I’ve been thinking about this for a while. I don’t like to make people pay for my work, but at the same time, I’m disabled, I can only work a few hours a week and the exhaustion is interfering with my ability to write. I want to give myself an incentive to write when I feel well enough. If I have paying subscribers, I have to write!
I may have mentioned the Space Dragon story I’ve been working on for a couple of years. The plan is to share a chapter a month for paying subscribers until I’ve written it all. You won’t be getting the first draft, since I write that by hand, but you’ll get the edited version. There will probably be further edits in future before I release it as a book. I might also share some of my short stories as paid subscriber posts.
What do you think?
Let me share a few paragraphs with you and if you want the rest, please feel free to join the paid subscription.
Update 22/03/2025
No one wanted paid subscriptions, so I’ve unlocked this chapter and any others that I’ve posted.
Overall Blurb – An eclectic mix of heart-warming stories, full of memorable, quirky characters. Read about the heroic postie, the eccentric duke, a spoilt parrot, a true friend and a determined would-be husband. Perfect bite-sized reading with your favourite drink.
Choose Your Words Carefully page 36 For people interested in the importance and power of words. Generally, a gentle story that might make you think twice.
Can Mollie use her heartfelt words to get her message across to Joe? And therefore, save a potential unhappy relationship.
“You shouldn’t do it. It’s not honest Joe,” snapped Mollie from her chair beside him.
“It’s only a bit of harmless fun,” said Norah.
“Harmless!” screeched Mollie, waking up at least two of the residents of Dove Farm Nursing Home. “You shouldn’t meddle in other people’s affairs, especially not affairs of the heart.”
Mollie stood up and made her way out of the communal lounge, as quickly as she could, on legs that had seen too many decades.
“What’s wrong with Mollie?” asked Heather, the warden.
“Joe’s written a song. It’s lovely. Read it Joe,” urged Norah.
Joe read out his lyrics. When he came to the last line, some of the residents clapped.
Heather looked puzzled. “It’s very good Joe. What’s made you start writing love songs at your age?”
“That lad you’ve had on work experience,” admitted Joe, “he’s had a tiff with his girlfriend, and wants to make up. They sing in a band and he wanted to write a love song for her to show he really does care. I said I’d help, but Madam’s got a bee in her bonnet about it!”
“Stop him!” cried Mollie, from the doorway. “Don’t let him give that song away,” she said to Heather urgently.
“Calm down Mollie, he’s only trying to help.”
“He’ll do more harm than good. It’s dishonest, that’s what it is.”
“She’s only jealous,” chimed in Norah.
“Not now Norah,” soothed Heather as she straightened her crisp, white uniform. “Sometimes I feel more like a referee than a Carer.”
“She’s bitter and twisted. She should have appreciated Sid when he was alive,” continued Norah, unable to let go.
“You leave Sid out of this.”
“Ladies please. Why don’t I go and make a tray of tea, while you two make up?”
“I’m going to lie down,” announced Mollie. Heather followed her as she went to put the kettle on, but Mollie refused to come out of her room.
“There’s no need for all this fuss,” began Heather. “And be careful about calling other people dishonest. You’re forever telling people you’re sixty-nine, but we both know you’re nearer seventy-nine.”
“Ok. Point taken,” agreed Mollie. “But please stop Joe handing over that song.”
“I don’t know that I can,” admitted Heather.
“Well, if you can’t, maybe I can,” said Mollie getting up and making her way along to Joe’s room.
“Not you again,” said Joe by way of a greeting.
“Just hear me out,” asked Mollie. Her voice was tired and pleading.
“You’d better take a seat, if I’m in for a lecture.”
Sarah Swatridge’s name can often be seen in women’s magazines worldwide such as My Weekly, Woman’s Weekly, Fiction Feast. She also writes novels, mainly historical, which can be found in the Large Print section of your public library. These novels are standalone and the themes vary from – women setting up a co-operative together in response to dishonest traders in the area (United we Stand) to stories set around employees in a biscuit factory (Biscuit Wars, Gentle Annie, Cakes in the Biscuit Factory etc) to the work of pawn brokers (Adam’s Emporium) or a woman in 1900 wanting an adventure before agreeing to marry (Biddy’s Big Adventure – also available from Calibre Audio if you have problems accessing print in the traditional way)
Lizzie’s badgered by the local paper who want to print a story about her.
They’ve challenged her to be self-sufficient for a year. Eventually she
accepts – but on her terms. It’s not an easy year, but she does learn
what’s important.
Win 2 x Paperback copies of An Honourable Wager by Sarah Swatridge (UK Only)
*Terms and Conditions –UK entries welcome. Please enter using the Gleam box below. The winner will be selected at random via Gleam from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then Rachel’s Random Resources reserves the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over. Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time Rachel’s Random Resources will delete the data. I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.
Set several years after the previous Empire of the Wolf Grimdark Magazine novella, The Scour, we rejoin Vonvalt and Bressinger in Sova. Vonvalt is not a happy bunny; the love of his life, Justice Resi August has announced her engagement, and a killer has escaped an asylum.
There’s not much he can do about Resi.
Instead he’s heading, in the midwinter cold, to the town of Eisbruck to track a killer by his snake skin boots, along with Bressinger, a shoemaker named Anna, and eventually a priest. Except Eisbruck is in the middle of a smallpox outbreak.
I enjoyed this novella, I got really immersed in the story. Swan describes the conditions in a town overwhelmed by disease and death in the middle of winter convincingly. The search for the killer is hampered by the deaths surrounding Sir Conrad. Bressinger gets sick quickly, despite having partial immunity from childhood cowpox, and Anna mysteriously dies without a mark on her. There is a rumoured witch Vonvalt has to uncover and hallucinations caused by contact with a forest herb that complicates matters.
The novella adds to the backstory for the Empire of the Wolf novels and explores parts of the Sovan Empire that they don’t . Recommended to fans of the series, and if you haven’t tried the novels, this novella will give you a taste of the style, setting, and characters.
The Crooked Medium’s Guide to Terror (The Crooked Medium 2)
True terror is a murderer you can’t stop.
London 1882. A carpenter is killed by a train – an eerie, brutal crime. Flamboyant medium Mrs Ashton and her sapphic partner Braddie seek justice for the widow.
A charismatic new medium takes London by storm. Dock-lass Maisie sees her frightening prophesy of vengeance. A noble family is devastated, but worse is to come.
Outgunned and bewildered, the three confront a deadly conspiracy. They risk losing everything.
Prize includes – Our Child of the Stars, Our Child of Two Worlds, The Crooked Medium’s Guide to Murder and the Crooked Medium’s Guide to Terror.
*Terms and Conditions –UK entries welcome. Please enter using the Gleam box below. The winner will be selected at random via Gleam from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then Rachel’s Random Resources reserves the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over. Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time Rachel’s Random Resources will delete the data. I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.
When the skeletons of a young woman and a baby are uncovered on a long-abandoned farm in Hvalfjörður, it is clear they were buried years apart. West Iceland CID begins to investigate the disturbing discovery, aware that someone has gone to great lengths to keep the past hidden.
In Akranes, Karitas, a young single mother seeking a new start, settles in with her four-year-old son and rents a basement flat from an eccentric landlord. A cautious sense of happiness returns when she meets the boy next door.
But when news breaks that a local girl has been murdered, Karitas must decide who she can trust, knowing that one wrong choice could place her and her child in danger. Detective Elma is drawn into the case, forced to navigate long-hidden family secrets to understand a killer’s motive, while struggling to hold together her increasingly troubled relationship with Sævar.
Kade Renn and the crew of The Moth have crossed the ancient gate and reached Origin — the dead world at the centre of the network. They arrive damaged, low on air and cut off from the route behind them. Lira’s breathing system is failing. Vessa is wounded. Nix is carrying heat he cannot shed. And beneath Origin’s ruined surface, old machinery is still responding.
What they find is more dangerous than an abandoned world. Human field stations. Hand-written warnings. Records from the First Crossing. Evidence that people objected before the first disasters — and that those objections were altered, buried or removed from the history that followed.
The Quiet War did not begin the way the Directorate says it did. Far behind them, Marshal Sorr is tightening a containment net around the damaged route. If it closes, Origin may be sealed again.
Kade does not need to save the galaxy. He needs to keep his sister breathing, keep The Moth alive, and carry enough of the truth home that no one can bury all of it again.
Some doors weren’t lost. They were locked.
Book 1 – Driftborn is out now! Pre-order Origin here
I reviewed Driftborn earlier in the year. I quite liked it. I’m quoted on the back cover for Origin.
Discover the fascinating history of medicine, from its primitive beginnings to the life-saving technologies of today. Now in paperback!
In The History of Medicine in Twelve Objects, Dr Carol Cooper takes readers on an engaging, humorous, and sometimes gruesome journey through the 12 objects that have come to define medicine through the ages.
Over the years, with increasingly more knowledge about health and disease, the ways in which doctors engage with sickness have evolved, and so have the tools used to treat patients.
