South Manchester Writers' Workshop is a creative writing group based in Didsbury. We are open to writers of all types - novels, plays, poetry, short stories...

Notes from meeting - 15 May 2012

Jess's fascination with Harris blossoms when he challenges her to a swim under dark skies. He supports her as the sea makes her feel weightless. Ruth likes these ambiguous relationships.

Solomon lives on the hill, tending his plot, and is now intent on preparing a good, if meagre, feast for his visiting Auntie Erica. There is pride in his achievements at school, as Annie's Tanzanian tapestry grows.

In Martin's world the Northlands are at a disadvantage to the Brits, and our second narrator wastes no time in telling us. And yet she feels it necessary to strike out for the hated London.

Edward runs - hard - to keep his devils at bay, and in his case one of them is THE devil. The immediate reason for his exertion is his father's cruelty to his sister. Mark's rewrite continues.

It's late, and our hero stirs himself to go out and sweep the streets clean of the human scum which infests them. We may of course quarrel with his choice of victims and his methods, as John's Chavkiller cuts a swathe through the gang with rifle and car bonnet.

Notes from meeting - 8 May 2012

Ten-year-old Edward is having his future and that of the world fought over as he holds his tiny sister protectively. Dark magic surges within him as heavily loaded light magic is wielded over his sister. Mark's dark fantasy gets going again.

Brendan's ghostly visitor starts to bring a friend, and things get a bit nasty. His fear mounts, day to day, until he wakes up in hospital having had a brain tumour removed. So that's all right, isn't it Peter?

Ann's impossible narrator Penny thinks she's a heroine who always knew more than her teachers but doesn't seem to be able to string two worms together. A tale of transparent trousers continues.

Martin pushes his narrator further into the Victorian asylum. He finds a strange oasis of calm and control around his interviewee. Murray dismisses his doctor and begins to explain.

In the far past, Ricardo talks with the far-seer. She tells him that she pursues the thief of the Minutes, who draws in Fallon, Elmore and many others in the 21st century world. John continues to build his structure over space and time and philosophy.

Notes from meeting - 1 May 2012

Bill takes himself off to a church hall for a creative writing session which turns out to be a misunderstood calligraphy demonstration. The disappointed scribblers get a fascinating day and a good meal out of it.

Queen Claudine goes to Lundy, and in her inimitable way manages to keep her hangers-on running around after her and also lose most of their clothes down the throats of goats. Rebecca was trying a new approach.

"Whatever it takes" seeems to be the theme of Daliso's script. Everything is rehearsed to within an inch of it's life, and the motivation is wobbling, then the potential funders turn out to know more than is comfortable.

Inspector Harris has seen some creatures in the last few days, but he's momentarily silenced by the willowy blonde in front of him. The willowy blonde centaur warrior that is. I think Andy's enjoying himself.

John switched his attention to the baddies in his mystical-political thriller. An agent is briefed to travel to England to find out more about fugitive Jenny, and perhaps find her.

Harris is oblivious to Jess's reaction when she hears that he has read her teenage story, a story that she invested a lot of herself in and still enters from time to time. Ruth is setting up a personal conflict to go with the occasional monster attack.

Notes from meeting - 24 April 2012

Back to the beginning again for Mark. Edward is ten and the devil has designs on his future and that of his sister. There is help at hand, but it will always have to be Edward's choice.

Jess is exultant and Harris is confident as he comes near to his Mediterranean target, but they are not communicating well, so that Ruth's lead character has shifting ideas of her feelings.

A short from John - a bit of sexism and geekery at a ufology conference followed by a twist that was absolutely obvious... except for all the moments before it came.

Peter gave us two men, just two of the residents of a house with a history, with one telling the other's story. When a ghost comes closer every day you fear the worst.

Henry wants to rekindle old reading habits, walks into a dark, seedy bookshop waiting for something to leap out and grab him. Which it does, more physically than expected, in part 2 of Dmitri's story of existence over centuries.

Notes from meeting - 17 April 2012

Geoff's tale of Simon Goodboy has only a little distance to go, but he can still throw in a melodramatic intrusion - ambulance services called for a TV star who can't handle the lack of mirrors in the room.

Mother flatters Harriet and I can only watch as my new love gets her feet well under the table. Dan's latest story was funny, sexy and disquieting.

Sam took us back to hell, where his hero and Streak the dog face an impossible battle against hellhounds who regenerate - sometimes many times - when they are killed.

Goodluck is in intensive care. Asia and Caroline come to visit him, or at least they come into his mind, but he cannot put out of his mind the £20,000 he once held in his hand. The strands of Annie's tale continue in parallel.

Dmitri introduced a new character. Henry lives in a world of fags, depression and strange influences like his fear of travelling on the upper deck of a bus. Yet he can still contrive to surprise his watcher, who has plans for him.

Harris wants to be alone to think, and also to keep at least a few cards close to his chest. Both are going to be difficult, due to an uncertain relationship with Cassandra and no control over Malbus the crow. And then Andy placed somebody new in his front room.

Jenny and Karl are back in the flat, and negotiating trust. She is at a disadvantage - if she leaves without protection she runs the risk of being picked up by the German murder squad. John has set up a complex and tense plot.

Notes from meeting - 10 April 2012

Mr Lemon scuffs his boots along the river bank and Paul and Andrew observe him unseen from a tree. Chris gave us a snippet of his new first chapter.

The pugilants tool up to finish Fallon off, looking like high-class gangsters as they pull onto the motorway. All the rules and instincts of John's world forbid Fallon to be noticed, but when four heavies point their guns at him, what else is there to do but to contrive a conflagration?

And so to the Greater Manchester Police HQ - Harris and Bonetti with Cassandra in tow and Malbus in a padded box. Andy had the Chief Constable set Harris up to handle the whole magic investigation - and the blame.

Edward fights his doubts before venturing out into the cold and dark for his first lesson in power from John, and Mark has yet to reveal the man's identity to his protagonist.

Peter's latest poem concerned untimely deaths which John and Mary have suffered and ended with - perhaps - the merest hint of another on the way.

Notes from meeting - 3 April 2012

Jenny is playing her role with some conviction - hardly surprising, since disguise is one of the few things keeping her out of the hands of the police. One of the others is Karl, her "host" who now tells her more about his organisation, in John's German thriller.

Have you finished with that annoying white wizard, asks the ever-present voice? He won't do you any good, because I'll give you your head and you'll still do exactly what I want. Mark made Edward's position painfully clear.

Andy's policeman Harris is wondering how much information he can entrust to his new magic "advisor" Cassandra when Malbus the supposedly dead crow bowls in and immediately tells all.

Without some unknown form of outside interference Oak and Fuschia are stymied, but when the gate captain is somehow spooked then disabled they take their chance. Much shape-shifting slaughter later they are on the other side of the gate. Almost free, you might think, but Peter 1 doesn't usually make things that simple.

New voice Ann gave us the autobiography of a pop wife, whose husband's glittering career would have been nowhere without her muse. And it's not only she who says so... maybe.

Peter 2 had a brief poem - a man contemplating love in mystic terms.

Why isn't Ruth's monster hunter as scared and angry as his companion Jess? After all, they've just survived a kraken attack. But he is smiling, which makes her even more mad. He was losing faith in these things, and now he's feeling justified and focussed.

Notes from meeting - 27 March 2012

No matches after the last time, is Jenny's message to her brother, but she finds herself falling in with his resentment of their violent father... and his plans. As they wait for the fire engines, is his madness in her? A short, short story from Rose.

Kate can take it no longer and heads for the moors to bury herself in nothing. Ed's murderer's flashbacks may be getting a bit closer to the act itself.

Peter 1 gave us an answer back to Milton's lament on blindness, basically telling him to stop feeling sorry for himself and do what he'd good at.

The circle game is already out of Nick's control, but now Jason takes over, humiliating his classmates with his memories of their futures. And Dmitri is beginning to convince us that the boy really knows.

Hans revisited his story Blood dream, in which Mike has a recurring violent dream. Can he beat it, or will it bring him down?

Evelyn and Oscar walk on the beach, their intimacy informed by an unspecified history. Christine's opening chapter was narrated by an observer from their future.

It's strange to be a warrior without a spirit, muses Ashron as he shares a drink with his friends in the afterworld. Peter 2 has a world to construct, plus at least one theology.

Notes from meeting - 20 March 2012

Aunt Juliet died quickly in the end, and perhaps her husband can be forgiven his drinking this time. Annie continued Esther's story of growing up in East Africa.

Sam put his hero in hell, creeping through the caverns, unknown as yet to the powers that be. He happens upon another visitor who starts to tell him what the system is.

Nick is haunted by a twenty-five-year-old memory, a schoolfriend who seems to be reincarnated in his own class. Dmitri showed us a teacher losing control.

Peter's shapeshifters have removed their friend from the torture chamber, and now have only to get their mind-frozen helpers across the temple yard... and through a heavily guarded gate.

Geoff's poem about homosexuality was very funny. Some thought it deep as well.

And so to Chorlton to find a witch. Harris and Bonetti need some serious information to help in their investigation of mystical goings-on. And also, Andy told us, to keep them away from reporters and the chief constable.

Ricardo is on an errand to the farseer and views the images on the wall. Is it his viewing which wakes the pictures up, so that he can see a dynamic representation of the far future? John's ancient world takes shape a little more.

Notes from meeting - 13 March 2012

If you can't satisfy me ask Simon, says Andrea. He's got five kids. But her husband gets no help from his friend, any more than he does from porn, guilt and fear of the messages that come up on his screen. Another short from Dan.

They've left the scene-of-crime and forensic people to sweep up the slaughtered centaurs, and now Tergil the elf faces Inspector Harris across his desk and promises to cut the small talk. But Andy doesn't tell us whether we can believe him this time.

Martin's first offering was a dark wander through an archaic mental hospital, with the narrator about to meet a man guilty of some as yet unspecified horror.

Simon Goodboy's tormentors are a day early for his weekly beating-to-within-an-inch-of-his-life, and they bring what might be good news, but again Geoff didn't help us know whether we could believe that.

I like to get really close, so I can see the surprise in their eyes at the first punch, says Hans's bar stalker. That first punch leads to many others, and tonight's victim is still there in the morning.

Ricardo has an errand to the Lodge of Ephemeral Arts, but is distracted by two of its members playing a complex board game which somehow represents the critical arts. This young denizen of John's imagined world is disturbed that he now knows much but has never done anything.

Peter has imagined more than one world. Back in heaven, Ashron finds that the door to his crystal palace will not show itself to him. His recent dealings in the realm of time and life have tainted him and he needs cleansing.

Notes from meeting - 6 March 2012

Bill gave us another slice of his own past and some deeper history - the Moravian settlement in Fairfield. He's been a strong character for eight decades.

Daliso returned from his travels with a small script - Love and Oatmeal. This tale of unexpected sexual trigger words had us rolling in the aisles.

Kate has had a brush with the prison's jungle authority, can't stay in her cell so has to flaunt her black eye. Ed's story has just about turned the corner.

David gave us a poem on a Scotsman's sympathy with Irish enjoyments, another on the early death of a family member and a third on a lost car at a festival.

Jess and Harris are stuck in Denmark for a night before their monster hunt can continue to Norway. Ruth put them in a little boat, crossing the harbour to those little islands out there... and the hunters become the hunted.

Esther is in Dar es Salaam, studying law and living with her Aunt Juliet. Her uncle has a weakness for the booze and recruits many accomplices to run for supplies. As Annie took her through her aunt's illness and decline, Esther recognises her own - different - weaknesses.

Notes from meeting - 28 February 2012

Nick is back at school and trying to hold it together, but Jason sits in front of him, an unavoidable reminder of... what? When Dmitri's teacher has to clear his class on discovering the source of that disgusting smell, he begins to remember.

Jess tries to get in between Harris and the mysterious Sonia, to make him see sense, to turn the boat back. Even when Ruth plucks him from the sudden whirlpool you can't be sure of the future.

It's 1950 and I'm off to Porton Down with my friend Simon. I'm blase but he is apprehensive. Rose gave us a personal gloss on a post-war horror story.

Sam's protagonist is also unnamed. We know his brother and some of his friends and the girl he'd like to think is important but most of this is about the speed and flickering attention of a young boy's life.

Oak and Fuschia reach the end of their journey. Shape-shifting is not an option so good old-fashioned disguise will have to do. And yet Peter's rescue mission goes unexpectedly well - someone has been there before and neutralised the guards.

Mark's grey wizard has challenges for Edward. His sister is not the only possible saviour of the world but she is the one currently the focus of attention, which is why the dark forces are massing.

Relaxing in Andalucia - review

A posthumous publication

Group news

A new story in the Foundling Review for young Rupan Malakin. Look here.

Four novels and a book of stories developed at the group are available in a Kindle edition: Ruth Estevez's Erosion is available here and Marie Antoinette by Ed Wilson is here. Teresa Maudlin has Illusions of Grandeur and Reflection of a Rainbow and Chris Gill has Egotist.

Nicola Batty's extraordinary online publication campaign continues. Her personal newsletter - Raw Meat - is always here.