Catriona Campbell at the IWC

Went down to the Irish Writers Centre to hear the winning writers in the Lonely Voices short story competition. I don't normally do short stories. I have tried it but cannot seem to get the balance right between making the characters three dimensional and keeping the plot moving. So it was refreshing to hear four exponents of the genre showing how it should be done. Four very different stories and a very enjoyable way to spend an hour or so. I was down there mainly to support Catriona Campbell, who I didn't know had any interest in writing. She was a friend of my daughter's in college and is mad as a bag of badgers but I was mightily impressed by her very Poe-esque horror story and the way she built up the jigsaw until the final gruesome revelation as to what caused the bloodbath.