Literary Festival: A World First

I am thrilled to announce the winner of this year’s Guildford Book Festival Short Story competition. As far as we know, it’s a world first for any literary festival for the winning story to be converted into an iPhone app.

It’s called Train in the Night by Christopher Franks who hails from Cambridgeshire.

It’s a captivating tale of childhood lost and adulthood found that will keep you hooked to the very last sentence – just the thing you want from a short story.

As the winning entry, it is now converted into an iPhone application you can either read or listen to – it’s ideal to while away a commute and it will leave you thinking about life and how we take so much for granted.

Chris wins an epublishing contract and will earn royalties from each download.

About the Winning Author

After a chequered career of schoolteacher, freelance violinist and corporate tax specialist, Chris Franks began to write seriously in 2007.

Most of his published work to date has been articles for magazines such as The Dalesman, This England, TGO and Lincolnshire Life but he is now turning his attention to fiction.

Another of his short stories, “Dracula’s Colours”, was recently voted the second most popular tale in an issue of the story magazine, Delivered.

Following the success of this and “Train in the Night”, he hopes to make his final career move – to that of full time professional writer and novelist.

Runners Up

We were so impressed by the quality of the entries that we’ve selected an additional 12 runners up stories to be included with Train in the Night in an anthology. The anthology will be available shortly in print and to be downloaded from the Amazon Kindle Store.

The runners up are:

• Trade Wings by John Jochimsen
• Don’t You See How Dark It Is? by Kevin Doyle
• Clarkson Was Good, But by Rin Mettler
• The Rabbit Intervention by Charlotte March
• The Last Dance by Miriam Burke
• Shere Terror by Peter Bullen
• Kitty’s Revelation by Marianne Ratcliffe
• Fez by Damien Gavillet
• Breaking Faith by Catherine Cawthorne
• A Rapid Twist of Fate by Rebecca Wenzerul
• A Sweeter Home by Rosalind Minett
• Fat Girl by Valerie Collins

- well done to all of you and thanks to you and every one who entered.

Thanks also to Joe Talbot of Festival media partner BBC Surrey for recording the narration for the audio version of the app.

Thanks to the judging panel for wading through more than half a million words !!!