{"id":182,"date":"2013-11-06T22:25:39","date_gmt":"2013-11-06T21:25:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/?page_id=182"},"modified":"2026-01-29T20:31:22","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T19:31:22","slug":"members","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/members\/","title":{"rendered":"Alpha Members"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Andrea<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Christine<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Christine has been living in rural Normandy for twenty-one years. She channelled her lifelong passion for literature and language into a teaching career and gradually developed a sideline as a writer of both short stories and articles on wide variety of subjects.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Christopher<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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I was born in Tunbridge Wells (1969) and I moved to Lugano in southern Switzerland in 2001 with my Italian girlfriend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I started writing in 2011 as a “cure” for chronic insomnia. I took part in the 2014 Poestate poetry festival in Lugano, with a piece named \u2018Foreign man, foreign land\u2019.  My first ever public reading and the piece was well received and gave me confidence. I became self-employed in 2015 which, for several years, took a lot of my energy and attention but I’ve started writing once again over the last two years, between early-morning poems and a novel which, strangely, hasn’t yet abandoned me like the other 7 or 8 in the past.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Colette<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Greetings from York and thank you for letting me on board.  I am Colette. I have been writing for four years or so, following retirement. I have had one short story published and another accepted as part of a possible anthology. I was focussing on short stories but have now disappeared down the wormhole of the third revision of my novel. I also try to write poems, but I easily lose heart with them. I love writing which is just as well as I am not expecting to ever earn a penny from it. <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Fanny<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Fanny grew up in England, where she worked as a bookseller and editor before setting off for Paris with a backpack three decades ago. Now settled in the south of France, she works as a translator, copy-editor and sometimes English teacher. Fanny has been writing forever but has only recently begun to take her literary ambitions more seriously, with some successes to date. Being part of the Alpha writers\u2019 group is a very positive next step.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Francesca<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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I am a retired Chemistry teacher who has always loved English. I only went into the sciences because everyone in my family was either Maths, Chemistry or Physics\u2026 so I did what was expected of me. No regrets\u2026 my life path made me who I am today.
Poetry is my first love, but I do enjoy short stories and I have three novels in various degrees of having been written.
I live in mid Wales, 12 miles due west from Welshpool, with hubby and a vast collection of bears\u2026 I am the ultimate arctophile. I also enjoy gardening and painting.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Liz<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Liz moved from the UK to the Catalan region of France, near Perpignan, in early 2019, following her dream to pursue a creative lifestyle after nearly fifteen years in automotive engineering. She now splits her time between freelance editing and proofreading, and writing fiction. She has two timeslip novellas and a full-length historical novel published in her own name, and a string of erotic short story compilations under the pseudonym of Kitty Mulholland.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Maria<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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I took up writing relatively late in life having retired from my local government job due to ill health. I write mainly for pleasure. Having read science fiction all my life, to be able to write my own stories in this genre is a joy. So I spend many happy hours in a world of my own making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I joined the Alpha Writers Group because it gives me the opportunity to obtain constructive criticism. Hopefully my writing is improving. One of these days I may even pop my head over the wall and publish the draft novels hiding in the study and the growing pile of short stories (be still my beating heart).<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Martin<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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I live in Sheffield with my wife Eva and dog Charlie and I\u2019m the editor of the prayer diary for Wycliffe Bible translators. I see myself as a writer, photographer, baker and storyteller. Recently I seem to have really grown in the flash fiction area. I\u2019d like to grow in writing short stories too. My photo was taken at a wonderful charity called Grimm and Co which I\u2019ve recently started volunteering for. It\u2019s focus is literacy for children, and according to them, as the front is an apothecary for Magical Beings, my magical being is a unicorn. If this sounds odd, then you need to visit their shop or check out their website to find out why.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Mike<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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I\u2019m a retired Science and Computing teacher from Lancashire. I now live in rural Norfolk with my wife, Vicky and two cats. We found our way here via South West France where we lived for four years after retirement. Grandchildren then pulled us back. I developed a love of writing after completing a degree in English and Creative Writing with the OU. I like to write flash fiction, short stories and sometimes poetry. When not writing I spend my time volunteering and looking after grandchildren.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Morgen<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Morgen joined Alpha part-way through Season XI and has relished each and every season since.  Short stories are her ‘thing’ but lately she has been dabbling with novel writing. Her love of the written word has been tested by the experience and she has become the world’s finest procrastinator.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Polly<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Polly lives in North Yorkshire and has loved writing since she was a small girl. She enjoys writing short stories and one day would love to complete a novel.
She has worked numerous jobs (none of them writing related) including call centre worker, teaching assistant, health care assistant and even a bit of waitressing and bar work. She currently works as a medical secretary which she has done now for several years.
Her other interests include yoga\/keeping fit and currently takes part in a weekly bootcamp.
This is her second time around joining Alpha after a break to concentrate on other commitments. She loves how the Alpha group inspires her and encourages a good writing habit.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Ros<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Ros is a writer and publisher living in Warwickshire. In addition to writing for business publications, she writes short stories, poetry and novels. Her first novel ‘The Appearance of Truth’ was long-listed in Bridge House Publishing\u2019s Debut Novel Competition. Her novel ‘New York Orphan’ has been awarded a Premier Chill with a Book Award and an Indie Brag Medallion. She received her second Indie Brag Medallion for Violet’s War. Having forgotten to stop writing after the one book that everyone has in them, she has now lost count of her publications. Her spare time passion is developing the Entlebucher Mountain Dog breed in the UK.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Ruth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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I am a creative being.  A lifelong musician, I\u2019m  currently a cellist in a string quartet.  I\u2019m also a lover of the written word. In my youth I was never without a book in my pocket. Parenthood to two boys soon put a stop to that! I  began writing seriously about ten years ago, continuing until one of life\u2019s  more challenging periods got in the way. I love poetry, perhaps the closest the written word comes to music, but have also written flash fiction and short stories. The \u2018one novel\u2019 is still inside me, but maybe one day\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Sally<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Sally was a freelance garden writer for about 15 years until the end of last year, writing mainly for BBC Gardeners\u2019 World magazine and RHS The Garden (with little forays into Telegraph Gardening and the Guardian\u2019s gardening pages). She has also written four books about various aspects of sustainable gardening. Achievements on the fiction side have been much thinner on the ground! She was a very early member of Alpha, back in the days when Olaf had only just set it up \u2013 and she\u2019s delighted to be able to return to the fold.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Stephen<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Andrea Christine Christine has been living in rural Normandy for twenty-one years. She channelled her lifelong passion for literature and language into a teaching career and gradually developed a sideline as a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-182","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1493,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/182\/revisions\/1493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}