Office Visitors: Tea With Patsy Collins


visitors

We’ve had visitors! I bought a story from Patsy Collins on Monday, and she replied with “I’m going to be in Dundee on Tuesday and Wednesday . . .”

She’s touring in her famous campervan, so of course we told her to pop in for a blether. Which she did yesterday morning.

Why no photograph of her? Well, Mr Patsy took some smashing pics of Patsy and the whole “Friend” fiction team – bar Alan, who’s on holiday this week.

Shame – Alan’s Patsy’s usual contact here on the team, though I’m often in touch about her stories for “The Weekly News”.

Anyway, I was saying, Mr Patsy took some really nice pics with a very posh camera with special lenses and all that, and mine would just have been using my phone. So, better you see her better quality pics when she writes the blog post she’s planning.

All things short stories

Instead, I’ll show you mugs of a different sort! Over tea and shortbread – of course! – we chatted about all things short stories; about how we know a story is right for us; about what we’re looking for just now . . .

Patsy jotted down lots of notes, which she’ll no doubt share with you through womagwriter.

All in all it was a fine chat, and nice to meet Patsy when I never had before. Although I almost felt I knew her from all the great work she does on her blog.

Oh, and Jill Finlay stopped by, too. We love getting visitors, after all!

It was Jill who bought Patsy’s first story for a DC Thomson publication when she was Fiction Ed of “The Weekly News”.

Back in 2004, I think they said that was. A long time for us all!

Patsy also very kindly brought us some chocolates (she clearly knows us well), and if you look carefully you can see we’ve already made a start!

When I showed them out, they were off to look for some Dundee cake before getting back on the road.

Thanks for popping in, Patsy!

Shirley Blair

Fiction Ed Shirley’s been with the “Friend” since 2007 and calls it her dream job because she gets to read fiction all day every day. Hobbies? Well, that would be reading! She also enjoys writing fiction when she has time, long walks, travel, and watching Scandi thrillers on TV.