I’ve never been a person motivated by wealth or greed. My career has been littered with low pay jobs because I would rather enjoy my job and scrape by than hate my job and get paid well. What I do get a kick out of is helping others. I try to help others as often as I can and most of the time it goes unnoticed. That’s not something I’m too bothered about, though. I don’t help people for the glory, but it’s nice to hear some positive feedback.

You may remember a year ago I ran a competition to win a gorgeous book called Steampunk Style, which I reviewed here: Steampunk Style book review. I asked for submissions in the form of short, steampunk themed stories as I was working in partnership with Titan; the publishers of Steampunk Style. The winner of the Over 18 category was Nemma Wollenfang. She’s a budding author and she recently sent me this letter, informing me of how she’s doing since winning the contest:

“I was fortunate enough to win the over 18 category of your Steampunk Short Story Competition last year. I was beyond happy with this and still am! It was one of my first and biggest writing achievement. I still often go to the associated pages to look. I just wanted to drop you line and tell you briefly how my writing is going. Since your competition I’ve been applying out more often, and now have a number of pieces published or pending publication, or long/shortlisted in competitions. My first short story book (which I contributed one story to) is due out on the 12th July – it’s called ‘Come Into the House’ and includes the top ten writers from the Historic House Short Story Competition 2014. You may also remember me mentioning that my novel was shortlisted last year (the judge of it told me that chapter 1 let it down), well I heard on Friday that my new revised beginning is now on the shortlist for the Retreat West First Chapter competition – the final 10 have now been forwarded to the judging agent who will announce the winner in August. I doubt I’ll win when competing against so many talented others but I’m thrilled that the new beginning works.