Jean Fullerton: The RNA’s Chapter Liaison

We welcome the lovely Jean Fullerton to the RNA blog. Jean will be taking on our monthly interviews with the RNA chapters. So, if your chapter has not yet been interviewed please get in touch with Jean.

For those who don’t know me I’m Jean Fullerton and I write sagas set in the East End of London but the other hat I wear is that of RNA Chapter Liaison and it’s in that capacity that I’m on the blog today. 

Firstly, let me say how thrilled I am that Elaine has asked me to organise the monthly chapter blog

spot. As many of you will already know I am passionate about the RNA Chapters as I believe they are the backbone of the organisation. With that in mind I thought I’d tell you a little about what I’m hoping to promote over the next year or so. 

As the Chapter Liaison I’ve had the great pleasure of visiting the Norwich, Cambridge, Southern, Exeter, Oxford Leicester, Southern Belle and the Cornish chapters as well as regularly attending my home chapter, the London and SE, in the past twelve months. I’m hoping to drop in on many more before too long. Enjoyable thought it is to have lunch with you all and getting together with different chapters it has also given me some ideas about how we might increase members participating in chapter events.

I’ve proposed a set of chapter guideline and although this may sound very official it is in fact just setting down what many chapters are already doing. However, in addition it will cover things such as financing of events and creating new chapters.

I’d also like to encourage chapters to put on regional activities such as the recent Yorkshire and Chelmsford Chapters’ afternoon teas both of which were a huge success.  By holding such events members who are unable to attend the London based awards and parties can celebrate and network with RNA friends closer to home.

I’m hoping, in conjunction with Alison May our membership secretary, to assist members to locate their nearest chapter and set up a buddy system so new members can link to a long standing member to allay the anxiety of turning up to a meeting and not knowing anyone. To this end I’m looking at ways of contacting all members to provide details of their local chapter.

However, I won’t be doing all the work as I’m looking for chapters to write an account of their news and activities for the RNA blog.  Watch out for an email from me popping into your inbox.

Please feel free to contact me on writetojean@jeanfullerton.com with any suggestions or queries about the RNA chapters as I’m more than happy to help.

Thank you, Jean. We look forward to your monthly bulletins and interviews.

If you would like to write for the RNA blog please contact us on elaineeverest@aol.com

COMPETITION MONTHLY!

We are thrilled to announce a new series for the RNA blog. Each month our Competition Monthly will bring news of writing competitions that we hope will appeal to members. We’ve invited Francesca Burgess to compile our list. Thank you, Francesca. Over to you…

Writing a novel is a long undertaking and it can take a while to reap any rewards. For this reason I like to enter short story competitions. These have the potential to earn you some interim money as well as boost your confidence. It also gives you something different to write if you're sick of you current WIP (and we all go through that stage!). As they say, a change is as good as a rest. As for novel comps, they're another avenue for your book, or something to put on your CV if the prize you win isn't publication.

Here's a tip, which I know shouldn't need saying but having judged comps myself I know does need saying: always read the rules and conditions several times. I like to print up or photocopy the 'how to enter' page and tick off each item as I do it. That way I know I've done all they want of me.

**Closing soon** The Caledonian Novel Award. Any genre for adults or young adults, at least 50,000 words. Unpublished novelists only but can have an agent. First prize: £1,000. C/D 1November 2015. Entry £20. Link to details

The Times/Chicken House Children's Fiction Competition 2015. Novels for 7-to-18-year-olds. First prize: worldwide publishing deal, advance of £10,000 (subject to contract). C/D 18 December. Entry £10. Link to details

Magic Oxygen Literary Prize for short stories up to 4,000 words and poetry up to 50 lines. Open theme. Prizes £1000/£300/£100/2x£50. C/D 31 December 2015. Entry £5.

Link to details

The Henshaw Short Story Competition for short stories up to 2,000 words. Open theme. Prizes £100/£50/£25. C/D 31 December 2015. Entry £5.  Link to details

The Writers' Bureau Short Story Competition for short stories up to 2,000 words. Open theme. Prizes £300/£200/£100/£50 + publication + free WB course. C/D 30 Nov 2015. Entry £5.  Link to details

Francesca Burgess has been placed or shortlisted in a number of competitions including Twyford Writers, Winchester Writers' Conference, Chorley and District Writers' Circle, Cordelia.net, Flash a Famous Phrase, Meridian Writing and those run by Writers' News and Writing Magazine. She's had stories published in magazines worldwide and in three anthologies, including Diamonds and Pearls. She's been a member of the RNA New Writers' Scheme for five years.

Contact:

Twitter

Writing Biog

 Blog

If you are organising a writing competition please send details to Francesca via the comments section on the blog.

Thank you, Francesca. We look forward to next month’s ‘Competition Monthly’.

The RNA blog is brought to you by,

Elaine Everest & Natalie Kleinman

If you would like to write for the blog please contact us on elaineeverest@aol.com

Hazel Gaynor: A Memory of Violets

Today we welcome, Hazel Gaynor to the RNA blog to tell us something of the research into her latest book.

Roses are pink …

The idea for A MEMORY OF VIOLETS was first planted back in 1988, when I was seventeen years old and played the role of Eliza Doolittle in the school production of My Fair Lady. There was something about this character and about London in 1912 that really struck a chord with me. Many years later, I started to write notes for a novel set around London’s flower sellers, and began to research street life in the early 1900s in the hope of discovering the real Eliza Doolittles. I was

astonished to learn just how many young children and women were selling flowers and watercress, many of whom were orphaned, blind or physically disabled.

 

Early in my research, I discovered the fascinating history of Christian preacher and philanthropist, John Groom. Groom wanted to find a way to help the flower sellers who sold bunches of flowers and watercress on the streets near his Clerkenwell home. He established the Watercress and Flower Girls Mission (commonly known as the ‘crippleage’) housing the young women in a row of terraced houses in a street in Clerkenwell, North West London and establishing an orphanage in Clacton for the youngest children.

 

With a dozen occupants in each home, under the care of a Housemother, these women and young girls lived and worked together making artificial flowers in a nearby factory. It took them off the streets, gave them employment that wasn’t dependent on the seasons or the weather, and improved their quality of life immeasurably. The artificial flowers produced were mostly sold to the wealthy to decorate their homes, but the work of the ‘Flower Girls’ was eventually noticed by the Dowager Queen, Alexandra of Denmark (widow of King Edward VII).

 

Queen Alexandra was to commemorate fifty years since she had first arrived in England from her native Denmark and rather than the usual processional drive through London, she wanted to use the occasion to raise funds for the city’s hospitals. Aware of the work of the girls at Groom’s ‘crippleage’ she commissioned them to make thousands of artificial pink roses for buttonholes which would be sold all over London.

The event on 26^th June, 1912, was a huge success, supported by a thousand titled ladies who took to the streets to sell the roses. As The Times reported of the event, ‘the most noticeable sight was the enormous number of men who wore [a rose]. In the City and West End, at any rate, nearly every second men had at least one bloom and often had two or three in one buttonhole.‘ In total, over £30,000 was raised for charity (several million pounds in today’s equivalent). This was the very first ‘flag’ day of its kind, known as Queen Alexandra Rose Day, and the capital had never seen anything like it.

 

From its inauguration, Alexandra Rose Day became an annual event in London and was greatly supported for one hundred years. The flower girls also went on to make some of the first poppies for the Royal British Legion after the Great War. Although ‘Rose Day’ is no longer held annually, Alexandra Rose Charities is still running today, and from 2013 has focused on food-related issues affecting lower-income families. The charity’s Patron is Princess Alexandra, the Honourable Lady Ogilvy – great granddaughter of Queen Alexandra of Denmark. John Groom’s work also continues to this day under the organisation known as Livability, the UK’s largest Christian disability charity. Her Royal Highness, The Princess Royal, is the charity’s patron.

 

As we approach the annual Daffodil Day on March 27^th (an annual fundraising event for Marie Curie Cancer Care in the UK and the Irish Cancer Society in Ireland), I will think about the blind, crippled and orphaned girls and young women who made those first little pink Alexandra roses, and started the concept of selling artificial flowers for charities. It is quite incredible to think that their legacy lives on over one hundred years later.

 

To get involved with Daffodil day, contact

 http://www.mariecurie.org.uk/en-GB/events/ in the UK.  

http://www.cancer.ie/get-involved in Ireland.
 

Link to hazel’s blog: http://www.hazelgaynor.com/books/memory-of-violets/
 

Thank you, Hazel for the informative insight into the world of the flower girls.
 

The RNA blog is brought to you by,

Elaine Everest & Natalie Kleinman

If you would like to write for the blog please contact us on elaineeverest@aol.com