Hello Thanks for visiting my website. I’m Pam Keevil and anyone who was at Francis Bacon Grammar School or York University might remember me as Pamela Swain. I wrote stories as a child but grew up thinking writing was only for English graduates or people from families with links to authors, publishers or editors. How wrong can you be?
Writing is for everyone but it takes inspiration and perspiration.
After a career as a teacher and then leadership trainer, I gave up fulltime work in 2014 so that I could spend more time writing. Like me, I’m sure you have heard the advice that would-be writers should write about what they know. At first I believed I would write for children but no. I was sitting in a work shop for children’s fiction and realised I was in the wrong place. I took myself off to one entitled How to write ghost stories instead. However much I tried, everything I wrote had a romantic flavour.
I now write romantic stories where the focus is upon the interplay of personalities. I am fascinated by the inner game; what goes on inside our heads rather than what we show to others. I love reading research in all aspects of relationships and this often forms the inspiration for my stories. Even I am surprised by the thrill I get every time I open up my laptop and set about constructing and creating a new story.
I enrolled in September 2014 on the MA in Creative and Critical Writing at the University of Gloucestershire and began writing in earnest with the sole desire to improve the tools of the craft. Returning to a story to tighten up the plot, re shape the characters, add or take away scenes and polish each sentence so that every word is just right is now just as much fun as writing the story in the first place.
I attend a Writer’s group and attend events such as the York Writer’s Festival and Swanwick Summer School each year to meet and hear from fellow writers. I have been short listed three times in short story competitions and in 2015 won the short story for children prize run by the Writers News in conjunction with Swanwick Writers summer school. I read at the fringe festival in Cheltenham in 2012 and at Cheltenham poetry festival in 2017. My short stories have been included in three anthologies locally. I have a monthly slot on internet radio when I read a short story or a longer story that is serialised.
I hope you enjoy the stories showcased here and the excerpts from the novels that are published, about to be published or still in the early stages of creation.
Please get in touch. I’d love to hear from you.
We’ve all been there. Why am I bothering? No one will read what I write. No one will like what I’ve written. Sometimes even I don’t like what I’ve written…Many people will say ‘Do it for yourself’. A writer is anyone who writes whether they have an audience or not….
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