Inspiration From A Literary Festival

I’ve been festivalling this weekend. (It’s a verb these days) The Isle of Wight Literary Festival to be specific. The great thing about this literary festival is that it’s literally down the road. It’s as if someone arranges for writers, publishers and agents to come to my house for the weekend. It’s very good of them.

Listening to so many great writers over the last few days has filled me with inspiration. I heard Kate Mosse talk about her new book and the reason she fell into writing, Deborah Moggach regaled stories of hotels, Conn Iggulden confessed the torturous journey to publication, and Jessica Mann talked about killing people.

Isle of Wight Literary Festival Short Story Entry

Please could you read this and let me know if you enjoyed it; it’s only short. (I guess that’s why they call it a short story) This is a new thing for me but something that I want to do more of. I think a short story is the same for a writer as a professional footballer dribbling around some cones.

The rules for the Isle of Wight Literary Festival competition are pretty loose. It must be no more than 300 words long and start with the phrase, “The weekend didn’t turn out as I expected…”

So, here goes…