waterstones to give you a £6 discount on the book when you say…….Well, to find out what the code is read the full article here on Mazzy Snape’s blog.

  

If you missed the first show you can grab it at MixCloud.
 

Two TSFG members taking part in Local Authors’ Reception at Foyle’s, Birmingham.

21 Thursday Jan 2016

Posted by fletcherski in Birmingham, Birmingham Literature Festival, Birmingham Writers, News, Q & A, Short Stories, Writers Group, writing

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Birmingham Authors, Foyles Birmingham, TSFG

Two fine members of TSFG flying the flag for local authors.

Tindal Street Fiction Group

Foyle's 1Mick Scully and Fiona Joseph will be appearing alongside Luke Kennard and Catherine O’Flynn on February 23rd @6:30-8pm. More details here:

http://www.foyles.co.uk/Public/Events/Detail.aspx?eventId=2748

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Seven Minute Stories

29 Tuesday Oct 2013

Posted by fletcherski in Anthology, comissions, Event, New Birmingham Library, News, Reading, Short Stories, writing

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Amanda Smyth, Anthology, bar, Birmingham, Coleshill, December 2013, free book, Free event, garrie fetcher, Gaynor Arnold, publications, Rochi Rampal, short stories, The Box, uk, Westmidlands Readers Network, writing

New Library garden. Don't worry we'll be in the warm.

New Library garden. Don’t worry we’ll be in the warm.

Oo, look, I’m in this:

Building on the success of their 2012 project Seven Minute Stories, The West Midlands Readers’ Network is once again commissioning regional writers to create short stories in collaboration with readers’ groups. In 2013, six writers will work with groups in locations around the West Midlands. The writers are: Gaynor Arnold, Garrie Fletcher, Ian MacLeod, AL Pietroni, Rochi Rampal and Amanda Smyth. Each writer has been given a few key narrative ingredients by their group and been asked to throw in some magic of their own in order to conjure up a memorable new story. Join us as these stories and their writers come together in a special anthology and showcase event.

All guests will receive a free limited edition copy of the anthology at the event.

Presented in partnership with the West Midlands Readers’ Network. Chaired by Roz Goddard, Co-ordinator of West Midlands Readers’ Network.

It’d be great to see you there, tickets are free and you could combine it with some Christmas shopping at the German Market in the city. Also, for those of you in fear of dehydration there is a bar!

You can book tickets here.

You can find out more about the West Midlands Reader’s Network here.

Back up! Back up!

20 Sunday Oct 2013

Posted by fletcherski in Computing, Housekeeping, News

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back up, data recovery, hard drive failure, iMac

Day three of no computer. Arggh!

Thursday evening I walked into the dinning room, where my iMac lives, to start writing. I was full of optimism, I’d just embarked on a new project and was keen to start fleshing out the sample chapters I’d already sketched out, this was going to be good.

I stopped half way noticing that the screen saver was wrong. Instead of the slowly rotating album covers from my iTunes collection there were multi-coloured, electric strands, lazily twisting across the screen, something was not quite right. I tapped the key board only to be greeted with a white screen and a grey folder, with a question mark upon it, flashing in the centre. Oh bugger, this looked bad.

It was only the day or so before that I’d thought I really should back the computer up as I hadn’t done it in a while. I needed a bigger drive and had been putting off forking out on 1TB of safety, fool!

I pleaded for help on twitter and facebook and a number of friends came up with avenues to explore, everything would be ok, I just needed to repair the disk – if only. I booted up from the installation disk and went through the process of checking the drive and repairing it, not once but three times. No joy, the funking thing was dead.

So where is it now? It’s up the road in Moseley with Mr Bad Apples, he’s slowly extracting what data he can and no doubt preparing a hefty bill for me. If only I’d have backed up it would have been a hell of a lot simpler, just fit a new drive then copy the stuff over.

So the moral of this tale? Obvious really, don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today, don’t skimp on paying out if it can save you money in the long run and don’t be stupid like me. Back up dammit.

Heed my advice or forever bang your head against walls.

Night Swimming

18 Friday Oct 2013

Posted by fletcherski in comissions, News, Short Stories, Writers Group, writing

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birmingham uk, comission, December, new library of birmingham, reading, short stories, uk

This summer (2013) I was commission by the West Midlands Readers Network to write a short story for a library book group. It turned out that the book group in Coleshill Library were not interested but that the writers group that was also based there was.

I went over in late July and met the group. They were a friendly bunch who made me very welcome. I talked a little bit about the type of things I write and they told me about the stories that they were interested in; it was quite a range. We had crime stories, historical fiction, satire, science fiction, comedy and so on. I made lots of notes.

It would be impossible, in the time I had and the amount of words available (2000,) to write something that covered everything they wanted. As it was I wrote two stories, both set in Coleshill. I couldn’t decide which was the story for them, which was the story that would best please them and cover some of what they asked for. In the end I asked Roz. Roz Goddard is a fine poet, short story writer and she runs the West Midlands Readers Network; her advice was bang on. She said use the best one.

I knew which was the best story I was just worried it wasn’t right for the group.

I visited the Coleshill Writers Group last Monday and read them the story. They liked it and had some excellent questions for me afterwards. If you’re near Coleshill and are interested in writing you should get down there.

If you’d also like to hear my story entitled Night Swimming, then come join me and a whole host of others at the New Birmingham Library on Monday the 2nd of December, it’ll be great.

Hello, come on in.

18 Friday Oct 2013

Posted by fletcherski in News

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about, blog, comissions, competitions, garrie fetcher, news, poems, publications, readings, shortstories, work, writing

Hi there, welcome to my new blog. I thought it was time I have something that was a bit more focused than my Here Come The Lobsters blog, something that just dealt with me and my writing, a single depository where you can access everything me. It’s not a book depository, there’s no grassy knoll and definitely no high-powered rifle, just me and a clunky old laptop, whilst I wait to see if life can be breathed back into my iMac.

I’ll be posting tales of my creative exploits and anything that relates to them. If you think there’s something missing, something that really should be here, then please leave a comment, I won’t track you down and kill you, honest.

Anyway, that’s it for now, things will undoubtedly change so keep checking back, you don’t want to miss out.

Cheers

Garrie Fletcher

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