First off I wanted to thank everybody who entered our Inaugural ‘First Line’ Short Story Competition. I was suitably impressed with the response, enough so that I will hold another, but more of that later.

Well, with less that three weeks to the closing date of the Writing to Inspire ‘First Line’ Short Story competition, I delighted to say that the entries are rolling in at a steady and consistent pace.

Why do you select to read one book or story over another?

Although there are many places to start when you first decide you want to write fiction, this is one way that I regularly recommend.

There is, believe it or not, a competition in the US for the worst first sentence of a novel. It’s called the …