Today's Soundtrack: My first interview as a writer

Guess it’s time to tell you about the Sheffield Novel Slam, 2018 - part of the Off The Shelf literary festival.

The short story is I pitched my first novel, From Where We Threw Dogs, and I came third overall.

The longer story is…

It was the first time I’d entered my novel into a competition.

It was my first time reading my work to an audience.

OK some of the audience knew me, but some didn’t.

For a writer who struggles for confidence this was very scary.

The competing novelists each got to pitch their novels and the audience voted through 8 writers from whom they wanted to hear more. I got through.

The 8 then read a three minute extract from our novels.

There were judges, 4 of them. They judged.

I came third.

I’m very happy about it

(And I’ve certainly got a taste for the Spoken Word side of this weird and wonderful life of a writer)

My prize for coming third was to be interviewed for Urban Tiger Radio.

And this is my interview….

https://soundcloud.com/rbanigeradio/stephen-mellor-for-soundcloud