Janet Cameron

Time for Everything - Image by Janet Cameron Is it hard to find time to write? Get organised and make it happen. A few small changes can help you to finish what you have started. ‘Life is always so full. Getting and spending we lay waste our powers. Why do we let ourselves be so busy and miss doing things we should have, or would have, liked to do?’ says Alice Munro in her short story, "Powers." Most people make time for what they really want to do, but somehow writing’s different. You want to write. Ideas are sizzling in your head like overdone bacon. But there’s that sense of guilt about taking time off from urgent tasks to do something that pays little or nothing. There’s also the spare room to paint, the bank statements to check and the cooker’s begging for a damn good clean. There are two issues here, the first is practical, the second abstract. (a) Careful planning to garner those extra few hours every week to pursue your creative urges t...

Is it possible to want someone so badly, love someone so strongly, so overwhelmingly, you'd be willing to sell your soul to the devil to have him? This is Mitzi Szereto's own distinctive take on the Faustian legend. Her short story, "Hell is Where the Heart Is," is irreverent with dialogue as sharp as the devil's pitchfork. Szereto is a pioneer of the form and, let's face it, it takes courage to pioneer erotic fiction, so often confused with pornography and sleaze. Copyright: Mitzi Szereto Even people who don't much care for erotica find something to praise in Szereto's work, as Jill Murphy of the Bookbag says in her review of a previous anthology, Dying for it: Tales of Sex and Death , edited by Szereto. "Groan. Erotica is really not my thing... It's all so crass." However, Miss Murphy concedes the book has something to offer, indeed that she loves the Szereto story in the collection. "I enjoyed it mightily," ...