In October we partnered with The Literary Consultancy to offer an exciting opportunity to writers in the East of England who felt that their writing needed some tender love and care. TLC Free Reads gives talented writers honest, constructive feedback on their work from industry professionals for free; providing them with a framework for improvement and helping them to progress their writing.
The Literary Consultancy is the UK’s leading manuscript appraisal service. They can advise writers whether their piece of work is suitable for a commercial literary marketplace, and if so, will help them to discover a suitable agent and publisher. TLC can also provide information about self-publishing and the alternatives that online publishing can provide.
TLC Free Reads is open to writers of prose (fiction, children’s, narrative non-fiction and short stories), poetry, and scripts for TV, Film, Radio or Theatre.
Our winners are announced below – congratulations to all and we look forward to hearing more from you in future!
TLC is funded by Arts Council England.
TLC Free Reads 2015 winners
Rick Roydes, Patriot (short story)
I am a young writer from Norwich. My writing vocation was ‘guaranteed’ just moments into a science fiction radio programme early into my Primary School career. In Middle School teachers would joke that I was not so good at maths but I could tell a story’ Migrating from city to small town, I began reading fiction and studying geography including New Literatures in English such as Sam Selvon.
I have been described as modern with raw talent. I believe that stories are everything from politics to moral fables, to fairy tales. To quote Sheryl Crow I am searching for ‘an intimate moment with the [reader].’
There have always been story tellers and thank God there always will be.
Patriot
Patriot is an intriguing story exploring paranoia in an unnamed, future country approaching two minutes to midnight on the nuclear doomsday clock. The main character, Kyle, is employed as a computer technician in a military silo housing 100 nuclear missiles. The story explores Kyle rising above the nationalism of the post war state through the world size love that he feels for his daughter.
Highlights of the story include a rebellious psychiatrist, plus Kyle and his daughter confronting the dangerously political Patriots and his careful explanation that the men were ‘good really’ but often ‘got it wrong’ arresting innocent people.
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