Fiction – Page 2 – F C MALBY

My Writing Journey: From Novels to Short Stories

WordPress sends these milestone reminders, and it’s often a good time to take stock and realise how far you’ve come as a writer. I began writing my debut novel, Take Me to the Castle, in 2007. It was published in 2012 and won The People’s Book Awards in 2013. I began writing short stories with several going on to be published in literary journals. Some won writing competitions and I was inspired by so many other writers and their stories…Alice Munro, Lydia Davis, Hilary Mantel, David Gaffney, Raymond Carver, Franz Kafka, Anton Chekhov, Ernest Hemingway.

It’s been a journey! Eight books (including two novels, two short stories and work in four anthologies) later and I still get a buzz from writing down the first words of a story, a poem, or a novel. I don’t know where the last 12 years have gone, but it’s been quite a journey. Writing, the grit required to keep going and hone your craft, along with the journey to publication, requires motivation and determination. It demands new learning and a level of discipline, but it’s also a lot of fun. The creativity, the process, it’s all part of the draw to write.

I’ve learned that you will always surprise yourself, and others. You’ll never quite know where you are going. This applies even to the most tightly planned plot! You can read more about planning, plot and structure in these posts:

Warning: Structural Work Needed – Plotting Your Novel

Permission To Not Write In A Linear Fashion?

Narrative Arc: Shaping Your Story

What’s Your First Draft Like? Author Interview

I get asked lots of questions on where I find my ideas and how I write. It’s different for poetry, short stories, flash fiction and novels. Novel writing is a marathon, not a sprint, but it also allows you more space for a story to unfold. Short stories and flash fiction, in particular, are less forgiving and no word can be wasted. You need to grab your reader in just a few hundred words, or more, or less!

I love writing. I love it as much now as I did 12 years ago. Blogging has also been a really helpful way of sharing my journey and what I’ve learned. I’ve been able to encourage new writers, connect with readers, network with people, interview authors and be interviewed. Thanks for joining me on the journey, whether you’ve just arrived (welcome!) or if you’ve been here a while. Drop any questions in the comments.

What I’ve Learned about Social Media & Blogging on Writing for 12 Years with Over 75,000 views

Photo: W.H. Auden’s Summerhouse in Kirchstetten, Austria. F. C. Malby.

75,000 views in 12 years – 6,000 views a year – an average of 500 views a month.

That’s far more than I ever expected, especially as there have been years when I haven’t been able to post as often. But, I consistently show up and that’s the bottom line. So, what have I learned?

1. Social media isn’t dead, and neither are blogs

Despite the rumours swirling around about various different social media platforms dying off, I believe they are here to stay. Even though they morph and change – as some do lose popularity, others will inevitably pop up in their place. Your blog can feed into different social media platforms, but it is also a platform in its own right, and it’s a good one. I wrote a post asking Is Blogging Worth the Time and Effort? I still believe that it is.

2. People will continue to follow you if they feel invested in what you are writing

It’s much to my surprise that people who followed me 12 years ago (is it really that long?) remain engaged with what I post today. So, make it interesting and varied. I love hearing your thoughts and comments, and I’m still connected with many authors who I interviewed when I began blogging. Author interviews are popular. You can read my interviews with authors Matt Haig and S J Watson on their writing process and background, as well as some of the challenges they have faced.

3. Surprisingly, I get most of my traffic from Pinterest

Yes, I expected Pinterest to die off, but it remains ever popular, particularly in sharing content about books and bookshops. I wrote a post on How To Use Pinterest To Improve Your Writing, which talks about how useful it can be to pin ideas to boards for inspiration and to share content. Have a look at my boards, which include a TBR Pile, Book Reviews and Author Interviews, as well as information on writing and more. It still gets 2,000 monthly views.

4. Readers like variety, whether it’s author interviews, book news and reviews, tips on writing or pictures of beautiful libraries

Variety, as they say, is the spice…(you know the rest). I try to vary my blog posts. No one wants the same content every time. Mine, as an author, is on books and fiction writing. Staying within your niche is important, but variety keeps things more interesting, so I mix it up. The second most popular category, after writing tips, is libraries around the world, with Space to Read and Relax: Bookshop Cafés and Bars Around the World… and 30 Amazing Libraries and Bookshelves. So, what can I learn about my readers? They’re writers, aspiring writers, readers and book lovers.

5. Keep it visual. Images capture what you are writing about and grabs people’s attention

See number 3. The visual nature of Pinterest draws people in and so do the visuals on blog posts. One of my recent blog post photos of my TBR book pile ended up in the Durham University Student Newspaper! We’re visual creatures, so creative visuals, as well as written content is important.

6. Blogging draws people to your website

75,000 have come to my site as a result of my blog posts. That’s on top of usual website traffic. This means I get to engage with so many more people, and it’s led to author interviews and book recommendations. It’s a network. I write a lot about short stories, as an author of short stories and flash fiction. This guest post from Cary Bray on The Magic of Short Stories is a popular read.

7. People will read and re-read your writing over the years as you build up your content

Once your content is up, it’s there to stay for as long as your site exists, which gives it longevity. My most read post about the Narrative Arc has been viewed 16,000 times and is on my top 5 list of most read posts, alongside Kurt Vonnegut and the Myth of Talent, Writing Prompts, What we can learn from Beauty and the Beast About Plot, Tension and Obstacles and Hemmingway’s Tip Of The Iceberg: Omit What the Reader Knows.

8. Blogging is a creative outlet other than writing stories, books or poetry

It’s a way of sharing ideas that don’t go into books and journals. For example, this infographic on Quentin Blake’s Rights of the Reader Illustrations, which I shared on World Book Day is too good not to share.

9. It connects you with others

Like this reader response to the above Quentin Blake post:

What a lovely connection!

10. I really enjoy it!

I love writing, and I really like to be collaborative and share information and what I know, especially if it helps others. Whether that might be finding a new book to fall in love with, or discovering a new author, or helping people find beautiful libraries, or giving writing tips. Sharing things that you find, and your ideas, has a ripple effect and sparks creativity in others. I also find new readers for my own work, but this is not the primary reason for writing blog posts. For me, it’s secondary to everything else that I do.

Sharing things that you find, and your ideas, has a ripple effect and sparks creativity in others.

Everybody’s Reviewing – Feature

Thank you to Everybody’s Reviewing, Creative Writing, Leicester, for this feature of my second collection of short stories, A Place of Unfinished Sentences.

Monday 9 September 2024

F. C. Malby, “A Place of Unfinished Sentences”

F. C. Malby writes novels, short stories, and poetry. She has travelled widely, teaching English in the Czech Republic, the Philippines and London. She is a qualified teacher and a photographer, and is currently studying for a Masters in Theology. Her debut novel, Take Me to the Castle, set in early 1990s Czech Republic, won The People’s Book Awards. Her second novel, Dead Drop, set in Vienna, is a lyrical, daring thriller about the undercover world of art crime. Her debut short story collection, My Brother Was a Kangaroo, includes award-winning stories published in literary magazines and journals worldwide. Malby’s poetry has appeared in journals, magazines and podcasts, and her second collection of short stories, A Place of Unfinished Sentences, includes stories that have been published in anthologies with Reflex Press and Pens of the Earth, and placed in competitions. She is a contributor to four print anthologies (the forth is forthcoming with Pens of the Earth in Oct 2024). She is also a contributor to anthologies published by Reflex Press, Unthank Book and Litro. Her short fiction won the Litro Magazine Environmental Disaster Fiction Competition, and was nominated for Publication of the Year in the Spillwords Press Awards. Her stories have been widely published both online and in print. Her website is here.

About A Place of Unfinished Sentences, by F. C. Malby

This second collection concerns the sentences we leave unfinished, questions surrounding sudden loss, a decision on a train. It covers themes of relationships and memory, exploring what happens when memory fails. It looks at beginnings and endings, weaving through themes of generations, family, uncertainty, and what happens when experiences change us.

From A Place of Unfinished Sentences

The woman sitting opposite me looks like the guy I used to date. Her face is angular, her eyes fixed to the page of a book I cannot see. I wonder why she reminds me of him. The door clunks back into the frame of the train’s carriage. A thud as it stops makes me jump, and a man with a trolley walks through and scans the seats.

“Tea? Coffee?” he asks, glancing at the ex-boyfriend lookalike.

“Neither,” she says, her eyes remaining fixed on the pages in her hands.

He looks at me. “Coffee, black, no sugar,” I say, without waiting to be asked. He lowers his shoulders, exhaling slowly as he pours me a cup from a large metal coffee pot. Steam rises from the spout, the scent of it licking at my nostrils. Saliva fills my mouth in anticipation.

“Snacks,” he says, almost as a statement. I can hear my Grandmother telling me that it’s rude not to form full sentences. Nobody is in a full sentence mood this morning. The trains have been delayed by three hours because of a ‘body on the line’ and the weather is damp and oppressive. Normally, the announcement is ‘leaves on the line.’ This morning it’s a body. An elderly lady told me it was a young man. Such a waste of a life, she had said with a tone of disgust, eyebrows raised, as though taking your own life was comparable to a child throwing away a gift they no longer wanted. I had started to explain that you don’t know what’s going on in someone else’s life, but she walked away mid-sentence.

London was a place of rush, a place of interchange, a place of unfinished sentences. The young boy’s life might have been an unfinished sentence: a friend in a rush, too busy to hear that he had felt low for months; an interchange of parents going to and from work, passing like ships in the night; a sentence about feeling hopeless, left unfinished.

Read the full feature at Creative Writing, Leicester.

PUBLICATION DAY

The day has arrived. It’s the release of my long-awaited second collection of short stories. Lots of you have asked when they will be available to buy and the wait is over. I’m thrilled to announce the release of a new collection of stories, many of which have been placed in competitions and published in international literary journals. Two of the stories can be found in anthologies – Yo u Fold Yourself into Tiny Spaces was Longlisted in the Reflex Press Quarterly International Flash Fiction Competition and published in In Defence of Pseudoscience: Reflex Fiction Volume Five. Prolific was published in Pens of the Earth and is forthcoming in a Pens of the Earth Anthology in October 2024. Some of my favourite stories are new to this collection.

“Intense, beautifully realised and ice-sharp”

ABOUT THE COLLECTION:

The sentences we leave unfinished, questions surrounding sudden loss, a decision on a train. This second collection covers themes of relationships and memory, exploring what happens when memory fails. It looks at beginnings and endings, weaving through themes of generations, family, uncertainty, and what happens when experiences change us.

“F C Malby’s stories capture characters teetering on the edge of precipices in their lives, sometimes literal, sometimes metaphorical, as they decide whether or not to take a leap of faith into the unknown. These intense, beautifully realised and ice-sharp stories momentarily suspend us over an Everestian abyss.” Jonathan P Taylor, author and Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, University of Leicester

“In this impressive collection of 65 short and very short stories, F C Malby gives us sharply honed glimpses into the profundity of the ordinary and the impact of the extraordinary. Malby’s characters deal with choices and their consequences, with themes of life passages, nature and the sea. Her prose is strong with much implied and left to the interpretation of the reader. Highly recommend.” Barbara Byar, novelist, short story author and Fiction Editor, Variant Literature

You can purchase my second collection of short stories, A Place of Unfinished Sentences, in paperback and as an eBook https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0DFW6BPMW

Two forthcoming Book Releases in 2024

I have some exciting news! There are two new books being released this year, both include my short stories. As an author, it’s such an amazing feeling when your work is about to be released into the hands of readers around the world. I love hearing reader feedback and discovering what resonates with individuals.

Since the release of my first novel in 2012, I have had a second novel published, a short story anthology (soon-to-be two) and work published in three anthologies (soon-to-be four) I have also had many stories and poems published in literary journals worldwide and some competition winners. I was asked to read for a writing competition for a journal and have given readings and led writing workshops. It never gets odd. I still love writing and engaging with readers.

The first book is my second collection of short stories, A Place of Unfinished Sentences.

“F C Malby’s stories capture characters teetering on the edge of precipices in their lives, sometimes literal, sometimes metaphorical, as they decide whether or not to take a leap of faith into the unknown. These intense, beautifully realised and ice-sharp stories momentarily suspend us over an Everestian abyss.” Jonathan P Taylor, author and Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, University of Leicester

The second book that I want to share with you will be published by Pens of the Earth, who are launching a collection of stories, poems and environmental articles on 21st October 2024. My short story, Prolific, will be in with many others with all profits from book sales going to the Solent Seagrass Restoration Project.