A group of up-and-coming authors have benefited from a career boost, thanks to an award scheme that helps them to prepare their stories for publication. Read samples of their work and see if you can spot the next Iain Banks or Alexander McCall Smith.

The Scottish Book Trust’s annual New Writers Awards provide a showcase for would-be writers from across Scotland, with each winner receiving a cash prize and a package of expert support to help them develop their work.

Several alumni have gone on to become published writers, including Wayne Price, one of the 2010/11 prize-winners, whose first book, Furnace, is due for publication this month, and Tracey S Rosenburg, whose novel The Girl in the Bunker was published last year, while she was still on the scheme.

Below, we publish extracts from the work of the latest group of writers to complete the programme. All those featured were winners of the New Writers Awards 2010/11.

Wayne Price, from Aberdeen

About me: I've been publishing short stories and poetry for over twenty years and have worked in a variety of short-term and/or part-time jobs. For the last ten years I've taught at the University of Aberdeen.

Career highlight: Publishing Furnace, my first collection of short stories, with Freight Books in February of this year. 

How I write: Now that I'm teaching full time I tend to work on poems in short bursts in the evenings or weekends. I need longer stretches of clear time to work on prose, so stories tend to stay on the back-burner until the Easter and summer breaks. I write best when I'm completely alone in the house, next to a window I can waste time staring out of.

Writing tip: Be patient and stay focused on the writing itself rather than on publications. If you hone your talent and stay committed, the publications will follow naturally and at the right time (i.e. when your writing is consistently strong enough to back up one success with others).

Extract from God’s Instruments, by Wayne Price

For a couple of years in my early teens the boy next door, Carl Appleyard, owned a mud-coloured lurcher bitch called Gypsy – a lanky, timid animal who followed the two of us everywhere on our long, aimless wanderings around the village. Carl was a sickly, papery-skinned boy, almost as gangly as his dog. He had a vague, philosophical way about him but was backward at school. He was a full year younger than me, too, and at that time hadn’t started churning for girls the way I had. It was Gypsy he gave all his attention to.

Carol Farrelly, from Edinburgh

About me: I’m currently working on my novel, This Starling Flock, set in neutral Ireland during World War Two. The opening chapters won the Sceptre Prize and the novel was conceived while I was a student on Glasgow University’s MLitt in Creative Writing.

Career highlight: That would have to be winning the Sceptre. Sceptre’s recognition of my novel is great motivation. My stories have also been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, Fish Prize and Asham Award. I teach in Edinburgh.

How I write: I mostly write at home, especially when working on first drafts. Although I know the endpoint of my characters’ stories, I do not have every scene planned out in advance. I like to live with my characters, to feel how they choose and react within scenes. As my novel is set in the 40s, I also devote time to historical research. Time and place are great for creating the friction all stories need.

Writing tip: Find a good reader for your work: someone who is sensitive to and ‘gets’ what you are trying to do in your writing, someone who has an ear for your voice. When I first started writing seriously, good readers really helped me to hone my writing. When you find such a person, hold on to him or her

Extract from This Starling Flock, by Carol Farrelly

Veronica was in full-blooded foxtrot when Frank saw her. The dance floor was a carousel of pointing legs and jostling elbows, but Frank’s eye lit on her straight. She was as close to him as the palm of his hand, where everyone and everything else, was sludge-grey sky. It was her loose red hair, perhaps, that drew his eye. Or the purple ribbon, a fluttering sash, belted into the waist of her silken black dress. It was those flashes of colour, auburn curling against white, purple clasping black, which slowed her motion somehow. Where the other dancers circled the floor as one starling flock, she moved to her own slower time—a time that she must also slow for her partner.

Damien whispered in his ear, ‘You’ll never have her.’

Susan Kemp, 45, from East Lothian

About me: After spending my twenties working, writing and playing in the low budget/no budget Scottish film scene, I was lucky enough to end up being paid by the BBC for many years, making both factual entertainment and documentary programmes.

I wrote scripts in a variety of shapes and sizes under that guise — anything from links for Jonathan Ross to a wide range of documentaries which included, amongst others, the story of a team of dogs training to compete at Crufts, a portrait of a famous Iranian film making family called the Makhmalbafs, or a fifty year history of television news in Scotland.

I picked up a lot of skill, and a few bad habits, along the way but eventually I faced up to the realisation that it was all just one big act of procrastination. I decided to take voluntary redundancy thereby forcing myself into a corner. To misquote the road sign in LA Story: what I really want to do is write...

Career highlight: being long-listed out of 45,000 entries for the Richard and Judy publishing competition. It gave me a major boost and after studying for a creative writing masters at Glasgow University, I no longer had any excuse not finish my first darn novel. I am currently working on the nth draft.

How I write: I have a studio in an old farm steading a couple of miles from where I live. I walk there through the fields and so get a chance to do some thinking on the way...and think...and think again on the way back.

Writing tip: Make some writing buddies. They are not only able and willing to enjoy endless conversation about novels, writing and punctuation, but they will also read your work and give honest feedback, because you will do the same for them in return. It's worth remembering that even T.S. Elliot needed a writing buddy (Ezra Pound) to finish Four Quartets.

Extract from Their Tinsel Show, by Susan Kemp

They would have spread out, one beater every five yards or so, and while the Guns took position they’d be lying in the heather, waiting.

At the start of the day the beaters would sing along the line. One would start with, ‘Day-oh.’

The next would pick it up, ‘De, dayayay-oh.’
And the next, ‘Daylight come.’
‘And we wanna go home.’
‘Day-oh.’
'De, dahdayay-oh.’ And on it would go until they got bored. They would tell jokes the same way: one sentence at a time shouted from one beater to the next until the punchline when, one-by-one, they would crease up in the telling of it and the sound of their laughter echoed across the hills.


Tracey S. Rosenberg, from Edinburgh

About me: American by birth, British by naturalisation, and yet I drink neither coffee nor tea.

I've had the usual writerly assortment of strange jobs - copyediting a Romanian business newspaper, page-turning for professional pianists, and working in more bookshops than I can count.

Career highlight: My novel The Girl in the Bunker, which retells the story of the fall of the Third Reich from the perspective of Joseph Goebbels's eldest daughter, was published by Cargo last year.

How I write: Depends on my mood, but I do like revising a poem five or six times by hand, so long as I have an excellent pen.

Writing tip: Do interesting things. If all you can write about is your experience in a creative writing programme, go join the circus or hitchhike across Canada. And keep a journal while you're there.

Extract from Couples, by Tracey S. Rosenberg

They're so lovely, the whispering couples still holding hands after fifty-some years.

With his bad back, he's no longer supple; she, glancing over bifocals, pauses in fear that she's left the cooker on, again, but he's already checked, already made it safe.
When consultants, in grim tones, give test results, they're side by side for what is left to say.

In the gardens, surrounded by slow pairs, I yearn to see him strolling with his wife, her arm poised at his back, her thinning hair the same fair shade he's loved throughout his life.

I stumble down the paths, still seeking this sight -- so unfair, so stupidly unfair.

R A Martens, 38, from Edinburgh

About me: I did an English Literature degree at Edinburgh, but didn't really start writing until about 4 years ago.  In daylight, I'm a complementary therapist.

Career highlight: getting the SBT New Writer's Award is pretty hard to beat.

How I write: Mainly on a computer, in my living room, both of which I am lucky enough to have entirely to myself.

Writing tip: You need to ignore your internal critic to get started – she/he is the meanest swine you'll ever hear from. They might come in handy later on, but gag them until you've done that first draft.

Extract from Magnificent Miss M and the Copenhagen Interpretation of Insanity, by RA Martens.

In 1910, when Niels had been with Goldberg Brothers for ten years, he had visited a fellow circus in Prague. They had recently hired a young fire-eater from Japan, and Niels watched as the boy bent back, a flaming torch ready to enter his mouth.

Suddenly, the fire seemed to grow blindingly bright and devour him in a flash, leaving only an ashen shadow.  Niels was consumed with guilt, as though he had somehow brought this thing about, though when he blinked the performer stood unharmed.  It felt as though the air around him had been struck like a bell.  

Kenneth Paul Stephen, 39, from Perth

About me: I have worked in the national media as a journalist and features writer for 16 years. A former staff hack at the Daily Record, I am now a PR and Communications professional with Heartland Media and PR. When not representing Scotland’s gamekeepers, I am publicising sports events, hotel groups and even bungee jumping companies. My work focuses on the lost voices that get drowned out from the din of a Central Belt-centric Scotland.

Career highlight: Two highlights, really. First, winning the 2010 David Toulmin Short Story Award at the 10th Word Festival, Aberdeen University, with a story about a boy in a wheelchair on Scotland’s north east coast. Second, being chosen as a Scottish Book Trust New Writer.

How I write: I usually begin with an idea which could literally come from anywhere, maybe from people- watching on a train or just something that hits me but it has to strike a chord somewhere for me to pursue it and wrestle it to the ground. After that, the single starting idea usually goes through some form of evolution, like barley in a mash tun in the making of whisky.

By the end, sometimes just the smallest kernel of the original idea remains but it drove you from point A and that, really, is its purpose.

I write when everyone else in my house has gone to bed. I usually write at the dining room table with the light on full. Thankfully, my journalistic training means I can work virtually anywhere. I once filed a story from the back of a sausage-frying hut during a hail-storm in Finland. The ladies thought I was going to get electrocuted so they invited me to take shelter. It was a tight squeeze and I could smell the grease off my clothes for days but the sausages were excellent.

Writing tip: Just get on with it. Time and tide and all that…

Extract from This is the Problem with Dreams, by Kenneth Stephen

Because we’re only around for a bit, I believe you should love everything, if you can.

I don’t know why I think that, I just do. There is a great photograph of me in my parents’ house. My mum always said, “ah, that’s just you, Grace,” and I’ve found, when recollecting things they’ve said, that they feel they know me with a degree of certainty, which is a great resource for me. I am holding a watering can and I am watering garden gnomes and a worm. Apparently, I used to go around the garden every day and I couldn’t go off to school unless I knew everything had enough water. Gnomes, rhubarb, compost heap, even the fence.


The New Writers Awards are managed by the Scottish Book Trust in association with Creative Scotland. Applications are open to Scotland-based writers who have not published a novel, short story or poetry collection and have a strong commitment to developing a career in writing. Each recipient receives a cash award of £2,000 and a bespoke professional development package, which can include nine months working with a mentor and networking opportunities with publishers and literary agents. Visit www.scottishbooktrust.com for more information.

- The winners of the 2011/12 New Writers Awards were Erika Anderson, Claire Askew, Helen Godfrey, Pippa Goldschmidt, Katy McAulay, Andrew Sclater, Helen Sedgwick and Richard Strachan.

Books comment: could a touch of Glastonbury be the secret of book festival success?