Showing Tag: "reading" (Show all posts)

Seen and Heard

Posted by K. S. Dearsley on Sunday, August 12, 2018, In : Coming Soon 
What child hasn't wanted to have stories read to them? It doesn't have to be something new, in fact children will happily listen to a favourite story over and over. That love of being told a story or read to, doesn't vanish with childhood. That's why radio and audio books are so popular.
    If you're sight impaired or have tired eyes after a day in front of a computer screen; when you're driving, washing the dishes or carrying out some other task that occupies the hands while leaving the mind...
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Living Language

Posted by K. S. Dearsley on Monday, February 26, 2018, In : Linguistics 
A few days ago, I finished reading a book called Mother Tongue: The English Language by Bill Bryson. A linguistics study of the English language and the foreign, social and cultural influences on it might not sound much of a page-turner, but I found it fascinating.
    There are many facts in it with which to dumbfound your friends at parties, such as how many different ways William Shakespeare spelled his name, but to my mind, what is most interesting is how English has always evolved and ada...
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Think Before You Click

Posted by K. S. Dearsley on Thursday, February 8, 2018,
Those who were born before the millennium might remember a time before computers adorned every desk, even word processors were a rarity, and electric typewriters were the serious writer's best friend. Actually, that's wrong–Tippex was a writer's best friend. More than three mistakes on a page–tippexed or not–and you were advised to start again. Worse still, because you couldn't save your files in umpteen different places or print off a pristine copy whenever you needed it, you had to ma...
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My Lords, Ladies and 11-year-olds...

Posted by K. S. Dearsley on Monday, October 14, 2013,
I've been asked to give a talk about writing to 11 and 12-year-old members of a local school's book club. I'm honoured and terrified. What can I possibly say that will interest them? It's a long time since I was that age–perhaps they'll be interested in what I was reading then, and I still have some of my 'deathless prose' from that period which might not be too embarrassing to show them.
In trying to trace what it was that set me writing initially, I realised that it was reading. I had an ...
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Point of View

Posted by K. S. Dearsley on Sunday, September 23, 2012,
When you return to a place after a gap of years it can seem smaller and far more ordinary than how you remembered it. The same applies to re-reading books. The imaginative tale you remembered can now seem derivative, the creative prose clichéd. It's disappointing, and might deter you from revisiting these old 'friends', however there is an upside. Books that you once found incomprehensible or uninteresting might now reward you if you read them again.  When I first read 'Ping' by Samuel Becke...
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The Fruits of Success

Posted by K. S. Dearsley on Wednesday, June 13, 2012, In : Competitions 
June has been encouraging so far. My story, 'The Adult Prodigy', has been accepted for Nameless magazine; I've had the proofs of 'Heavy Air' for the Bridge House anthology, so that should be out soon; one of my poems, 'Masters of the Air', came fifth in Mary Charman-Smith's competition and another, 'DNA', was shortlisted. I say all this not just to show off, but because it reminded me that sometimes competitions have prize-giving events, and while these are fun, they can also be nerve-wrackin...
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US vs. UK

Posted by K. S. Dearsley on Saturday, March 3, 2012,
When e-publishing is it better to use American English (spellings, vocabulary and grammar) or UK English?  If you're submitting to an e-zine or publisher, they will usually say which they prefer in their guidelines and, if they like your work enough, will correct one or two oversights that might occur if, say, American English isn't your first language.  However, if you're self-publishing you have to decide which one to use–or do you?
There's less risk of making mistakes if you stick to UK ...
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Dear Readers, Readeresses, Readerlings

Posted by K. S. Dearsley on Monday, February 13, 2012,
I recently edited Discord's Child again (the new version is online now), and for the first time I used the proof-read feature on my computer.  It was worth doing.  Every time you make changes to a manuscript you run the risk of making new mistakes, and the more familiar you are with the work, the less likely you are to notice them.  
The computer proof-reader spotted several instances where I'd removed a word and left an extra space, and drew my attention to a tendency to repeat certain phras...
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How to Get Noticed

Posted by K. S. Dearsley on Monday, August 29, 2011,
The best way to promote your work could be to get it featured on BBC's Radio 4.  Recently a spokesperson for Dickens Journals Online (DJO) was on a programme telling the presenter about the organisation's project to get text copies of Households Words and All Year Round online in time for Charles Dickens's bicentenary next January.  Facsimiles of the originals had been scanned using Optical Character Recognition (OCR), but sometimes words were misread or paragraphs were jumbled, so every issu...
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About Me


My writing career began as a freelance feature writer for the local press, businesses and organisations. Now a prize-winning playwright and short story writer, my work has appeared in numerous publications on both sides of the Atlantic. I write as K. S. Dearsley because it saves having to keep repeating my forename, and specialise in fantasy and other speculative genres.

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