Mslexia

Mslexia, the magazine for women who write | www.mslexia.co.uk

Get published

Workshop#1 Choosing a title

EXERCISE 1 revealed: Titles and matching blurbs

All Summer

A young woman, bewildered and scarred finds herself on an island off the coast of Ireland. Her memory al but gone, except for the few threads that lead her back to an art robbery and a murder. What is her relationship with shadowy figure always two steps behind her? Who was the dead man? Was he her friend or her lover? Who was the kind and sympathetic man who rescued her from him? What did he want from her? In this uncertain world, all she does know is that she must keep running and hiding.

Eva’s Cousin

In the summer of 1944 Eva Braun invited her younger cousin Gertraud to keep her company at Berchtesgaden, the Fuhrer’s mountain retreat. Defying her anti-Nazi father, Gertraud went, and stayed until Eva left to share Hitler’s fate in his Berlin bunker. Not until her seventies did she ever speak of this strange time in her life.

Trespassing

Dia is the daughter of a silk farmer, Riffat - an innovative, decisive businesswoman. Like her mother, Dia seems at first sight unrestricted, spirited and resourceful. But for a young woman in Pakistan, sometimes personal freedom has its own hidden borders, especially where love is concerned - and there are those who yearn to jump the fence…

The Pursuit of Alice Thrift

Poor Alice Thrift: book-smart but people-hopeless. Alice graduated second in her class at medical school, but hospital life is proving quite a challenge. Evaluations describe her performance as ‘workmanlike’ and her people skills as ‘hypothermic’. Luckily her roommate Leo, the most popular nurse at the hospital, and her feisty neighbour Sylvie, take on the task of guiding Alice through the narrow straits of her own no-rapport zone.

Getting Mother’s Body

Roosevelt Beede manages the petrol station in this dusty Texas town; his one dream is to buy his wife June the artificial leg she’s always wanted. Billy, their teenage niece, longs to escape this narrow life. She’s the only Beede without ambition - except for her mother, the fast-living Willa-Mae, who could croon her way out of any jail with a blues song. But Willa Mae is dead and buried and with her, the mythic Beede legacy: a cache of jewels. If Billy could get her hands on those diamonds and pearls, no dream would be too grand to realise…but first she has to beat the rest of the family there.

Spoiler

It was after his friend Adam died mysteriously that Ben started to hear whiffling noises in the night. The two novitiate priests had roomed side by side at their seminary in Rome, the cool, sardonic Adam becoming a mentor to the younger Ben. Did Adam jump from the parapet, Ben winders, or was he pushed?

« Back to workshop

Download workshops as pdfs

The From Laptop to Bookshop workshops featured here are currently available for free.