expat blog - Now publishing my articles

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I was delighted today to receive an email from the expat blog site, 'share your expat experience', to inform me that they have published three of my articles on their interesting site.
My articles cover:

Paying Tax In Spain

Spain's High Speed Train (AVE) Project

Introduction to Valencia

I shall be writing more articles for this site which receives many hits from people all over the world anxious to learn more about Spain.

Writers Circles

As I have been focussed on my editor duties (see previous blog) for the Writers Bureau I have been reading lots of the WB students posts of their Forum.

I posted my suggestion for them to consider joining a local writing circle. This is a good way to meet like minded people, learn from their experiences and skills and of course receive valuable feedback on their own work.

This appeared to be met with a good degree of enthusiasm so I hope lots of the students pluck up their courage and join a local group - you never know who you might meet.

If they are lucky enough to live in or around Southampton they could also visit the Writing Buddies where I know they will receive a warm welcome from my writing friend, Penny Legg who has recently started this group and her own writing consultancy. The photo was taken recently at one of their get togethers in Borders bookstore.

If you are a WB student - please note that the deadline for submissions has been extended to July 31st - so you still have time to send in your work.

I look forward to reading it, even in this heatwave!

Chapter and Verse - Writers Bureau

As my regular readers will know I am currently the editor of Chapter and Verse (C&V), the students ezine for the Writers Bureau.

This is my opportunity to help encourage the new writing talent to become published and, for many, it will be their first time to experience the thrill of seeing their name 'in print' albeit electronically as against the traditional printed word.

However, the publishing world is changing rapidly with many publications opting too only produce their copy in the online format. Some through choice others through financial necessity borne of the current economic climate. Consequently being published online is rapidly achieving the same status and acceptance as the more usual formats.

Back to C & V - if you are a WB student reading this blog please try to submit, more details on the WB web site - if you have already submitted please accept my thanks and keep a look out for the next C&V as your work might be published in our net edition!

The Future has Arrived - Zemanta

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It looks like blogging has just taken another step into the future with the advent of 'Zemanta' maybe not the friendliest of names but lets see what it can do - as I type this blog the product (having been downloaded as a Mozilla, my browser, add-on) bursts into life down the RH side of the screen with suggested additional content including news, photos, tags and other links. Well let us see how it does over the next few weeks - am I ready for the future, I hope so because it has already arrived!

The Coastal Pages

Working on the premise that readers like frequent change to enhance their reading experience this month Inland Magazine now features my 'The Coastal Pages' The first edition focuses on the Valencian coastline beaches, which stretch for 518 kms.

Although the magazine's title suggests it has no involvement with the coast nothing could be further from the truth with many readers living on the coastal strip - including me. So I agreed with the owners to promote this area more and provide a broader scope of articles for the readership.

My other contribution is an article on the multi million Euro Alicante airport expansion project which is redeveloping the airport into an international one - see the article for more details.

New search Engine - feedmil

Today, for a change, amongst my unsolicited emails I received a very interesting email inviting me to submit 'Words from the Author' from a new search engine organisation - Feedmil

To be honest I had never heard of them and with a degree of cynicism, borne of rogue and scam emails, I decided to research them prior to replying. They checked out and I discovered that they are:

'Feedmil is a feed search engine featuring a spam-free, topic-focused search for a variety of feed types including news, blogs, microblogs, social media ...'


So I took up their offer to promote this blog - you can check them out here

Torrevieja Writers Circle Workshop

Instead of our normal meeting yesterday we took the whole day to spend in 'Workshop' mode considering many different aspects of Creative Writing including:

- Characters

- Plot

- Points of View

- Writing Dialogue

- Story Beginnings

all under the guidance of the TWC chairman, Nik Morton

There really is a lot involved in writing both short stories and full length novels. It was an interesting day and hopefully many of the group will now be able to produce work to enter some upcoming short story competitions.

My articles on Issuu

My publications on Issuu are getting a lot of hits including my anthology of articles...

Open publication - Free publishing - More ave

Changing your Internet Providers

Spain is still suffering the associated problems of having had a monopoly situation with the country's telephone and internet provider - in that they are arrogant to deal with and expensive. But now the market has changed and there are plenty of other providers to select from - however which one and what are they actually offering?

It is a minefield through which we started walking 2 weeks ago - we settled on Orange and after the wait, their sending of the wrong router we have now more or less established the connections.

The 6 year old laptop works (it fact it is rejuvenated on a 10MB line!) my PC works on a Wi-Fi link but my partner's PC, cabled into the router, is still playing up! So changing can bring financial benefits and a faster line but with a lot of stress! (Unless you are an internet communications genius)