17th April 2025 – Wylye Valley Writers

The readers at our 17th April 2025 meeting:

William read his story Absence concerning two men searching a room for clues about a missing woman.
William spent his early childhood and schooling near Salisbury and has lived in Steeple Langford for the last twenty-eight years. He spent the best part of a decade as a student, but then had to do real work, firstly as an engineer and later as a management consultant.
William has always been fascinated by everything to do with space and has been a life-long science fiction fan. He created his first book at the age of eleven from newspaper reports on the Apollo Ten mission. He heard ‘the Eagle has landed’ late at night while on scout camp in Grovely Wood. More recently he has written a trilogy of novels about the first human voyage to another star system, and discovered he wants to be a spaceship designer when he grows up.
Work on his next novel, concerning the recovery of an alien spaceship seems to have ground to a halt like the vessel in question, but he hopes it will be revived when he discovers where it is.

Reena read an extract from her fantasy novel in progress with the working title of Flower of Truth. It concerned a young woman wishing to break away from the stifling conformity being forced on her.
When Reena was a little girl in Malaysia, she would open crisp pages and immersed herself in enchanted forests, where animals could speak. Her grandmother’s raspy voice would transport her on Hindu mythical beings to ancients lands, where deities and devotees coexisted.
A fire ignited within her… she wanted to create such worlds too. Alas, the older she got, this boring, practical world got the better of her. She went to school, got her degrees in psychology and MBA, pursued a corporate career in the Asia Pacific to pay her bills … all the while supressing that burning desire within. Until she couldn’t do it no longer.
Now when she stares off into space for hours at a time, she’s actually tapping into her imagination, writing her first novel. She is working with an incredible coach, who’ll comb through thousands of words to pull out the gold nuggets, and is supported by her husband and wonderful writing friends, who have encouraged her to stop lurking in the shadows and come out to share her work…

Brian read his short story Utopia which featured a retired music mogul holed up on his own Island but still obsessed by the need to end the silence, the story morphing into the music that haunts him.
Originally from Ireland, Brian worked in publishing in London for a number of years, then moved to the countryside and now lives in Wilton.
He has written for local newspapers and magazines as a theatre and book reviewer and as a freelance journalist, including an article on one of these Wylye Valley Writers reading events.
Subsequently, he took part in the Wylye Valley Writers writing course.
Brian is a founding member of the Salisbury Fringe group which held an annual weekend festival showcasing new writing for theatre. He has had a number of short plays performed.

Carol read an extract from her recently published novel where the police receive an unfriendly welcome when visiting a scrap dealer.
Carol was raised in a small village in the New Forest, where her novels are set. She has always loved all things ‘animal’ and is particularly keen on horses. She has happily ridden miles across the open heaths and lawns of the forest on a variety of horses and has less happily walked home on her own when she has fallen off and not kept hold of the reins.
Married to a farmer and raising their own family, she became suitably adept as a lamb feeder, pig herd, substitute fence when the cows got out and other things that are not suitable to put on her CV!
When they retired from farming Carol began writing fiction. After some success with short stories and plays she decided to try her hand at full length crime fiction. She has recently signed a three-book deal with a publisher, and her first two novels Murder in the New Forest and Straw in the Wind have both topped Amazon’s best seller lists for crime fiction. Her third novel will be published later this year.

Peter read an extract from his book The Detainee. An American meditates on his past, where he had “a perfectly respectable career working for the biggest criminal in town”, and how others now respond to him.
Peter returned to his hometown of Salisbury some years ago after spending ten years in Sydney, and another twenty in London. He’s written most of his life, being encouraged on this course at the tender age of thirteen by his English teacher, who, after reading one of his compositions said, ‘It’s a load of rubbish, but very well written’.
His first published work was poetry, then sit-com for Australian TV and Channel 4, and drama for BBC and South African radio.
The Detainee has had a long history. First written in 1998, it gained no success at all and was rewritten in 2008. Once again, things didn’t look that promising, but finally, in 2014, not only was it published, it became the first part of a trilogy. And suddenly, everything changed. He spent three years going back and forth to Hollywood after it was optioned over there, and when that finally fell through, the option was then taken up by a British film company.
All this seems to take an indecent amount of time, but Peter’s looking forward to being the richest man in the old folks’ home.

Photographs on this page by John Bruce, lightanddarker.com