Tag Archives: short stories

CatNav Reviews the Five Stop Story App – 10 out of 10!

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I recently received a completely surprise review for the Five Stop Story app from Cat Nav. CatNav helps readers navigate the vast number of reading apps available in the app store. It identifies the best apps, reviews them and rates them.

It gave the Five Stop Story app 10/10. See the review below. You can download the Five Stop Story app from the app store here.

 

Review of Five Stop Story

Five Stop Stories Limited (Age +12) [10/10]

Similar in style to the Watchbook app, Five Stop Story is a gateway to a number of exciting stories. The app comes loaded with three short stories that give an indication of the type of quality you can expect. If you like what you read, you can subscribe for a year for just £1.99.

Five Stop Story’s interface is clean and minimalistic, allowing you focus on reading the stories. The text size can be increased or decreased and – aside from sharing your favourite passages on Facebook and Twitter – that’s about it.

Thankfully, there are options for sorting through the featured stories. Tabs are included for the latest and most popular. You can also choose to browse by author, genre, date and so on.

With so many stories available it’s probably best to focus on The Other Dave Clark, which is included free with the app. Written by Dave Clark, this short satirical story imagines a nightmare scenario where Nick Clegg wants to see more competition in society and so proposes cloning everyone. This spells trouble for our hero Dave as a committee decides who deserves to live, the original or the clone.

The Other Dave Clark is a perfect showpiece for the app. If every other story is only as fractionally entertaining as this, then the app is going to be immensely successful.

As the name suggests, Five Stop Story is designed to be read in short bursts, on a daily commute for example. There are already lots of stories to suit every mood and this is a great start to Five Stop Story.

This app is essential for iPad and iPhone owners, it’s as simple as that.

Joshua Douglas-Walton, CatNav

 

You can dowload the Five Stop Story app here.

If you want to see your own work featured on the app, you can enter our monthly competitions on the writers page of the Five Stop Story website.

You can find this review on the Persian Cat Press site here.

You can find more great reading apps on the CatNav app here.

Celebrating 11 years of the Bangkok Women’s Writers Group

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I’ve been a member of the Bangkok Women’s Writers Group for nearly a year now, and sadly will soon be leaving, as I’m heading back to London to work. The group is a talented bunch and their feedback on my novels and short stories has been invaluable.
Luckily Anette Pollner, who leads the group, is organising an event, which happens to place just before I leave the country. On 10 April, writers from the group will read from their works in progress at the artspace@newsong on Soi 39/1 Sukhumvit, Bangkok. The readers include Anette, myself, Carol Stephens, Dana MacLean, Lenora Bell, Mariejoy San Buenaventura, Michaela Zimmermann and Tejaswini Apte.

About the Group:

The BWWG meets every second Tuesday 7 PM at Starbucks Soi Lang Suan to workshop their writing in a supportive and creative environment. Current members include several published and international prize winning authors, novelists, essayists, academics, humorists and poets, as well as a few complete beginners. The authors come from different continents, and from a wide range of backgrounds and age groups.

The BWWG has been meeting continuously for 11 years. In 2007 they published the Thai English language bestseller ‘Bangkok Blondes’, and in 2009 they gave a reading at the British Council and published a pamphlet.

 

Five Stop Story Kindle Book now Live

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After lots of blood, sweat and tears (all mine), the Five Stop Story Kindle book is now live. To be honest, I’m quite relieved. It took a lot more time and was a lot harder work than I expected – It seems formatting is the biggest nightmare whatever medium you publish on! Luckily I got there in the end, plus I was really lucky to get Sarah Kate from Warm Onion Designs on board, designing the cover. And it’s out in time for Christmas 🙂
The book contains 30 short stories from the Five Stop Story competitions and 1 from me, which I might put up on this website when I get a moment.
Here is the link if you’re interested: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Five-Stop-Story-Stories-ebook/dp/B006O1QKD0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1324625318&sr=8-1
My story is called “The Final Days of Trevor Morrison.”

The perfect Christmas treat: the Five Stop Story Kindle e-book

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Christmas is coming, the shops are covered in lights and there is a Christmas tree on every corner. I’m in Bangkok and I never expected it to be this festive here. But it’s great – I’m loving all the good cheer and the decorations. The Thais love Christmas – I think mainly because it’s just enough excuse to have fun and enjoy themselves. And also an excuse to visit the shopping malls which are always packed whatever time of year it is.
Getting into the Christmas spirit, Five Stop Story is going to launch an e-book in time for Christmas. This will feature 30 of the best short stories from the competitions. It will be free for a limited introductory period so that authors and their friends and families can download it so get in quick and buy
At the moment, I am trapped in a formatting hell, pummeling the formatting into a Kindle-shaped Christmas package. I was hoping to put one of my own stories in the book, but I haven’t had time to do my own editing! Still, it’s all in a good cause – the first Five Stop Story Kindle book. I can’t wait.

The lovely Robert Coles has also recently interviewed me about the kindle book and Five Stop Story in general on his blog – check out the interview here.

Must get back to formatting now!

Five Stop Story iPhone and iPad App Launch

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It’s been a busy month. The Five Stop Story iphone and ipad app is up and running and I’ve been in London putting flyers in bookshops, coffee shops and local libraries to encourage people to download it and discover new writers.
We’ve crammed the app with features and you can browse the stories by author, or by genre or by competition winners. You can also read more about the authors in their bios and visit their websites. The app links with Facebook and Twitter so that you can share the stories you really like.
You can download the app on the your iphone/ipad by visiting the app store and searching for “Five Stop Story.” Find out more about the app here.
On last check we were #2 in the UK “what’s hot” in Books list!

UK Literary Agents – Some Help from the Writers’ Workshop

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The great thing about the internet is that there is so much free content that can help writers and that is accessible to everyone. I wanted to share a great spreadsheet (I know what you’re thinking the words “great” and spreadsheet” aren’t a natural fit, but stay with me) that I found online today. The people at the Writers’ Workshop have put together a list of literary agents in the UK and beside each one have put the kind of submissions they are accepting and some notes. You can download the spreadsheet here. I actually have a very similar spreadsheet that I made myself about 2 years ago using the Writers and Artists’ Handbook. I’m very happy that this time round someone else has done it for me. Anyone can download the spreadsheet, save it to their computer and edit it as they please. So you can use it to keep track of the submissions you make.
Talking of “free things” (a rather tenuous link) Five Stop Story’s July short story competition is now in full swing – find out more on the website.

Five Stop Story

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Five Stop Story is the short story website I run to discover new writers. I’ve recently launched a new competition with a “travel” theme. The Five Stop Story mobile application is due for launch in September and will showcase the best short stories by up and coming writers.

I thought now was as good a time as any to tell you about about the idea behind Five Stop Story and the current competition:

A “five stop story” is a story you can read in five stops on the tube in London, or in about 10 minutes.

I started the Five Stop Story project to discover and publish short stories that can easily fit into modern lives. As people get busier and busier they find it harder and harder to find the time to read. At the same time, they now have the technology to read on the move. They no longer have to lug a book around in the hope that they will find somewhere to read it. They can read on a mobile phone, an ipad or a Kindle.

So people have less time, but they can now read anywhere. This means that they can fill their spare moments with fiction. They can read on the tube to work, or while they are waiting to meet someone for coffee. The ideal medium for these spare moments is the short story; fiction that will fill the time, but you won’t have to abandon half way through.

Five Stop Story aims to fill these spare moments with stories by new writers. We are running regular competitions to discover these writers and the competition prize includes publication on the website and our forthcoming mobile application. The mobile application will enable people to read stories by up and coming writers on the move. 

The Five Stop Story website launched in November 2010 and the first competition ran in January 2011. Five Stop Story is supported by the Arts Council and will be launching its mobile application in September this year.

The theme of the current competition is travel and we are looking for stories of 1,500 to 2,500 words. As well as publication on the website and mobile application, the overall winner will receive a copy of the book A Moral Murder & Other Tales from the Blue Hills by Sangeetha Shinde Tee. The closing date is 26th June 2011. To find out more and read the stories by previous winners please visit the website.

Bangkok Literary Festival

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Last weekend was the first ever Bangkok Literary festival. Organised by the Neilson Hays library, the day provided a chance to mingle with fellow writers, hear a range of informative talks about all aspects of writing and participate in writing workshops.

I was very fortunate to be asked to speak at the festival. My talk covered two key topics. Firstly, as a new writer, I spoke about the challenges and the opportunities presented by the new publishing landscape. Secondly, I discussed short stories and my view that the short story is very much the medium for fiction in the 21st century. This then gave me the opportunity to tell people about Five Stop Story and its latest short story competition. (This will be the subject of my next blog post, but in the meantime, you can find out more here.)

Before my talk I was pretty nervous – especially when I read through the festival programme and saw the high calibre of the other speakers – including Ken Hom, Stephen Leather and Christopher G Moore. How could I compete with Ken Hom? Before I went into my talk I was wondering if I’d bitten off more than I could chew.

But luckily the audience were very receptive and welcoming. My talk went smoothly and people asked well-informed and challenging questions. And I received a bottle of wine for my efforts, which was certainly appreciated!

After my talk, I decided it would be bad form to crack open the wine immediately so I treated myself to a burger and a beer and then went to see Christopher G Moore and Stephen Leather’s talks. Christopher’s talk took the audience through each of his books, providing us with an insight into how life in Bangkok had changed since he started writing. Stephen shared his first-hand experience creating a best-selling e-book – a real bonus for new writers.

All in all, it was a great day out, extremely well organised by Annemarie Hellemans and her team at the Neilson Hays. I’m already looking forward to the next festival!