The Original Writers Group

Check the calendar for meeting, events and writing competitions. Please note that the writing competition dates are always the closing dates for entering.

Look out for the OWG sign when you arrive at the Battersea Arts Centre.

Original Writers Radio goes live!

Attached is an audio boo excerpt from Melissa Dougherty Anderson's latest novel, London Cowgirl, the story of a 15 year old girl who has just moved to London from America.  It is a tale of teenage angst, overcoming fears, english horse back riding, and a first crush. Visit Melissa's page to give your feedback.

For more information on setting up your own audioblog account go to audioboo.fm and start posting your stories!

The Writers Workshop Evening
Everything is settling into a routine here at the Battersea Arts Centre. We have found our feet.

By which I mean, we have a format. There is a room for those who want to read and plenty of space for those who want to write. So choose your poison.

The order of events is that we always meet up in our designated room at the beginning of the evening and I quickly separate everyone into groups. We are still keeping the Reading groups to around seven max. It seems to work best that way. And those of us that want to write -- there are plenty of spaces around the BAC. Then come nine o'clock we all meet up in the bar.

It is a good format and seems to work well. As I have said in the past, do bring your work, from working on finished pieces of writing, brainstorming ideas, develop notes, even readings from favourite authors. You can try anything and learn everything.

The Original Writers Readers Group

I am setting up a Readers Group for our members.  If you would like to be part of this, then please respond to the OWG Book Group forum.

Bobbie Darbyshire's 'Truth Games' and 'Love, Revenge & Buttered Scones'
If you pass a bookshop, be sure to pop in and ask them to order up one of Bobbie's two novels: Truth Games and Love, Revenge & Buttered Scones


Truth Games (2009) is a serious comedy about sex in 70s London. After the hippies and before the yuppies, between the advent of the Pill and the onset of AIDS, between the 'summer of love' and the 'winter of discontent', the newest game in town was sex.

Love, Revenge & Buttered Scones (2010) is a page-turning comedy of errors that plays with truth and illusion. An innocent meeting of a reading group sparks a series of bizarre events. Three troubled people, driven by loneliness, vanity and revenge, hurl themselves on Inverness public library to find that nothing is as they expect.

"Fantastic story telling, with wonderful characters who you soon feel you’ve known for ever. Set in the 1970s between the advent of the pill and the onset of aids, Truth Games explores the complex relationships between a group of friends in the long hot summers of 75 and 76 and the winter in between. Cleverly observed, the book has laugh out loud moments interspersed by episodes that challenge you to examine your own behaviour when dealing with close friends and those not so close. For those who remember the 70s Bobbie Darbyshire conjurs up lots of memories, from the clothes we wore, to the things we ate and the parties we threw. For those who don’t remember the 70s don’t be put off. There’s as much here that’s as relelvant today as it was back then. The nature of friendship and fidelity between friends as well as between partners. Page turning stuff. Thoroughly deserves a 5 star rating!" Posted on Waterstones Website

Colin Macintyre's 'City Awakenings' Released Dec 2011

Congratulations to Colin on releasing his new album "City Awakenings". The Guardian's Mark Beaumont gave it four stars out of five and wrote "Don't call it a reunion: although it's been seven years since the last Mull Historical Society album This Is Hope, they were always the cover for one man's work, Hebridean alt-pop eccentric Colin MacIntyre. Mull's early albums stood out for their charming melodic oddities – MacIntyre played "seagulls", sampled tube announcements and favoured dog-in-wig artwork – and for his air of the parochial and unusual, coming across on stage like a faintly psychopathic Father Dougal. That sense of sanitarium serenade still lingers at tonight's mainland comeback show – MacIntyre tells of the great-grandmother who claims she saw John Wayne on Balamory's high street and digs out early track Public Service Announcer, a song about "considering mass contamination of British Telecom" built on a telephone ring rhythm.

But thankfully his demons seem vanquished; the material from new album City Awakenings is largely bereft of that bristling mania, instead awash with comfort, joy and metropolitan dazzle. With their early period touches of quirky folktronica nabbed and vastly upscaled by Tom Vek and Patrick Wolf, the modern Mull embrace simplicity: the lushness of Thameslink or the life-affirming pop of The Lights and Watching Xanadu, which, 10 years on, is still the catchiest tribute ever written to a 1980 Olivia Newton-John film about roller-skating Olympian muses.

MacIntyre exudes the inclusiveness of island life, too. When he phones his sick uncle to dedicate You Can Get Better to him or plays a solo ballad about his great-grandfather lost to the first world war without knowing he was a father-to-be, we're absorbed into his extended family as if Bush Hall has become a sub-branch of Mull post office. By the time the mariachi signature song Mull Historical Society entreats London to "Join us!", we are queueing up to renew our memberships."

John Rico's Border Crosser

Congratulations to Johnny on the publication of his book 'Border Crosser' published this June by Ballantine Books.

“A timeless story of confounded youth and its eternal struggle for meaning, this book may well signal the birth of a titanic new voice. . . . [Rico’s] precise, evocative prose balances pathos and humor with an almost destructive compulsion for honesty and so much frustrated wit that, even at his most naked and sensitive, he holds nothing sacred.” Publishers Weekly

The Word Association

Two of our members, Joanna Swainson and Nicholas Russell-Pavier , have set up a Literary Consultancy called The Word Association. Many of you know Joanna and Nicholas as enthusiastic OWG members. Joanna's experience working for a number of literary agents and Nicholas' years as a film and radio producer means that they bring a fresh and honest eye to the sticky business of getting your work published.