A special evening presenting prizes to short story competition winners on the Isle of Wight, UK

[Pauline Rowson]

Over seventy people attended the prize giving ceremony last night of the Wight Fair Writers Circle, Winter Short Story Writing Competition in Newport on the Isle of Wight.

 
I was very honoured to be asked to  give a short talk at this wonderful event and to present the prizes to the adult category of the competition at the Castlehold Baptist Church and new reception rooms in Newport.
I'm very grateful to Wightlink who generously sponsored my ferry trip across to the Isle of Wight from the mainland at Portsmouth.  All proceeds from the competition, organised by Carol Bridgestock and the Wight Fair Writers Circle went to the Love Russia Charity, The Multiple Sclerosis Society and The Barely Born Appeal.

I was also delighted to sign copies of my novels, two of which are set on the Isle of Wight, a thriller In For The Kill and an Inspector Andy Horton marine mystery police procedural crime novel, Blood on the Sand. The Suffocating Sea (another Andy Horton crime novel) is also partly based on the Island.

It was a great evening and I was thrilled to see so many young people participating  in the competition and especially an overwhelming number of boys. 

Before I attended the award ceremony I dropped into Waterstones in Newport where I met the manager, Paul and signed copies of my thriller In For The Kill.  I was very proud and pleased to discover this is one of their most popular fiction novels alongside that of fellow thriller writer Robert Goddard.   I promised Paul that I would return to  Waterstones in Newport, hopefully during National Crime Fiction Week in June 2011, an initiative of the Crime Writers Association of which I am a member. More on this in due course.