Book:
Everything is shape for sending to the printer: all I've got to do is to check all the print and font styles and types, spacing, page numbering, and all the preliminary pages (including Title Page, Publisher's Note, Foreword and Acknowledgements) followed by the Contents page (even the page numbers below may not be final!) - which I'm putting below. Unfortunately, it takes quite a bit of time checking detail, and it gets a bit frustrating when I put a subtitle on page 8 in bold, and a para on Page 13 decides to show up in bold as a consequence!

Contents

Title	Page
1. Introduction	1
2. The Initial Concept	2
3. The Realisation	5
4. Membership	8
5. Short Story Critique	9
6. Discussion - Short Lists	10
7. Regular Challenges 1-3	14
8. Discussion - What's in a Name?	18
9. Fringe Developments	20
10. Group Story (Phase 1)	22
11. Regular Challenges 4-6	25
12. Article - Dialects	31
13. Group Story (Phase 2)	34
14. Discussion - Novel openings	40
15. Longitudinal Exercise	43
16. The Learning Curve	61
17. Regular Challenges 7-9	64
18. Writers Log	69
19. Regular Challenge 10	72
20. Group Story (Phase 3)	75
21. Article - Now we are Thirteen	77
22. Satisfying Aims	80
23. New Joiners	84
24. The Scribeham Chronicle	89

The Chronicle extends to almost 80 pages.

I have received a brilliant design from Michele in South Africa, and you will all be pleased with it, I'm sure.

Whether I can get this to the printer before this Circular goes out, I'm not sure. But as soon as I send it to them, I'll set advertising in progress, including a note on the website. In the meantime, can you all send me your current addresses so that I can send you each a copy. If you want more than a single copy (or if you don't want one at all!), let me know.

No-one has objected to me suggesting that anyone can copy bits from the book as long as they quote Alpha Writers, so I'm putting that in.

Financial Aspects

I am planning to order about 150 copies which we will offer for sale at £3 (or is that too high? - should we say £2.50 or even £2?). If we sell out, re-order copies will have to be charged at £6. I am not planning to make a great income (it would be an embarrassment) but it might be nice if we could have enough to make single section printed copies of anything we do for ourselves this year, or next year.

Organising Challenges
Christine will shortly be sending out the summarised assessments for Challenge 6, and Catherine will be sending out the entries for assessing Challenge 7, and Ann will deal with Challenge 8. Would anyone like to offer to co-ordinate Challenge 9, please? I am happy to finish off with Challenge 10.

Regular challenge:
Members rankings after Challenge 4 (on my scoring of 3 pts for the first, 2 for the next 4 and 1 for every entry):

Christine, Sally and David have 9 points each
Margaret and Ann have 8 points each (so has Chris if he can rejoin)
Clare, Laura, Di, Geoff, Laura and Zena have 7 points each

A couple of competitions could change this dramatically!

See the Challenges page for details of this month's regular challenge, and for the results of previous challenges!

Longitudinal experiment:
Click here for details.

Group Creative Writing:
Click here for details.

Discussion:
We have a story from a member which I am attaching. This is for constructive criticism in the way that you all dealt with Clare's. Make your comments and circulate to everyone, please, and you will discover the writer in due course.

- Olaf