Share your writing success stories. If you subscribe to Writing Magazine and would like to feature here, email Tina Jackson, tjackson@warnersgroup.co.uk

MARCO MAKES HIS MARK

‘During my six-year apprenticeship learning the conventions of writing fiction, I wrote a 60,000-word children’s story involving talking animals,’ writes subscriber Paul Purnell.

‘After an excellent critique and feedback from the service offered by Writing Magazine, I learnt that anthropomorphology was not popular in the UK. In any event, my story was not publishable in its current state.

‘I shut the incessantly talking animals in a cupboard and set out on another children’s adventure with twelve-year-old Marco from the island of Malta. With my passion for the sea and marine creatures, plus my knowledge of Malta having lived there as a child, I was compelled to have the story unfold in the Mediterranean Sea.

‘Under the expert eye and tutelage of Gary Dalkin, editor and regular contributor to Writing Magazine, my manuscript was turned into a publishable fantasy for ages seven and upwards.

‘Whilst living rough amongst the rocks of Paradise Bay, Marco overhears two men conspiring to plunder the unusual treasure from a shipwreck. The robbers are unaware that doing so will trigger a catastrophic event in the Mediterranean Sea.

‘You may not be aware that the Med has a mermaid police service similar to that of the UK. Marco and a young mermaid, Lois, inform the chief of police. She dismisses the information as being a figment of Marco’s over-imagination. ‘Marco and Lois formulate their own plan to prevent the divers reaching the wreck. They have 48 hours to journey the treacherous underwater route from Malta to Sardinia to fetch help. Time is tight but that is the least of their problems…

‘An American summed up her review by saying: “With Purnell’s wonderful imagination and sense of humour Marco and the Pharaoh’s Curse becomes one of the most original and enjoyable tales of the sea I’ve ever read.”‘ It’s available on Amazon: writ.rs/purnellbook.’

Animal antics

‘My life has been enriched by the variety of animals I’ve encountered over the years,’ writes subscriber Malcolm Welshman.

‘When I embarked on writing the fourth in my vet series about a young vet, Paul Mitchell, in his early days in practice, I found I was bringing in so much autobiographical material that I suddenly had a light-bulb moment and decided I should switch to a memoir.

‘That was last year, and during that time I recrafted the book, bringing in encounters that I had as a lad growing up in Nigeria. The biggest spur to doing so was to discover, lurking in the bottom of a chest full of yellowing, old scripts, one about Poucher, the African bush dog that we owned. I’d completely forgotten about it; and sat curled up alongside that chest, to immerse myself in what I’d written over fifteen years ago.

I was flabbergasted to relive some amazing adventures with that dog. Being protected by her from a savage attack by marauding baboons. The two mammy wagons that careered down a narrow road and shunted our Land Rover into a ravine. Only minutes earlier, my mum had been sitting in the vehicle; and it was only the warning barks from Poucher that alerted her to scramble out in the nick of time.