Memories of Hugh C. Rae

Sometimes we meet people fleetingly,who turn out to have a disproportionately significant influence on our lives. Hugh C. Rae, whom I first met more than 25 years ago, was someone in that category as far as I'm concerned, and I was sorry to read of his recent death at the age of 78.

My first encounter with Hugh came in the context of a writers' competition. There is a very good writers group in Southport, and I attended a number of their annual get-togethers in a seafront hotel in that pleasant resort. Each year, there was a competition that anyone could enter. When I heard that the competition involved writing the first chapter of a novel, I decided to submit the first chapter of the Liverpool-based detective story that I was writing at the time. In fact, I hadn't got much further than the first chapter at that stage.

My entry didn't win the prize, but Hugh made some helpful comments. He'd written thrillers himself, and said that he liked my writing. I found this very encouraging, and carried on with the book. That first chapter - much re-written, I have to say, since I took on board his advice - became the first chapter of All the Lonely People. In one of the essays that appear in the ebook version, I mention Hugh's influence on the story, and also the fact that, years later, it was a real pleasure to meet him again at a couple of CWA conferences in Scotland. He was a convivial chap, who cared passionately about writing.

He wrote under his own name and under various pseudonyms, but ironically he achieved his greatest commercial success with historical romances written as by Jessica Stirling. On meeting Hugh, a craggy Glaswegian, you would not imagine him as a writer of light popular romance, but the point was that he was a real professional, someone who could write in a range of different styles, and treat each genre he tackled on its merits. I shall continue to have fond memories of him, and the example he set, of treating a young and enthusiastic but rather unsophisticated writer with kindness and respect..

Writing Competitions

I’ve been involved with writing competitions a good many times, mainly as a judge in recent years, but also sometimes as an entrant. An early version of what became the first chapter of my debut novel, All the Lonely People, was submitted to the Southport Writers’ annual seminar competition in the late 80s and got nowhere. Actually, that’s not quite true or fair, since I did get some feedback from the judge, Jessica Stirling (who was in fact a very likeable fellow, Hugh C. Rae) which offered some encouragement.

A couple of years later, the Southport Writers’ ran a short story competition judged by the senior fiction editor of ‘Bella’. My story, ‘Are You Sitting Comfortably?’ won – a truly great moment. The story was published in ‘Bella’ (which sadly does not take fiction any more) and in ‘Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine’ and it helped to launch my career in print..

I’ve been asked to mention a writing competition run by that admirable organisation Mystery Women, and the details are here. Mystery Women does, I’m glad to say, allow men to join, but its special mission is to encourage women writers.

Is it worth devoting time and trouble to entering a writing competition? On balance, I think it often is – though it’s very important not to allow an initial lack of success to deter you from continuing to apply fingers to keyboards. Winning competitions and literary prizes is the icing on the cake – the ultimate measure of success is having readers who want to keep coming back for more of your work.

Writing Competitions

I’ve been asked to judge the annual story competition for Wirral Writers, a group to which I belonged in the 80s. The prize is the Maynah Lewis Cup – Maynah was a veteran professional writer who founded the group many years ago, and did much to encourage local authors on the Wirral peninsula.

I’m glad to be involved in something like this, because I do think Maynah was right, and that it is a Good Thing that writers continue to be encouraged – whether or not they have already had the experience of publication. I’ve been involved in judging prize competitions several times over the years, most recently for the Mace & Jones contest last year to celebrate Liverpool’s year in the spotlight as Capital of Culture. Of course, the judging process is inevitably very subjective, and this is something I remind myself of when I’m involved in competitions or awards in relation to my own writing.

I heard the other day that Hugh C. Rae, an excellent writer of many years’ standing has recently brought out a new book. Hugh judged the competition in which I entered an opening scene that later became the first chapter of my debut novel, All the Lonely People. I didn’t come close to winning, but I found his assessment of the piece very useful. And the first short story I ever had published was picked as a winner of a writing competition by the fiction editor of ‘Bella’. A few years later, as a published novelist, I had the pleasure of meeting Hugh at a couple of CWA conferences in Scotland - and he revealed that his most successful books were not thrillers, but romances written under the name of Jessica Stirling!

With every competition, there are bound to be more losers than winners. But my own experience makes me believe that there is something to be gained from entering competitions, even if one doesn’t succeed. And I hope that the current crop of Wirral Writers will include some stars of the future.