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 - 17 January 2012

It's Geoff's project, so he gets himself organised at the hotel then sets out for the abandoned building where his nephew was last heard of. Lisa's playing catch-up so she isn't so organised when she turns up and sees something dangerous starting. Terry hasn't let up the pace in chapter 2.

It's too quiet, and Sophie's ill-matched pair Theodore and Sebastian (call me Seb) don't know where everybody is. The chill really comes when a 999 call rings and rings.

Dan's Red dogs and hummingbirds gave us a couple fighting to experience the good things of life against psychological conditions which seemed to make it a losing battle.

Esther has worries about how she is thought of at school and her inability to tell anybody about the older boy harassing her. Her sole trusted companion is her dog, but a dog can't last for ever. Annie took us through the night when little Kyowa breathed his last.

At the end of part one of Elaine's iron age saga, Mortunda is no longer the centre of attention for the plotters. They do, however, expect to be able to use her as they look to other members of her family.

Andy continued his story of asylum for magical creatures. The elf and the rock troll are safely installed in the police station and now... here come the dwarves.

Notes from meeting - 10 January 2012

We remember Ashron in rather violent surroundings. Now Peter shows him in a serene, ethereal chamber. His spirit merges briefly with a comrade and you remember his death in an earlier chapter.

Jess is drooping, but she's not sure about joining Harris in their little cabin. She distracts herself by dipping into his book again and, as we've seen before, Ruth can send her deeper into a book than most readers can manage.

John took us back to ancient times - Ricardo so convinced of his academic future in the study and divination of sand that he courts the teacher's anger by musing on why Orando finds everything so easy.

The house asserts itself gently, so that by half-way through Hans's short story we have seen people behaving strangely but there is as yet no explanation.

Geoff's latest story began as a piece of serious commentary. He should have known better than even to try - judicial product placement and a sentence of weekly beatings-to-within-an-inch-of-your-life are much more productive ground.

Jill's eyes follow Pete into the ambulance as he deputes himself to help Stiles. Chris's final chapter showed him ready to do something much less charitable, but those eyes have stayed with him and eventually...

Notes from meeting - 3 January 2012

It's Kate and Steve's first fight, over the usual ludicrous cause - tidying the fridge. Unpromising prehaps, but Ed is starting to turn the story round.

Alison is tired, looking forward to a quiet evening rather than the invitation to sit with the boy upstairs. Rose only hinted at what he was like.

Young Bill is posted to a squad he doesn't want to join, but manages to win a camouflage competition on his second day. Then he threw in a pen-portrait of his grandma.

Another Rose painted a series of intriguing scenes. A life story? A mystical experience? "The story is always true," we were told twice. More please.

Harris discovers that young trolls are like other children - they love dinosaurs. Bonetti drives the white van looking like a bouncer on his day off, all - Andy said - to find Rocky and Tergil a safe place to stay.

Notes from meeting - 6 December 2011

OK, you go down to the morgue to identify the body, they pull open one of those huge stainless steel drawers and there she is - a tiny, mutilated fairy. And of course, Andy, you have to leave the elf with her for a quiet moment.

"Take the ugly one alive," bellows the officer, and the three look at each other nonplussed. Simon Goodboy now has a vengeful surprise for the world, and Geoff will tell us soon what it is. Please!

It's probably as well that Jenny changes her look completely before seeing her face in the paper under accusatory headlines. John has her in the company of one strange group who claim to be protecting her from another, much worse group.

How do you live with a voice which has been inside you forever, that claims always to tell the truth, that shows you how far you could go if you only listen? Mark is trying to tell us.

It was Geoff's nephew, among others, who disappeared in the prologue of Terry's new story. And now he's off to investigate, with Lisa following, to be rewarded no doubt by the all-too-certain jeopardy of the willful love interest.

Notes from meeting - 29 November 2011

The hunter has the moose at his mercy, but his vision of the hunt is mingled with flashbacks of his partner Mia and their son Linus. Anders showed him taking out his resentments on the hapless moose.

Peter watches Jenny as she sleeps, then kneels to take advantage of her. She wakes, objects, then has to help him to his feet. Jane has a penchant for uncomfortable scenes.

Ed placed his murderer in the prison laundry again, where she gives away far more than is wise.

Edward struggles to master his magical power, uncertain of how long he might have before the Voice moves again against his sister. Mark's rewrite proceeds.

Fallon's journey to the intersphere has so far been a bloody failure. He does a little historical sight-seeing then finds the object of his quest in monstrous hands which he pursues back to the world of phenomena. Did I get it John?

Notes from meeting - 22 November 2011

Edward is running, trying to hurt himself enough to forget the Voice, which has directed his life from the beginning. He carries so much weight for one so young in Mark's rewrite.

Terry started a new one. Brad and his friends are on a US haunted house tour and break into an old dance hall outside Phoenix. There's nothing inside, but then back in the sun...

Fallon fights one-against-six in a mysterious space between everything and everywhen. John slowed the marshall's perceived time so far that he can give us historical notes on each weapon as he uses it to deadly effect.

Those angels have now attacked Olympus and, while Daliso detailed the slaughter and mayhem, Fortuna goddess of luck goes in Jonathan's solid body to fashion a path for her divine family to come to earth.

Jane and Harris have reached the ferry and she sits back with his personal introduction to monster-hunting. Not for the first time in Ruth's story Jane experiences the book for herself.

Esther is in primary school, and Annie explains that she must be careful with her dolls, hiding them in the hedge. Some people may dislike them and others will envy her such a plump and pretty little baby.

Notes from meeting - 15 November 2011

Dorothy is beginning to hate Cyril and his disdain for her is plain to see. June continues to paint her picture of post-war domestic oppression.

While Hephaestus and Ares gossip about worrying times the angels gathered under Jonathan's reluctant command ready their war zeppelin. Daliso knows how it all hangs together. Honest!

Sophie brought back one of her 100-word stories, with the girl whose brother sleeps with her... and in his grave.

Kate and Steve engage in a little verbal fencing, back in their warm domestic days. Ed is winding up the momentum of his plot. Imperceptibly.

Simon Goodboy remembers the times when his status in life was at least unmiserable. If only Geoff hadn't made him go off to blow up Parliament.

Inspector Harris has left Tergil the elf in interview room 2, hoping to learn something from a look through the one-way glass before he has to go in with his boss to find out what's really going on. Andy's crucified-angel story proceeds.

The escape (to what?) continues as Harris drives Jane towards the ferry. They stop for a meal, she misses the toilet door and Ruth conjures up a room full of bats for her.

Notes from meeting - 8 November 2011

The mother has only negative feelings towards her baby, both before and after birth, and takes extreme measures. But Jane told us in line one exactly what was going to happen.

A man and a woman drive through unfamiliar streets, find their map increasingly useless, then pitch into fire and violence. But what kind of story was Dmitri telling?

Anders took us through the disintegration of a relationship held together by a child. It ends when conversations from a flashback merge into today's pursuit, which is hunting.

We always look forward to something new, but nobody expected to be commenting on Peter's Ebay advert or responding to an invitation to become writer-in-residence (i.e. crew) on his planned boat trip.

Kate's head is not a nice place to be, but for a lifer in her cell there are few options. Ed explored the workings of her mind.

Dan brought a shaft of light into the unremitting gloom of earlier offerings. Ed is determined not to play along with the expected etiquette surrounding opening doors for people, even if it does mean he ends up being carted off in an ambulance.

Esther's dreams do not stop, but they change character as her troubles shift from fear of AIDS to fear of being left alone with a boy she thought she liked. Then Annie held out the possibility of salvation.

How to relax in Andalucia

A posthumous publication

Group news

Three 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.

Nicola Batty's January Raw Meat newsletter is out now.

Nicola is serialising her story The Reluctant Vampire on her blog. The first chapter is here and she's up to chapter twelve (and counting - one a week, so keep up).

Andy Smith (under his pen name Aycy) has won third prize in the national Stepping Stones Nigeria short story competition (every story began with the sentence "In the distance stood Mount Kilimanjaro.").

Dmitri Gallagher's story Shoreline took third prize in the Didsbury Arts Festival short story competition.

Rupan Malakin's story I, Crasbo has been commended in the judging of the Manchester Fiction Prize 2011.