Pen Factor stories

Explore stories on The Pen Factor. Search for favourite authors or titles, browse by genre or use the filters to find your favourite story.

The Investigation

A seemingly never-ending investigation, and Keith's inability to let go of passed liaison, threatens a revival of old alliances,...

Romance / Women's fiction

Amongst The Clouds

While Celeste has died, and even though she leaves behind a husband, friends, and family she loves, she realizes and chronicles...

Romance / Women's fiction

Room 101

Dealing with teacher is an art.

Coming-of-age / Young adult fiction

Victoria Li

Disappear Here. (Part one, Chapter Three: The Roach Motel)

... This is a chapter ... so many may be lost. In the previous, one of three friends, Nick, died; he was hit with a truck in front...

Literary fiction

Lewi Lewis

A GHOSTLY TALE

Romance set within a graveyard

Paranormal fiction / Magic realism

Annie Mitchell

Protag

A struggling writer battles with his protagonist.

Fantasy / Sci-fi

Irish Goat

Indian Givers

A man who learned at 21 that his father was actually his stepfather tries to come to terms with discovering that all the promises...

Coming-of-age / Young adult fiction

Mark Schaeffer

Constant Craving

This is the first part of the first chapter of a hopeful (like fingers-constantly-crossed, hopeful) first novel that will eventually...

Coming-of-age / Young adult fiction

Lauren Forte

Changing Tunes Prologue

Jenny Daniels is living the rockstar life; money, freedom, sex, and rock & roll. But all that takes a turn when a personal tragedy...

Romance / Women's fiction

Erika Torres

Chapter 1

It's the story of a young adult trying to survive through her last year of high school as well as an abusive relationship. During...

Coming-of-age / Young adult fiction

Emma Chance

A long way from home

Never count on the people who say they love you

Action / Adventure

Caitlin Jones

The Sleepwalker: Chapter One

Charlotte Dean, a logical young woman from a well-off family, has always been prone to sleepwalking which has put her life at...

Paranormal fiction / Magic realism

Blueswan

Perpetual Horizon

A couple is going on a road trip and get lost. Everything that can do wrong did go wrong and this is how they deal with it.

Flash fiction

morgan renninger

Beyond the Blue Kite

Over the course of a weekend, Brian McFadden-Brant falls into a downward spiral both helped and hindered by his mother and grandfather...

Literary fiction

Richard tattoni

Family Affair

Aging family physician and wife long for a child and achieve that in unexpected way

Flash fiction

Sam Newsome

The Whrilpool of Thought

The inner thoughts of a young girl about life and her place in it.

Literary fiction

Blueswan

To Ski

A young man experiences what it feels like to ski.

Coming-of-age / Young adult fiction

Gloria DeMoura

One Last Breath

The story is about a young girl who lost her father, the only person in the world she loved the most

Literary fiction

Kyissa Almeida

string of pearls

1942, a young man is sent to Hawaii, while there he is faced with many challenges and makes a best friend along the way.

Literary fiction

gerald

The Lion's Deal

A lion was captured in the wild and forced into slavery. He made a deal with his captor that if he won 100 battles in the arena,...

Literary fiction

MELISSA HAM

Writer of the Month

Ian Andrew grew up in the coastal town of Larne, Northern Ireland. He left to join the Royal Air Force at age 18 and worked initially as an aircraft technician before being commissioned as an Intelligence Officer. After serving for two decades he relocated, with his Australian wife, to the rural South West of Western Australia. Surrounded by a resident mob of kangaroos, he is currently working on the next novel in the Wright & Tran series of detective stories.

Ian Andrew

Pen Factor Picks

Reviewer of the Month

I am from Sydney but have lived in the Illawarra for 31 years. I graduated with a diploma of art in 1979, from what was then The Alexander Mackie CAE in Sydney, where I met my partner Sharon, an artist and teacher. We have a twenty two year old son. I left home at 17 and spent my early years working in a variety of jobs. I was restless, eager for new experiences. I managed to get work at the Sydney Theatre Company and the Opera House building sets and making props, I had a stint working on film and TV sets before building several recording studios in Sydney. Eventually I discovered computers ostensibly to make art, but had so many requests to repair them, I started my own business, which I ran until retiring in 2013. I have loved literature all of my life. In a lot of ways, reading informed the progress of my life. It is difficult to describe precisely, that strange, in-between world you enter when you are immersed in a good book. Good literature can be a great teacher and make one a better person. Since I retired from gainful employment I have been trying my hand at putting an enthusiasm for literature into writing. I have much to learn, but I have also found a great deal of pleasure in writing. Writing reviews for The Pen Factor is an opportunity to hone one’s own skills with the bonus of receiving positive criticism for your own work. Writing is necessarily a lonely business, so it is a pleasure to pass on the knowledge I have learnt, as well as having an ongoing conversation about the craft of writing. I do my best to be positive and constructive in criticism. I believe it is important to exercise both, humility and generosity when writing a critique/review for beginning writers. The best advice I could give is to put yourself into the shoes of your characters, and be ever observant. Eavesdrop on conversations. Sometimes an overheard sentence can reveal the beginning of a terrific story. One can overhear the most mundane, silliest snippet of conversation, but it can be a trigger; store it in your memory for later. I was standing in a que yesterday and two women were eating apples. There was silence, while they ate and then one said to the other “do you eat the core,” Immediately and vividly, two comic scenes popped into my head.

Dreyfus

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