The next contribution to the Fiction category of the 2024 Creative Writing Showcase is from Ronald Mackay. He has been a regular contributor and long-time supporter of Fred's Blog, and I am always immensely grateful for his encouragement and support.

Ronald's latest story is called Coming of Age and you can read it here.

Ronald Mackay and his wife Viviana Galleno recently moved from Canada to the Netherlands and divide their time between Voorburg in South Holland and Buenavista del Norte on the north coast of Tenerife. Ronald is the author of “Fortunate Isle, a Memoir of Tenerife”, “A Tenerife con Cariño”, and “The Kilt Behind the Curtain”. His new book, this one of short stories, will appear in English later this year and in Spanish early in 2025.

- Viviana and Ronald April 2024 - Buenavista del Norte
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A warm welcome back to Shane Joseph, a regular contributor to our showcases.

Shane's first story this year, in the Fiction category, is a powerful piece called Forgiveness, which you can read here.

Shane Joseph is a graduate of the Humber School for Writers. He is the author of seven novels and three collections of short stories. Shane’s second novel, After the Flood, a dystopian novel of hope, released in 2009, won the Write Canada Award for best novel in the futuristic/fantasy category. His short fiction and non-fiction have appeared in literary journals and anthologies all over the world. His blog at www.shanejoseph.com is widely syndicated, he has a monthly column in The Sri Lankan Anchorman journal, and is the Book Reviews Editor for Devour Art & Lit Magazine. His most recent novel, Victoria Unveiled, will be released in September 2024.

Shane is the owner and publisher of Blue Denim Press (www.bluedenimpress.com), a literary press he founded in 2011. He is responsible for editing, formatting, cover design, production, distribution, and promotion at his press. To date, the press has published over 50 titles (fiction and non-fiction) in paperback and e-book formats.  In particular, Shane loves editing to release the story from within the words.

More details on Shane’s work, blog and book reviews can be found on his website at www.shanejoseph.com.  He maintains an active presence on social media via Facebook, Instagram, Linked-In, Twitter and Goodreads. He has a growing collection of You Tube videos produced by him on literary topics.

For today's contribution in the Memoir Showcase, it is a pleasure to feature Susan Mellsopp, a loyal supporter of our writing features on Fred's Blog.

You can read Susan's story Four Hunky Firemen and a Policeman here.

Susan Mellsopp is happily retired and lives in Hamilton New Zealand with her cream and gold Labrador guide dog Maya. Much of her life has been spent as a dairy farmer, and also working as a librarian, archivist and accessible transport researcher. She runs a writers group and is constantly being challenged to write in genres other than travel and memoir. Susan has published two school histories, written for an alumni magazine, and writes for a national magazine which is published monthly. Last year she had a story published in a book about pavlovas. She is a voracious reader; usually having two talking books and a kindle book on the go at once, loves to travel, listen to classical music, cook, spend time with friends and use modern technology.  Volunteering is important to Susan, recently she began tutoring at Senior Net teaching older people how to use their ipads and iphones.  
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Our latest submission to the Memoir Showcase is from Patricia M Osborne. She found out about the 2024 Creative Writing Showcase on Twitter (X), and I am so glad she did.

You can read Patricia's enthralling story Operation Bucharest (2015) here.

Patricia M Osborne is married with grown-up children and grandchildren. In 2019 she graduated with an MA in Creative Writing. She is a published novelist, poet and short fiction writer with six poetry pamphlets published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press, and numerous poems and short stories appearing in various literary magazines and anthologies. Her debut poetry pamphlet, Taxus Baccata, was nominated for the Michael Marks Pamphlet Award.

Patricia has a successful blog at Whitewingsbooks.com featuring other writers. When Patricia isn’t working on her own writing, she enjoys sharing her knowledge, acting as a mentor to fellow writers.
 
Website
https://whitewingsbooks.com/
Twitter
https://twitter.com/PMOsborneWriter
Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/triciaosbornewriter
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Following on from yesterday's feature of Players in the Memoir category, I am delighted to share with you another excellent piece of writing from Sue Wald, this time in the Fiction section of the 2024 Creative Writing Showcase.

You can read Sue's story Tristan Radler's Opinion of Life here.

For our second contribution in this year's Memoir Showcase, I am very pleased to welcome Sue Wald to Fred's Blog.

Sue gives a detailed description below about the background to her memoir extract.

Once you have read that, you can click here to read Players.

Many thanks for sharing this wonderful piece of history Sue.

Sue Wald

Under her Nom de Plume 'Sue Wald', she has penned 'A Day in the Life', a Very Short Memoir of a hundred pages - of which 'Players' forms part - set over three days of Hallowtide, when two urns in the author´s garden inspire her to transport the reader almost a hundred years back in time via Spain and Germany to her grandfather Kurt´s hometown in Sudetenland, with the help of poems and stories within stories, offering glimpses of her granddad´s life before, during, and after WWII - including an entertaining lunch encounter with Oskar Schindler himself - as well as peeks into her own life and ghosts of the past.
She is also the author of a Short Thriller - 'Faith Value' – set in Spain, Romania, and Turkey.
As a Thursday Child and multilingual language teacher, she has helped enough school children (and adults) on their way to be able to look back on a life not wasted and heave a sigh of relief, not too far from a secluded sandy beach and enjoying good food and a good read in the company of her cats and dogs.​

Our next two submissions in the Fiction Showcase are from Shirley Read-Jahn.

Shirley explains that these two short pieces are samples of a style of writing she has been dabbling in (mildly sexy and/or horrific), and not the way she usually writes. I found them both intriguing and well written.

You can read Which Body Part is the Most Sexy?  here and Sewing here.

Shirley Read-Jahn was born during World War II and educated in England before becoming a hippy and living in an ancient Roman burial tomb in Matala, Crete. She went on to take up many different colourful careers, including swimwear model, interpreter, landscape gardener, paralegal and events organiser. She also co-founded the highly-successful San Francisco Jazz Festival (SFJAZZ) as well as running her own landscape business in the United States. Shirley has belly-danced since her thirties, still plays table-tennis, and now lives in Australia. In retirement, she has finally found time to devote to her passion for writing and the books swirling around in her head. To date, Shirley has published 10 books for children (including illustrating them herself) plus 4 books for adults in the historical fiction and memoir genres. She is currently working on 2 more in both genres.
 
LINKS:
Website: shirleyreadjahn.com
Instagram: @sreadjahn
Twitter (X): @ReadJahn

The first two stories in this year's Fiction Showcase are from Valerie Fletcher Adolph, a loyal supporter of Fred's Blog over the years.

Val explains that she is starting to base a novel on the characters in the first story, Mr Morton's Shoes, and that the second one, The Two Aunts I Never Had, starts out as basic fact but wanders into fiction.

You can read Mr Morton's Shoes here and The Two Aunts I Never Had here.

Welcome to the first submission in the Memoir section of this year's Creative Writing Showcase.

It is all the more special because it is from a newcomer to the writing features on Fred's Blog that have now reached their 10th year.

You can read Elora Canne's inspirational story called Drowned Rat to Triathlete by clicking here.

Elora Canne 

I’m a retired Childcare Educator after 20+ years in the industry. Initially, I thought I’d work in a quiet bookshop café, since I’d done the barista training 3 times over the years, but, of course, COVID happened, and the café industry suffered. I’ve since never gone back to work and have happily embraced the writing life. I also volunteer at our local cat rescue centre and on our local reserve to help control erosion of our foreshore. My husband and I are empty-nesters and live with our fur baby Maisie Moonlight, a Ragdoll kitty.
 
Each day starts and ends with a bit of reading. In between, I’m either hustling the housework, or hassling my husband! Just kidding, he works full-time from home so I make sure we have all our meals together, and the rest of my day is equally idyllic. If I’m not actively pursuing a writing or volunteering project, I love to potter in the garden, try new recipes (I ‘try’ to grow my own herbs), and go for walks amongst the trees, love them.
 
I predominantly enjoy writing about midlife relationships based on my 40+ years of experience together with the same man. Whom I’m still madly in love with. I’ve written a full-length memoir and a mini-memoir detailing our road to relationship success. More recently, however, I’ve turned to a more romcom style of writing, but still in the midlife category.
 
I do have another mini-memoir in progress, however, like the attached 'Drowned Rat to Triathlete' story, it, too, is not relationship centred. It outlines a weekend getaway with my sister to Uluru with surprising spiritual experiences.
 
I love the feeling of contentment putting pen to paper gives me. Giving words to wisdom, if you will.
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