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Happy Publication Day for Sticky Ends!
We here at McCaw Press are very happy to announce that it’s publication day for Carol Carman’s new book Sticky Ends! A collection of comic poems featuring possessed gnashers, unstoppable shoppers, serial killer brides, crossword fanatics, telly addicts, a lonely school reunion, a bunch of drunks and the world’s worst outing to Blackpool. Carol Carman…
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Carol Carman’s Writing Club Prompt: C is for Clock
This week – the prompt is C is for Clock. It could be simply a clock, in which case: What sort of clock? What’s it like? Working or broken? Valuable or not? Where is it? Who owns it – or owned it – if anybody? Why is it where it is, and in the state…
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Carol Carman’s Writing Club Prompt: B is for Bottle
This week – the prompt is B is for Bottle It could be just a bottle so things to think about: What sort of bottle? What shape is it? How old is it? Is it intact, or broken? Is it worth anything? Where is it? On a shelf? In a shop? Underground? In somebody’s bag?…
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Carol Carman’s Writing Club Prompt: A is for Art
This week – the prompt is A is for Art. Now this could mean a work of art figures in your piece – a painting, sculpture, a performance… Perhaps your character is the artist – the one creating the art. Perhaps your story takes place in an art gallery – who could that involve? Customers,…
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Carol Carman’s Writing Club Prompt: Z is for Zoo
This week – the prompt is Z is for Zoo or zoology or zoological. A zoo is a place full of animals – and staff, and visitors. Your piece doesn’t have to take place in the zoo – it could be outside the zoo, next door to it, across the street. It could be about…
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Carol Carman’s Writing Club Prompt: Y is for Yellow
The yellow can be incidental to your story, the springboard for it or a major part of it. Loads of things can be yellow: Clothing – including hi-vis clothing, but also have a think about clothing that’s not normally yellow – like a suit or a raincoat. Unusual things intrigue us both as people and…
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Carol Carman’s Writing Club Prompt: X is for… X
Have a think about how we use the letter X. If you’re marking something, it’s ticks for correct and crosses – or Xs – for incorrect. Putting an X in the box is how we vote. X is used to denote an unknown quantity, which you’ll remember from trying to solve equations at school or…
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A Glimpse into My Childhood
This is my piece for the Writing Club prompt ‘W is for Window’. The window I looked up to the sky through had a cracked pane, the result of my dad flailing a cardigan at an irritating bluebottle. The cardigan had a penny in the pocket – one of those big old heavy pre-decimalisation pennies,…
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Carol Carman’s Writing Club Prompt: W is for Window
Despite Louise Hulland suggesting that after last week’s foreshadowing of car trouble, this week’s prompt should be ‘Winning the lottery’, it is, in fact, W for window. There’s plenty of scope for stories involving a window. Are you on the outside looking in, or inside looking out? Either way, what’s going on on the other…
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Something Amiss in My Engine
Oh, the irony. This poem, for Carol Carman’s Writing Club, Prompt: V is for Vehicle, was written well before the 19th of January, when something went wrong in our car engine which meant I coudn’t get to the BBC studios on the 20th to present the poem in person. There was something amiss in my…