Mark & Claire were our guests on the 20th of July at our evening event held at Anna’s.
What a wealth of knowledge these two have about everything to do with books, they are both very talented authors with a few books under their belt. It was a brilliant evening, I am sure everybody went away with a bit more information about something. I look forward to reading The Crow Folk, the first in the series of The Witches of Woodville which is available here.
Mark has also gone into the film industry, you can see his film on Prime now. His podcast called The Bestseller Experiment is also top-rated, you can find it here. Mark’s books are available on Amazon here. You can also read all about Mark on his very detailed website here, one of the best I have seen, I might get a few tips when I see him next at The Hythe Food & Drink festival this weekend.
The group will have a big presence at the festival this year as many of our published authors will be selling their books. Our three anthologies will be on sale plus members of the group will be available to talk to, Karen will be there Saturday and Sunday.
On Saturday Ben Shockley and some of the actors will be there to promote the film and book.
If you would like to have a table please contact Debby from the writing group.
Mark Stay and Claire will also be there to promote and sell their books.
What a fantastic day we all had on Saturday at The New Folkestone Bookshop for our very first book launch, it was our third anthology but we had never celebrated one before due to being a new group and then covid. So many people came to support us and listen to the readings we did during the afternoon. The finger buffet was a success, especially the personalised cupcakes and biscuits.
We had 28 people submit stories for this anthology so it was a significant task for Matthew and Debby to do all the editing etc but we have to agree the book is bigger with a variety of stories and poems.
Write by the Sea has now produced three anthologies, Ghosts by the Sea, Doorways to the Sea and Journeys by the Sea.
All our books are available at the bookshop on Tontine Street and also on Amazon here.
A fun afternoon for the children as well.
A massive thank you to everyone for making this book a success.
Our next event is on the 25th May at Anna’s, all about script writing and dialogue. Everyone is welcome to our free events we just like you to buy something to eat or drink so we support the establishment.
Our third anthology has taken longer to edit and publish because of the work that has gone into it from Matthew and Debby Jones, whom we thank very much. We had over 30 stories and poems this time from the group, thank you for your support.
We will reveal the cover at our next meeting on Thursday 27th April, this event is open to everyone, and there will also be a talk about writing romance.
We have set some dates towards our third anthology publication.
The cover reveal will be on the 27th of April 2023
The book launch will be at The New Bookshop on Tontine Street on Saturday 13th May between 2 & 6 pm. There will be some readings from the book and your opportunity to meet the authors and of course, buy the book also the best bit is there will be prosecco and nibbles.
As we have had two events this year about condensed writing, the journalist and travel writing, your summer exercise will be to write a piece about TRAVEL. You have a free rein but please think about the length of your writing as we will all read our work out during the meeting.
We will be reading them out on the 7th September after the summer break then they will go on the website.
We had an interesting discussion about what goes in a notebook at our last meeting, I liked the hangman and maths……a few grandparents were present. Eventually, we all came up with many ideas and how we remember things, glad it’s not only me that forgets just about everything. I thought separating your notebook into sections was a good idea as it often takes me a while to find what I am looking for.
Born an Essex girl I graduated to a Kent Lady in 1998, where I live with my husband Roger and little dog, Teddy. I have three children and three grandchildren who keep me on my toes. In my previous life, I have done a variety of jobs from teaching horse riding to the disabled to arranging funerals. After a spell at Bible School in 2000, I worked in India and Nepal as a missionary. I started writing in 2012 when I retired and have been on an exciting journey ever since. My first book was a memoir piece of how my life changed when I became a Christian, at age thirty. It’s called, I Met Him at the Well. I then wrote a children’s book called Peter the Pony, which encourages children to know they are all special and loved. I had the pleasure of doing book readings in the local primary schools, sharing Peter’s story. These books are both on Amazon. Currently, I am writing a longer fictional piece based in the village of Lyminge where I live. I am not sure whether it will make the status of a novel but certainly a novella. I also love to write poems and draw inspiration from life, nature and my faith in God. You can see this on my blog at kateguk.wordpress.com I have just done a course as a volunteer news reporter for Academy FM and am looking forward to seeing what may develop from this. I belong to several writing groups but particularly enjoy the Write by the Sea group as it gives the opportunity and space to learn about different aspects of the arts.
Debby Jones grew up in Hythe, attended Folkestone Girls’ Grammar and then joined the Great Exodus to university in 1978.
After studying Law and French at the Universities of Sussex and Aix en Provence, Debby worked for the European Commission in Brussels for a while, then for a small law firm in Westminster, before starting a seventeen-year stint with Lloyd’s of London where she tracked down underwriters and brokers evading disciplinary fines and members of Lloyd’s who had defaulted on their underwriting liabilities.
She then worked for a Private Investigator with offices in Washington DC, Geneva and Mayfair before setting up on her own as a genealogist. Now Debby can find herself investigating anything – from the Great Snowstorm of 1836 to missing beneficiaries.
Her first novel, Dateline Haifa, which she co-wrote with a colleague, came out in 2019. A sequel is underway. She has contributed to and published the Write by the Sea anthologies and is currently working on turning Dan Hawk Psychic Detective, a film soon to be released, into a novel.
I have been singing for my supper since the late 1960s, singing regularly in the streets of London, and South coast seaside towns, first as a Bottler for Paris Nat, a well-known Busker at the time. I formed my first band; THE RACE, working mainly in the London area with one or two visits to the Continent to play at Clubs and Blues/Folk Festivals. Recording with them began my life as a Singer-Songwriter, recording artist and Performance Poet. My second Band was called Delivery, and with them I first played at Ronnie Scotts which became a lifetime favourite of mine, playing there recently in 2022. With Delivery, and then subsequent work, I began travelling frequently, to the USA, South Africa, all over Europe and Scandinavia.
During the early 1970s, I became an activist. At first, in my local community in North Kensington, being the first Musician to step up for Rock against Racism and Sexism. I sang for Reclaim the night, the striking Miners, Troops out and the Brunswick Women, local community fundraising.
After the birth of my second child in 1987, I began working with a group of young people in Poplar near where I lived in East London, adding sessions as a voice tutor at The City Literary institute, various Universities and internationally. In the late 1990s, I trained as a Voice Movement Therapist. During the 1980/90s I worked a lot with young people through the Prince’s Trust and others, around the UK including Somerset House in London.
As Musical Director for choirs, I helped found the Sing for Joy Choirs in London, for people with neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s and Multiple Sclerosis. The First Choir in Kentish Town Health Centre, London and the National Hospital for neurology in Bloomsbury. The Choirs performed regularly in London, in Hospitals, Southwark Cathedral, Westminster Hall, St. Pancras Station, The Stoke Newington Town Hall and TUC Congress Hall. The BBC made a documentary about the Choirs. See below.
I have recorded my own music in the UK, USA, Sweden, The Isle of Jura, Romney Marsh and Poland. Performing in the UK and Internationally with my own Music and Contemporary composers such as Orlando Gough, who directed The Shout, a 16 piece Choir/ Theatre company, winning several awards for its work, in The USA, Germany and other places, touring internationally for 12 years. The USA, Japan, including performing at The Festival Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall, The National Portrait Gallery, on the River Thames and Embankment, and The Albert Hall in The Proms as a soloist, recorded live for the BBC. The singers, from very varied backgrounds – gospel, jazz, blues, contemporary classical, opera, and early music – and include several accomplished improvisers. It has been called a ‘vocal big band’, a ‘club choir’, a ‘vocal Stomp’, a ‘dangerous choir’, a ‘choir of Babel’ and a ‘choral phenomenon’.
In 2004 I took part in The Channel 4 series Soul Britannia, together with a wonderful band and singers, Madeline Bell and Linda Lewis, recording a concert live at The Barbican, then touring the UK. In 2015. A documentary was filmed by The Welcome Trust in London and Folkestone. During the 2020s I travelled both as a Performer and Voice facilitator in The USA Canada and South Africa. Below – is a documentary. Click in the centre.
Writing has been a long-time passion and I have had several articles published around my work with young people and local communities and the Parkinsons choirs My memoir, The Singers Tale, was published in 2017. I performed my show, The singer’s Tale at The Edinburgh Festival and other places. I love writing as much as I love Music.
For more information and full discography see the website. Click on my Blog. Thank you. www.carolgrimes.com
After the first performance of a new work, composers sometimes have to wait years for a second. A few hours after the first realisation of his choral piece We Turned on the Light in an afternoon Prom (20) given by the BBC Scottish Symphony under Martyn Brabbins last Saturday, Orlando Gough heard it again that evening with the BBC Symphony under David Robertson. It went down a storm on both occasions.
Setting a new, ecologically correct text by Caryl Churchill reminding us how our over-consumption of the earth’s resources is landing us in big trouble, Gough’s work is scored for large chorus and full orchestra – forces he handles with immense flair and panache. As with the orchestra, the main body of singers changed between the two performances – youth choirs from all over the UK sang the first; the BBC Symphony Chorus and Huddersfield Choral Society the second. But, in both renditions, a lot of the punch of this explosive piece came from Gough’s own diversely constituted choir, the Shout – whose members come from backgrounds taking in gospel, jazz and blues, as well as contemporary classical, opera and early music – and from more informally assembled participants operating under the name of the Rabble.
These two Proms celebrated the singing voice. Getting the afternoon event off to a flying start was an atmospheric opener by Gough called, aptly, Open, which featured the mesmerising vocalism of Carol Grimes and Manickam Yogeswaran, among others, ricocheting around the Albert Hall at all levels and from every direction.
Vortex Club, London John Fordham Tuesday, September 3, 2002 The Guardian
The Vortex Club in north London, an establishment at which the alfresco nature of the decor has generally reflected an indifference to showbiz superficialities in music, has had a summer lick of paint. Carol Grimes, the forthright and defiantly independent jazz, blues and world music singer, has not had a summer lick of paint; nevertheless, she emits the same fierce glow that has been her trademark for 30 years. She played the relaunched venue at the weekend, having assembled an oddly balanced but fitfully luminous band in endorsement of the club’s return to health.
Grimes appeared with some familiar sidekicks in percussionist Josefina Cupido, trombonist Annie Whitehead and multi-instrumentalist Ian Maidman. It was an accomplished, impromptu ensemble hauled together for a limited purpose, but Maidman acts as several musicians (pianist, guitarist and bassist), so for the most part the set-up served Grimes well.
Grimes likes humane songwriters with an ear for life’s rawness and ironies, and she made Joni Mitchell’s Two Grey Rooms vibrate with a haunted nostalgia. The singer’s jubilant earthiness came out on Wild Women Are Wonderful (co-written with keyboardist Janette Mason), her raw R&B edge given extra buoyancy by Whitehead’s improvised counterpoint on trombone. Whitehead’s playing, as Robert Wyatt has pointed out, makes her sound uncannily like a singer herself, with the trombone’s plummy sonorities and emphatic weightiness transformed into an airy, dreamy sound in her hands. She sounded like a softer edition of the Crusaders’ Wayne Henderson as Grimes roared, scatted and squawked on Women Are Wonderful, and became fluently sax-like on Randy Newman’s Baltimore. An old Grimes song, the Kurt Weill-like Alexandria Dance, wound up with the singer ascending into yodelling extemporisations over Cupido’s whispering hand-drumming. It was the kind of informal, no-frills, suck-it-and-see show from classy performers for which the Vortex has become so loved – and it is heartening to note that the club goes back to a full seven-night programme from October.
Carol Grimes CABARET Sunday 7 March CAFÉ PRAGUE Welcome spring with Cafe Prague hostess Barb Jungr accompanied by Adrian York. Barb will be delighted to present British blues singer Carol Grimes and her band – a Komedia premiere! Carol is one of Britain’s top-drawer singers with a breathtaking performance history – most recently composer Orlando Goff’s The Shout. With a new CD for the first time in ten years, Carol is in new and outstanding form. 7.30pm – £8.50/£6.50 Cafe Prague @Komedia 09 March 2004
Is there a better way of spending a Sunday evening, than trying to forget the fact that in twelve hours’ time, the working week begins again? Clearly, most of the over 40’s in Brighton thought not. Cafe Prague is Komedia’s regular mêlée of musical acts hosted by Barb Jungr. As hostess and singer she is probably an acquired taste – larger than life but not quite as funny – but clearly had a following in the audience. With her overwrought-chanteuse voice and wild gesticulations, she livened us up with enjoyably confident and stylishly delivered New Orleans blues, Cole Porter, and several Dylan songs, very ably accompanied by Adrian York whose barrel-house blues style was only slightly marred by the miked-up underwater muddiness of a rather inadequate upright piano. The second half was given over to Carol Grimes and band. With a voice that was delicate and agile, precise yet powerful, and with the band delivering a consistently tight and cooking blend of country-tinged jazz (bass, drums, guitar and the excellent Stan Adler on cello) she led us from Randy Newman and Joni Mitchellto an exhilaratingly bluesy version of the Pogues USA and a stunning Tom Waits encore (New Coat of Paint). Komedia is one of Brighton’s best venues, but I always think they try to pack too many people into the upstairs cabaret bar. All the apologetic tapping on shoulders and shuffling of chairs whenever you need to get up for a drink or a pee is very irritating – but otherwise a chilled and uplifting way of taking the pain out of Sunday evening.
Foundation Big Band Vortex, London John Fordham Friday September 19, 2003 The Guardian You often find musicians trying, in myriad small ways, to change the world at the Vortex. But these highly skilled players are always fully committed to having a ball doing it. This combination of good causes and good fun, in the club’s liberal-bohemian ambience, is what makes the place special. On this occasion, the 11-piece, all-female Foundation Big Band was launching the Vortex’s latest campaign: to raise £250,000 to fit out its new premises in east London. Since it came to life during the London jazz festival last year, the Foundation Band has grown from tentative beginnings into a charismatic bravura. The band has been touring lately, and the members’ growing mutual sensitivity to one another’s strengths and idiosyncrasies were evident from this show.
Though there were plenty of punchy solos – notably from the notional musical director, trombonist Annie Whitehead – the variety and richness of the compositions provided the biggest surprises. On this showing, the band is building a distinctive repertoire of its own, with connections to quite unexpected big-band jazz landmarks such as Oliver Nelson’s glossy sophistication and Don Ellis’s left-field funk. This liberation wasn’t apparent, at first, from Kim Burton’s tautly interlocking but faintly static Latin opener Pigeon Post. But Diane McLoughlin’s New Day was an ebullient tussle of glowing melody lines, with Andrea Vicari injecting a vivid postbop piano solo over Josefina Cupido’s snare-drum crackle.
The pianist then added understated, Bill Evans-like chording under McLoughlin’s soaring alto solo, which vibrated with echoes of the late Cannonball Adderley.
Carol Grimes’s restrained power and Whitehead’s warm lyricism intertwined on the ethereal Now the Hour, with Grimes boldly veering into a kind of north African-inflected scat at the close. The eccentric Don Ellis element came from baritonist Izzy Barrett’s Showtime, with its trombone solo of exuberant percussiveness from Gail Brand and a vivid, bluesy guitar break from Deirdre Cartwright. Much more than a right-on gesture, this is a new British big band with a future.
