Inkerman Writers
a showcase of our work
Talking Book
Hi everyone
You will be aware that just before Christmas, Inkerman Writers secured £1500 to produce CD ‘talking books’, primarily for the partially-sighted, based on the idea that such products normally rely on out-of-copyright classics or big names and we felt that there was a gap in the market for original fiction. Many thanks in particular to Millie, Alison and Richard (McElheran) for helping to secure our success with the funding.
Well, the pressure is now on and we have received the final paperwork from the funder. There are two key deadlines by which we need to spend the money - end of March for production of the discs, end of April for the launch. Just been with Richard to discuss how we go forward. The situation is this. I have secured a deal with a local company that will allow us to produce 1000 discs for about the same as it would cost us to produce the originally envisaged 500. That means we can send the alloted discs to charities and sell some additional ones for group
The recording will be handled by Richard and he and I have talked about two or three of our writers whose voices are particularly well suited to recording, based in part on the test recordings we made two years ago. Richard and myself will chat further about this when we next meet.
The CD will allow us eight stories if we restrict each one to 1100 words approximately (ten minutes a story). Our proposal is to choose four stories from ‘Tuesday’ and four from ‘Wednesday’. If you are not currently attending courses we will count you as from the night when you did attend.
We need to select the stories by the end of January to allow for recording and post-production in February in time for copying in March. Rather than run through lots of stories in class, the idea is that you let myself or Richard know which stories you have read which you think would fit in well (there is no theme for the CD). They may, for instance, be on our sites (www.inkermanwriters.co.uk and the new one to which we are migrating, www.inkermanwriters.ning.com) or you may have read something you liked in our anthology, A Strawberry in Winter, or heard something in class you really liked. Or you may have a newer piece of your own work you wish people to see, in which case you can pass copies round at class, email them or post them on our ning site. When we reach the cut off point, we will add up which stories have the most recommendations and there are your eight stories.
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About
DfC
The Inkerman Writers are members of Darlington for Culture (DfC), which was set up in 2010 to help save Darlington Arts Centre from closure.
Its members include representatives of arts and community groups.
DfC was established after the centre’s owner, Darlington Borough Council, announced that budget cuts meant that it would have to withdraw its subsidy from the Arts Centre.
Although the centre closed, the organisation remains active - more at www.darlingtonforculture.org
Publications
Welcome to the site created by the Inkerman Writers to showcase our work.
Based in Darlington, North East England, and having celebrated their tenth anniversary in 2013, members have enjoyed success in a variety of arenas, including winning, and being shortlisted and highly commended, in short story competitions, having novels published and publishing the short story anthology A Strawberry in Winter, which can be obtained by visiting the website www.blurb.com
The group's second anthology of short stories, Christophe's Farewell and Other Stories, can be obtained, cost £4.95 plus postage and packing, from
The Inkerman Writers’ latest book, Out of the Shadows, which was launched as part of the 2013 Darlington Arts Festival, is on sale. The book can be ordered direct from
http://www.blurb.co.uk/b/4204019-out-of-the-shadows
The group also produced The Last Waltz, a double CD of short stories, available by contacting deangriss@btinternet.com, cost £5 plus p and p.
Several of our writers wrote original one-act plays in a collaboration with the Green Theatre company, which were performed at Darlington Arts Centre early in February, 2012.
Darlington-based Inkerman Writers have produced their latest anthology of short stories, Inkerman Street, based on the demolition of a fictional northern street and the stories of the people who lived in it.
The book, which features a variety of stories ranging from horror to comedy, was launched to a large audience at the Darlington Arts Festival Literary Day on Saturday May 26 and begins like this:
“Inkerman Street is still and graveyard-hushed tonight, the terraced houses cold behind boarded-up windows, silent sentinels among a sea of wasteland. No one lives here now and tomorrow the bulldozers will move in to flatten the houses to make way for the Council’s Grand Plan.
“Although the people are long gone, the houses still have life. Peek into one of the bedrooms and see on the wall a painting of a seaside scene, brightly-coloured boats bobbing in the harbour, fishermen pipe-smoking in the noonday sun and seagulls wheeling high above the choppy waters. In the roaring silence of the night, you can hear the screeching of the birds and taste the salt air, acrid and herring-sharp at the back of your throat. It is an illusion; the bedroom is empty and the blooms on the faded wallpaper have long since wilted.
“The air in the houses is musty with neglect yet but a few months before, these were bustling homes filled with frying bacon and steaming irons, whistling kettles and playing children. The houses witnessed all these scenes for more than 150 years. Behind their curtains were enacted a thousand stories but tomorrow they will be destroyed because Inkerman Street is the last of its ilk.
“Now, on the eve of the street’s death, the people who once lived here have returned, gathering solemn and silent in the mist, the ghosts of the past come to pay final tribute….”
The anthology can be purchased at http://www.blurb.co.uk/bookstore/invited/7524452/bae89c993c98ec8c8b37b12d6b9b37ecced5dec3
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