Carol Warham: Patsy Collins - The Travelling Writer.

Welcome to my blog, Patsy Collins. Patsy is a prolific short story writer, having many published in magazines, in many different countries. She has also published a number of short story anthologies and novels.
Patsy and her husband are inveterate travellers. They publish some of their wonderful photographs on social media.
Many of us know Patsy as the editor of Womagwriter blog. She keeps us up to date with the ever changing world of magazines which accept short stories. We are all grateful for the work she puts in, with this blog and with her 'free competitions' blog. I shall let Patsy tell you more about herself.

Thanks for inviting me over, Carol.

I'm Patsy Collins – a short story writer and novelist. Several of my writing friends refer to me as 'the travelling writer'. That nickname is appropriate in several ways. For one thing, my short stories are regularly published in women's magazines in the United Kingdom, Australia, Sweden, Ireland and South Africa. (A few of these stories have been reproduced in themed collections, such as Through The Garden Gate, Slightly SpookyStories I, No Family Secrets and All That Love Stuff. There's also a shorter collection, Not A Drop To Drink, which is available as a free ebook.)

Another way I get about a bit is online. As well as a website and the usual social media, I have two writing related blogs. Womagwriter provides all the official guidelines and news needed by anyone wishing to submit fiction to women's magazines. There's often advice, tips and interviews from those involved in the industry too, plus information on fillers, non-fiction and pocket novels.

My other blog regularly provides links to free to enter writing competitions. I'm very keen on these, partly because my first novel, Escape To The Country, was initially published as a result of my winning one. You can imagine how much that boosted my confidence. Free competitions have also resulted in my work being performed in the House of Commons, read by Jeffrey Archer and A.L. Kennedy, translated into Greek and winning me cake.

The most obvious reason for my travelling writer nickname however is that I do much of my writing in a campervan. My husband is a maritime photographer, so we travel with his work and I use some of the places we visit frequently in my novels. It's great being able to write on location and literally walk in my character's footsteps. So far I've used Portsmouth, the New Forest, Dover and South Wales for novels, and places in Scotland, Sweden, France. I like it so much that Leave Nothing But Footprints is actually set in a campervan... er and involves a photographer. (That doesn't stop people asking me where I get my ideas from!)

The non-fiction book From Story Idea to Reader, was written by me in England, France and Scotland, whilst my co-author Rosemary J. Kind worked on it in Yorkshire and Switzerland. Isn't the internet useful?

I don't just write in the van, I use it to visit writing friends and sometimes to give talks to writing groups or run workshops. (To travel to them, I mean – any events held inside the van would need to be very exclusive and intimate!) It's lovely to meet up with people I know online and that's something I hope to be doing more of this year.

Patsy has provided kindly provided links to her blogs, website and her books. Please go along and have a look.

Through The Garden Gate – getBook.at/GardenGate

Slightly Spooky Stories 1 – getBook.at/SSS1

No Family Secrets – getBook.at/NFS

Alll That Love Stuff - getBook.at/ATLS

Not A Drop To Drin – getBook.at/NotADropToDrink

With Love And Kisses – getbook.at/WLAK

Website – https://patsycollins.uk

Womagwriter – https://womagwriter.blogspot.co.uk

Blog – http://patsy-collins.blogspot.co.uk

Escape to the Country – viewBook.at/EscapeToTheCountry

Leave Nothing But Footprints – myBook.to/LNBF