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June-deadline & Regular Writing Competitions

Below is a list of June-deadline writing competitions listed initially under format and then under deadline dates (see Competitions for other dates). Below that are weekly, monthly, quarterly and competition websites. Enjoy!

And don’t forget I also have an extensive Submission info. section (including how you can appear on this blog) and an Events page (do email me if you know of more)…

JUNE

Children’s: The Commonword Diversity Writing for Children Prize 2013 has a 30th June deadline. See www.ihaveadream.org.uk and / or email w4c@cultureword.org.uk or phone +44 161 832 3777.
Flash Fiction: Weekly challenge on http://theironwriter.com.
Flash Fiction: The Flash 500 Fiction Competition, established 2009, is a quarterly open-themed competition for fiction up to 500 words has closing dates of 31st March, 30th June, 30th September and 31st December. Entry fee: £5 for one story, £8 for two stories. Prizes: £300 plus publication in Words with JAM, £100 and £50.
Flash Fiction: Northampton Literature Group usually runs a yearly poetry competition with a mid-May deadline but it has 2013 off and is running a flash fiction competition instead! The deadline is Sunday 30th June (midnight, UK time) and their Head Judge is… me!
Flash Fiction: Indies Unlimited hosts a weekly 250-word max. prompt competition – see Indies Unlimited. Also see ‘Short stories’ below.
Flash Fiction: Lightship Publishing runs eight competitions; flash fiction, first chapter, one-page, memoir, poetry, poetry book, first act, short stories, all with a 30th June deadline. See http://www.lightshippublishing.co.uk and/or email admin@lightshippublishing.co.uk for more information.
Flash Fiction: Writer Austin Briggs runs a monthly 55-word competition (different theme each month). It’s free to enter and you can win $55 (of his own money!).
Flash Fiction: The New Writer 17th Annual Prose & Poetry Prizes launched April 2013. £2,000 in prizes. Closing date 30th November. Short stories, flash fiction and poetry.
Mixed: Submission to the non-fiction and fiction Shirley You Jest Book Awards opens 20th May (closes 22nd July). I’m one of the sponsors!
Mixed: Segora International Writing Competitions 2013. Vignette Competition, max 300 words, judge Bernard Lord. Short Story Competition, from 1,500 to 3,000 words, judge Tom Bryan. Poetry Competition, max 40 lines, judge John Hudson. Deadline for all competitions 8th June. Prizes: Short Story and Poetry £150, £50 and £30; Vignette £30 and £10 for commended or equivalent prize money in euro.
Mixed: The Creative Future Literary Awards showcasing the work of marginalised and disabled writers, theme The Spark in Flash Fiction (maximum 300 words) or Poetry (maximum 200 words), closing date 16th June. Entry fee: £5 per piece, £15 if critique required.
Mixed: Marple (shorts & poetry), Christian magazine Pockets has a different theme per month, Cinnamon Press Writing Awards (for novellas, poetry and short stories).
Mixed: The Cowley Literary Award is a global short story competition, fiction and non-fiction, $5,000AUD prizes, max 4000 words, closing date 30th June. See http://www.australianartsales.com.au/cowley-award.
Mixed (novels & short story collections): iWriteReadRate and Cornerstones Literary Consultancy (http://www.voteformyebook.com) are offering a monthly social competition to members of the community – see ‘Monthly’ towards the end of this page.
Mixed: Lightship Publishing runs eight competitions; flash fiction, first chapter, one-page, memoir, poetry, poetry book, first act, short stories, all with a 30th June deadline. See http://www.lightshippublishing.co.uk and/or email admin@lightshippublishing.co.uk for more information.
Mixed: http://globalfeelgoodcompany.com/competition (opens May, closes 30th September – see ‘September’ for full details).
Non-fiction: Elephants. You gotta LOVE ‘em! And can you WRITE about them? Let’s find out. We’re looking for FICTION (including but not limited to fantasy and humor) and for NARRATIVE NONFICTION, between 500 and 5,000 words.Prize for 1st place is $150 and 2nd place is $50. Plus, the top tales may be included in an anthology {ELEPHANTHOLOGY} with your name. See http://www.phylsbooks.com/#!contest/c1kbb. Submissions accepted from 1 April 2013 – midnight of 1 July 2013. Cost $10.
Non-fiction: another non-fiction competition is http://greberwritingaward.com/submissions.htm
Novels: The Flash 500 Novel Opening Chapter & Synopsis Competition, established 2013, is an annual competition, opening for entries on 1st May and closing on 31st October. The judges for this competition will be the senior editors at Crooked Cat Publishing. Entry fee: £10. Prizes: £500 first prize, plus a runner’s up prize of £200.
Novels: Submission to the non-fiction and fiction Shirley You Jest Book Awards opens 20th May (closes 22nd July). I’m one of the sponsors!
Novels: Lightship Publishing runs eight competitions; flash fiction, first chapter, one-page, memoir, poetry, poetry book, first act, short stories, all with a 30th June deadline. See http://www.lightshippublishing.co.uk and/or email admin@lightshippublishing.co.uk for more information.
Novels: Novel Rocket runs an annual Launch Pad Contest: Boosting You Out of the Slush Pile. Entries will be accepted in all genres beginning mid-January. The deadline for submission is different for genre categories according to the following schedule. In each case, entries must be received by 11:59 PM EST on the 10th day of the month (April to September) listed on http://www.novelrocket.com/p/launch-pad-contest.html. They also post a new writing-related article seven days a week, from author interviews to marketing discussions to articles about the craft of writing.
Novels: other June deadline competitions include Impress Prize, and Lightship International First Chapter.
Plays: Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting has a 1st prize of £16,000. Open to anyone resident in the UK and Ireland. The play must an original, unperformed and unproduced piece of work, an hour long or more in playing time. Closing date 3rd June. See http://www.writeaplay.co.uk/about.
Plays: Adrienne Benham Award 2013: £2,000 prize now accepting applications: Theatre Centre offers the Adrienne Benham Award, a £2,000 seed commission, to support the work of a promising playwright interested in exploring the Theatre for Young Audiences sector, but who has little experience in the field. The award is intended to steer gifted writers towards young audiences by giving them a seed commission and attachment to Theatre Centre as they develop an original idea for young audiences. Prize: £2,000 seed commission and attachment. Deadline: 7 June 2013 at 12 noon. Further information (including the full criteria and application form) available from the Theatre Centre website.
Plays: Write Lines: New Writing for Young Audiences Conference: Do you write plays for young audiences, or do you want to? Celebrating 60 years of working with writers to produce outstanding theatre for young audiences, Theatre Centre hosts a day-long conference for writers and theatre professionals on Thursday 20 June. The keynote speech will be delivered by playwright Bryony Lavery. Other guest speakers include playwrights Amanda Dalton, Rob Evans, Philip Osment and Evan Placey; and industry professionals Anthony Banks (NT), Jonathan Lloyd (Polka Theatre) and Purni Morell (Unicorn Theatre). Reserve your place today!
Plays: Ace Drama have a Beatles-themed ‘Ticket to Write’ contest ending 25th June.
Plays: www.angletheatre.co.uk/discovered.html.
Plays: Lightship Publishing runs eight competitions; flash fiction, first chapter, one-page, memoir, poetry, poetry book, first act, short stories, all with a 30th June deadline. See http://www.lightshippublishing.co.uk and/or email admin@lightshippublishing.co.uk for more information.
Poetry: Wirral Festival of Firsts Open Poetry Competition 2013 has a closing date of 1st June 2013 (today!). First Prize: £200, Second Prize: £75, 3 runner-up prizes of £25. For poems on any subject, of no more than 40 lines. Submissions can be made online or by post. Postal submissions should include a separate sheet with the entrant’s name, address and the titles of the poem(s) and a cheque or postal order for £3 per poem or £10 for 4 poems payable to: “Festival of Firsts”. Postal submissions to: FOF Poetry Competition, 71 Alderley Road, Hoylake, Wirral CH47 2AU. See website www.festivaloffirsts.com for all the competition rules and online entries.
Poetry: Canterbury Festival Poet of the Year Competition 2013. International, max 60 lines, judging panel will consist of Nancy Gaffield, winner of the Aldeburgh Prize 2011; the ‘2012 Poet of the Year’ Graham Burchell; and Luigi Marchini, Chairman of the Canterbury based SaveAs Writers’ Group. Closing date 14th June. The festival itself runs 19th October to 2nd November.
Poetry: Mslexia (for women poets – sorry, guys): 2013 Poetry and Pamphlet Competitions. “This year the Poetry Competition for single poems will be judged by the fantastic Costa-award winning poet Kathleen Jamie, and the first prize is £2,000 – a substantial prize that also includes two optional extras: a week at the idyllic poets’ retreat of Cove Park, and a mentoring session with the editor of Poetry Review. Other winners will receive a share of the remaining £1,100 prize pot, and all winning poems will be published in the September 2013 issue of Mslexia. Following the success of the inaugural 2012 competition, and the publication of the winning pamphlet by Polly Atkin, Shadow Dispatches, we have also launched our 2013 Pamphlet Competition. For collections of 20-24 pages of 18-20 poems. the first prize is the publication of the pamphlet by Seren Books, plus £250, 25 complimentary copies of the pamphlet and royalties from all subsequent sales. If you’ve never had a full-length collection published and want to take your work to the next level, this could be the competition for you… The deadline for both competitions is 17th June 2013, so there’s still plenty of time to decide which poem to enter – or to write one! – and to come up with a winning title for that short collection. Full details of how to enter both competitions are on our website at www.mslexia.co.uk/poetrycompetition and www.mslexia.co.uk/pamphletcompetition respectively. Keep an eye out there too for specially commissioned poetry writing workshops which will be available over the coming weeks.
Poetry: Scroll’s 4th of July Front Cover Contest: Be Published on the front cover of Scroll Original Artist Magazine, Scroll Publ cover on Facebook, and on the front page of scrolloriginalartistmagazine.com from July 1st thru August 30, 2013 along with your colored photo and 80 word bio. Independence Day is the theme for the July / Aug 2013 issue. To Enter send 2 poems – 21 lines, photo, biography and full contact info to scrollpubl@outlook.com. Deadline; June 21, 2013.
Poetry: The Writers’ Forum Poetry Competition is a monthly contest for poems of up to 40 lines. Closing: Monthly. Entries arriving too late for one month go forward to the next. Prizes: 1st – £100. Runners-up – A Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Entry Fee: £5 each, £3 each thereafter. Includes a critique (sae required if entering by post). Comp Page: http://www.writers-forum.com/poetrycomp.html.
Poetry: Second Light Poetry Competition for Long and Short Poems by Women is judged by Moniza Alvi, £300 first prizes, closing date 25 June. See http://www.secondlightlive.co.uk/news.shtml#Comp13.
Poetry: The Flash 500 Humour Verse Competition, established in 2010, welcomes any form of humour verse will be accepted, from a limerick to a poem of 32 lines. This is also a quarterly competition with closing dates of 31st March, 30th June, 30th September and 31st December. Entry fee: £3 for the first poem, £2.50 for each poem thereafter. Prizes: £150 plus publication in Words with JAM, £100 and £50.
Poetry: Poetry Space Competition 2013. Max 40 lines, judge Martyn Crucefix. 1st prize £250 + anthology, closing date 30 June. See http://www.poetryspace.co.uk/2013/01/poetry-space-competition-2013.
Poetry: Lightship Publishing runs eight competitions; flash fiction, first chapter, one-page, memoir, poetry, poetry book, first act, short stories, all with a 30th June deadline. See http://www.lightshippublishing.co.uk and/or email admin@lightshippublishing.co.uk for more information.
Poetry: The Keats-Shelley Prize 2013 for Essays and Poems on Romantic Themes – open to all. Prize Chair: acclaimed novelist Salley Vickers. £3,000 prize money. Winning poems and essays will be published in The Keats-Shelley Review. Theme for poems in 2013 is Noise. Essays are invited on any aspect of the work and lives of the Romantics and their circle. Poems judged by John Hartley-Williams and Matthew Sweeney, essays by leading Romantic scholars Prof. Simon Bainbridge and Prof. Sharon Ruston. Closing date 30 June.
Poetry: The New Writer 17th Annual Prose & Poetry Prizes launched April 2013. £2,000 in prizes. Closing date 30th November. Short stories, flash fiction and poetry.
Poetry: Other poetry competitions include: Creative Competitor, Earth Words, Edwin Morgan, Keats-Shelley Prize 2012, Margaret Reid, Ted Walters, United Press, Writing Magazine.
Screenwriting: Canada-based Wildsound run monthly screenwriting competitions.
Scriptwriting: Lightship Publishing runs eight competitions; flash fiction, first chapter, one-page, memoir, poetry, poetry book, first act, short stories, all with a 30th June deadline. See http://www.lightshippublishing.co.uk and/or email admin@lightshippublishing.co.uk for more information.
Scriptwriting: Ted Walters.
Scriptwriting: The 10th Annual Screenwriting Challenge is a competition open to screenwriters around the world. There are 3 rounds of competition. In the 1st Round (June 14-22), writers are placed randomly in heats and are assigned a genre, subject, and character assignment (see examples of past assignments here). Writers have 8 days to write an original short screenplay no longer than 12 pages. The judges choose a top 5 in each heat to advance to the 2nd Round (July 25-28) where writers receive new assignments, only this time they have just 3 days to write an 8 page (maximum) short screenplay. Judges choose a top 25 from the 2nd Round to advance to the 3rd and final round of the competition where writers are challenged to write a 5 page (maximum) screenplay in just 24 hours (August 23-24). It’s easy to register. First, download and read the Official Rules and Participation Agreement. Once you have read, understood, and agree to the terms, you are ready to register by clicking here. The entry fee is USD $39* until the Early Entry Deadline of May 16, 2013 and USD $49* until the Final Entry Deadlline of June 13, 2013.
Short stories: The Fourteenth V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize is now open. “The Royal Society of Literature is delighted to inform you that the fourteenth V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize for best unpublished short story of the year is now open to submissions. The winning author will be awarded a prize of £1,000, and the short story will be published in Prospect online and in our annual magazine, the RSL Review. In addition to this, there will be an opportunity to appear at an RSL event with established short story writers in autumn 2013 (the 2012 winner read at an event with short-story writer, novelist, and poet Jackie Kay. This year’s judges are award-winning short story writers Adam Foulds, Jackie Kay and Helen Simpson. The entry form is available on our website. The closing date for entries is 13th June 2013, and all submissions should be posted with the £5 administrative fee to: V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize, Royal Society of Literature, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA For further information, please email Molly Rosenberg (molly@rslit.org) and / or see website http://rslit.org/v-s-pritchett. Stories must be 2,000 to 5,000 words long, printed on one side of an A4 in double-spaces and sent to the London address above.
Short stories: Elephants. You gotta LOVE ‘em! And can you WRITE about them? Let’s find out. We’re looking for FICTION (including but not limited to fantasy and humor) and for NARRATIVE NONFICTION, between 500 and 5,000 words.Prize for 1st place is $150 and 2nd place is $50. Plus, the top tales may be included in an anthology {ELEPHANTHOLOGY} with your name. See http://www.phylsbooks.com/#!contest/c1kbb. Submissions accepted from 1 April 2013 – midnight of 1 July 2013. Cost $10.
Short stories: Hayley Sherman runs a monthly short story competition for submissions on any subject up to 2,000 words. The winners are published on the website, promoted online and receive a £10 First Writer voucher. All entrants are also considered for publication in The New Short Story Annual at the end of the year. Deadline 25th of the month. Heather Marie Schuldt runs a similar contest, although 500-750 words max., but with the same deadline.
Short stories: Scotland’s International Crime Festival Bloody Scotland (which runs mid-September) has a short story competition deadline late June.
Short stories: Fantasy Faction have a fantasy short story competition which ends June 30th. Thanks to Sophie E Tallis for that one!
Short stories: Lightship Publishing runs eight competitions; flash fiction, first chapter, one-page, memoir, poetry, poetry book, first act, short stories, all with a 30th June deadline. See http://www.lightshippublishing.co.uk and/or email admin@lightshippublishing.co.uk for more information.
Short stories: Writers’ Village runs a quarterly short story competition which attracts entrants worldwide. Click here for the rules… and every entrant receives invaluable critique! Their summer deadline is 30th June.
Short stories: Words Magazine Short Story Competition is free to enter, international, and has a closing date of 30th June. See http://www.wordsmag.com/compcal13.htm.
Short stories: Five Stop Story runs a quarterly short story competition (end March / June / September / December). Membership to the site is £25 but you get to enter up to five stories in each competition. Further details at http://www.fivestopstory.com/write.
Short stories: GKBC (Giving Kudos to Brilliant Content) is running a free crime-writing competition with a deadline of 30th June 2013. See http://gkbcinc.com/the-gkbcinc-short-story-competition for more details.
Short stories: The Booktown Writers’ Annual Short Story Competition 2013 welcomes 1000-3000 words, cash prizes + anthology. Closing date 30th June. See http://www.booktownwriters.co.uk/competition.html.
Short stories: British Fantasy Society Short Story Competition. 5000 words max, 1st prize £100 + year’s BFS membership + publication. Judge Allen Ashley, closing date 30th June.
Short stories: The New Writer 17th Annual Prose & Poetry Prizes launched April 2013. £2,000 in prizes. Closing date 30th November. Short stories, flash fiction and poetry.
Short stories: Other June deadline competitions include Aeon Award (quarterly), Countryside Tales, Creative Competitor, Cwrtnewydd Scribblers, Earlyworks, Erewash, Five Stop Story, Glimmer Train (different category each month), Lightship Publishing, sandralit, Ted Walters, Words Magazine, Writing Magazine (WM: open to all theme: writing for children – dog tales / subscriber-only theme: passport, glove, tuba), Writers Bureau, Writers Reign and Calderdale.
Soundtracks: Mini Operas soundtrack competition opens early June closes late July.

WEEKLY

Flash Fiction: Indies Unlimited hosts a weekly 250-word max. prompt competition – see Indies Unlimited. Co-run by interviewee Kat ‘K.S.’ Brooks. Also see ‘Short stories’ below.
Flash Fiction: Each week on http://theironwriter.com, four writers agree to compose a five hundred word story involving the same four elements. Please remember to give your story a title. The stories can be in any genre except erotica. The writers will not know what the four elements are prior to committing to the challenge. There is a four day time limit to complete the story. I email the elements early Thursday morning, my time. The story is due at midnight, Sunday, your time. Each author retains full and complete copyright of their story submitted to The Iron Writer for this competition. However, it is understood each story will remain on this website indefinitely. The Iron Writer will not publish any submission outside this website without express permission from the author. So, if you are up to the challenge, please email me at HERE and we can schedule when you are willing to participate. Please include your main blog or website. I will link your story to your site. You may participate as often as you want.
Mixed: Needle in the Hay runs weekly and monthly competitions (“awards”). See http://needleinthehay.net/submission-guidelines for their guidelines. Thanks to Jason Fink for pointing me in that direction.
Poetry: Buxton’s Word Wizards slam poetry competition runs in the coffee lounge at the Grove Hotel, Buxton, Derbyshire, UK at 7:30pm on the last Tuesday of every month. Entry is £2.50. More info can be obtained by e-mailing Rob at: poetryslamUK@aol.com.
Poetry: Well Versed is the weekly poetry column of daily UK newspaper the Morning Star, published every Thursday, in print and online. Poetry editor Jody Porter. Under the stewardship of the late and esteemed John Rety, Well Versed developed into a widely-read forum for new and established writers. Send submissions, with biographical information, to: wveditor@gmail.com. Poems need not be overtly political, but space is limited so they must be short to medium in length.
Short stories: Flash Fiction Online occasionally closes to submissions (I guess because they’re overwhelmed), but they are currently open.
NB. Don’t forget to check out the ongoing competition websites listed at the end of this page.

MONTHLY

Flash Fiction: Writer Austin Briggs runs a monthly 55-word competition (different theme each month). It’s free to enter and you can win $55 (of his own money!).
Flash Fiction: Empirical Magazine runs a monthly flash fiction (<1000-word) competition.
Mixed: iWriteReadRate and Cornerstones Literary Consultancy (http://www.voteformyebook.com) are offering a monthly social competition to members of the community; it’s a great opportunity to receive professional feedback as well as contribute to developing your profile and platform. The prize is a fantastic Cornerstones masterclass mini-critique on the winning writer’s first pages of their story, up to 2000 words. This is designed to give the writer a professional critique on how to improve the opening as well as hints to consider throughout their writing. Simply upload an ebook (novels or collections of short stories) to iWriteReadRate. Every month we’ll select five to take part in the competition. All the writer needs to do is promote it with their networks and aim to get as many votes for their ebook as possible. At the end of each month the ebook with the most votes wins the prize.
Mixed: Needle in the Hay runs weekly and monthly competitions (“awards”). See http://needleinthehay.net/submission-guidelines for their guidelines. Thanks to Jason Fink for pointing me in that direction.
Mixed: Pockets and Creative Print Publishing (both have different themes each month), Opening Editions (free).
Novels: http://www.novelrocket.com/p/launch-pad-contest.html has monthly competitions (April-Sept) with a different genre each month.
Screenwriting: Canada-based Wildsound run monthly screenwriting competitions.
Scriptwriting: Scripped has a variety of script contests including a monthly one.
Short stories: Hayley Sherman has a monthly short story competition.
Short stories: Brighton COW (currently on hiatus), Coast to Coast, Glimmer Train (different category each month), Writing / Writers’ News magazines and Opening Editions.
Short stories: Bound Off now take submissions via Submishmash.
Short stories: Darker Times Fiction is a monthly short story competition for stories of 3,000 words and less in the horror genre or on the subject of ‘darker times’. It’s open to UK and international writers and ends on the last day of each month and costs £5 / $8 a time.
Short stories: Hayley Sherman runs a monthly short story competition for submissions on any subject up to 2,000 words. The winners are published on the website, promoted online and receive a £10 First Writer voucher. All entrants are also considered for publication in The New Short Story Annual at the end of the year. Deadline 25th of the month.
Short stories: Heather Marie Schuldt runs a short story contest, 500-750 words max., on her blog, with the same deadline (25th of the month).
Short stories: http://www.fivestopstory.com/write: 2012 competitions cost £4 per entry (2 for £7, 3 for £8, optional feedback £5) and have monthly prizes of £50. There is also a £150 prize for the overall winner of their 2012 league table and you can become a member for £25 which entitles you to 3 free entries per month (2012).
Short stories: LinkedIn’s Aspiring Writers Group runs a monthly short story competition. You do have to be a member of LinkedIn (free) and the writing group itself (a closed group but you can ask to join) to enter the competition.
NB. Don’t forget to check out the ongoing competition websites listed at the end of this page.

QUARTERLY

Flash fiction: Wow Women on Writing.
Short stories: Aeon Award, Cheer Reader, Dark Tales, Emerald Flash Fiction, Five Stop Story and Writers’ Village.
NB. Don’t forget to check out the ongoing competition websites listed at the end of this page.

ONGOING

Children’s: Dal Burns‘ children’s writing competition ‘Write Across America‘.
Children’s: Little Star Writing is a site where you can “get published, enter competitions, win prizes, play games, improve literacy skills, receive certificates and HAVE FUN!”.
Flash fiction: One Forty Fiction and Wow Women on Writing.
Mixed: What The Dickens magazine lists “competitions and give-aways which are all free to enter”.
Mixed: sterlingmag and sundayat6mag.wordpress.com
Mixed: You can apply for a three-month residency on the Mslexia blog (women only).
Non-fiction: http://www.tales2inspire.com/HOME.html (free )
Novels: Novel Rocket runs an annual Launch Pad Contest: Boosting You Out of the Slush Pile. Entries will be accepted in all genres beginning mid-January. The deadline for submission is different for genre categories according to the following schedule. In each case, entries must be received by 11:59 PM EST on the 10th day of the month (April to September) listed on http://www.novelrocket.com/p/launch-pad-contest.html. They also post a new writing-related article seven days a week, from author interviews to marketing discussions to articles about the craft of writing.
Poetry: Poetic Republic is an ongoing online poetry competition in which the entrants are also the judges.
Scriptwriting: http://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/links5.shtml.
Short stories: Creative Writers’ Circle competitions are open to all and are free.
Short stories: Flash Fiction Online is a 500-1000 word site that is free to subscribe / read, free to submit to. Payment is via donations with 60% going to the author and 40% going to the site so there’s no way of knowing how much (if anything) you’d earn but another opportunity perhaps.
Short stories: Author and columnist Lorraine Mace runs the Flash 500 flash fiction and humorous verse competitions.
Short stories: Short Funny Story wants humorous short stories or true-life events and pay $15 for every story published online with $25 extra for any story chosen for inclusion in their anthologies.
Short stories: Penny Dreadfuls 21 commissions short stories.
Short stories: Words Magazine short story competition guidelines.

COMPETITION WEBSITES

Flash Fiction: Creative Times has a list of their top 10 paying flash fiction competition sites. There are also some listed on http://www.nationalflashfictionday.co.uk/competitions.html.
Mixed: Be a Better Writer has a list of (mostly American) current and future competitions.
Mixed: Book Marketing Maven has a list of a few.
Mixed: Duotrope is a great resource for competition and submission opportunities.
Mixed: FanStory lists a variety of ongoing competitions and is a site where you can “share your writing and learn from the feedback that you will receive on everything you write. That includes poetry, stories, book chapters and scripts. When you post your writing you will get feedback that will determine your place in the rankings. FanStory.com is a popular writing site for writers of all skill levels”.
Mixed: Fiction Addiction lists a few competition sites.
Mixed: http://www.firstwriter.com/competitions has a great list of competitions but you have to subscribe (not free) to the site to access the full details.
Mixed: Ideas Tap has a great list of allsorts.
Mixed: Jacqui Burnett’s Writer’s Bureau has a list of a variety of forthcoming and ongoing competitions.
Mixed: Carole Burdock’s bi-monthly magazine Kudos.
Mixed: Loquax.com lists thousands of competitions including writing comps.
Mixed: The National Association of Writers Groups (based in the UK) lists their competitions on http://www.nawg.co.uk/competitions/open-competitions.
Mixed: West Country Writers has a bijoux collection of competitions.
Mixed: Words Magazine has a variety of competition information.
Mixed: The Poets & Writers website include contests, grants and awards.
Mixed: www.prizemagic.co.uk has a variety of competitions.
Mixed: Sally Quilford‘s competition calendar.
Mixed: Trafford Publishing lists them a month per page.
Mixed: free literary monthly magazine Words with Jam have regular competitions.
Mixed: Write Link also lists forthcoming competitions.
Mixed: Writers Reign lists short story, poetry, non-fiction, performing arts, rolling competitions, children’s writing competitions and book writing awards.
Mixed: http://writingcontests.wordpress.com lists various competitions.
Novels: http://apostrophebooks.com/fictionfasttrack.
Poetry: Poetry Kit, http://www.poetrylibrary.org.uk/competitions, Writers Reign.
Poetry: You might also like to take a look at Poet Laureate Alice Shapiro’s website. Alice kindly provided some poetry tips for this blog in August 2011. Poet Scott E Green dropped by and left a comment on my me page to say that his blog has multi-genre competition and submission info. I checked it out and it looks really useful.
Poetry: The Writers’ Forum Poetry Competition is a monthly contest for poems of up to 40 lines. Closing: Monthly. Entries arriving too late for one month go forward to the next. Prizes: 1st: £100. Runners-up: A Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Entry Fee: £5 each, £3 each thereafter. Includes a critique (sae required if entering by post). Comp Page: http://www.writers-forum.com/poetrycomp.html.
Screenwriting: Canada-based Wildsound run monthly screenwriting competitions.
Scriptwriting: www.hollywoodscriptexpress.com/screenplay_contests.html, www.scriptfactory.co.uk/go/Default.html, www.writesofluid.co.uk/screenwriting-competitions.html, and www.thespiannet.com/writing_contests.shtml.
Short stories: BookTrust has a wonderful list of over 50 short story competitions.
Short stories: other sites include Poetry Kit (“shorts & other comps”) and Words Magazine.
Short stories: Writers Reign‘s short stories competitions page lists by deadline date.
Short story collections: http://apostrophebooks.com/fictionfasttrack.

If you discover any broken links, closed competitions or know of ones that I haven’t listed here, please do email me with details.

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Posted by morgenbailey on June 1, 2013 in childrens, competitions, ideas, non-fiction, novels, poetry, scriptwriting, short stories, submissions, writing

Tags: 5pm fiction, agent, Amazon, author, author interview, author spotlight, Barnes & Noble, Barnes and Noble, biographers, biography, blog, blogger, blogging, books, characters, children’s, competitions, copyediting, copyeditor, copywriter, copywriting, cozy mysteries, creative writing, crime, crime novelist, crime series, crime thriller, crime thrillers, critique, critique groups, debut novel, editing, editor, erotic romance, erotica, exercises, Facebook, fantasy, fantasy horror, fantasy writer, feedback, fellow authors, fiction, fiction author, five senses, flash fiction, free verse, future tense, Goodreads, grammar skills, graphic novels, guest blog, guest blog post, guest post, haiku, haiku poem, hendecasyllabic, historical, historical author, historical writer, horror novel, humorous, humour, iambic pentameter, indie, interview, interview with writer, interviewees, Jane Wenham Jones, Kobo, LinkedIn, Literary Festival, literature, memoirist, Morgan Bailey, morgen bailey, Morgen with an e, multi-genre, murder mysteries, murder mystery, mystery author, mystery series, mystery suspense, non-fiction, Northampton, novelist, novelists, novels, open mic nights, pantoum, paranormal, paranormal romance, paranormal romances, past tense, pinterest, poem, poet, poetry, poetry collection, poetry collections, poetry exercises, poetry magazine, poetry slams, present tense, pseudonyms, publisher, publishing, query letters, reading books, red pen, rejection letter, rejection letters, rejections, rhyming, rhyming poetry, romance, romance fantasy, romance writer, romantic suspense, science fiction, scriptwriters, second person point of view, second person viewpoint, self-publishing, short stories, short story group, Smashwords, sonnet, story a day, Story A Day May, story author, story authors, story collections, story writer, submissions, suspense novelist, suspense thriller, tanka, terza rima, travel memoir, travel writer, triolet, Twitter, vampire, villanelle, Waterstones, western, western author, Wordpress, writer, writer interview, writing, writing competitions, writing events, writing exercises, writing fiction, writing group, writing magazines, writing novels, writing poetry, writing prompts, writing workshop, YA, young adult novels, youtube

Invitation to take part in my blog

31 Mar

Hello. I’ve recently put a shout-out on LinkedIn to take part in my Author spotlights and the response has been great. That said, it’s proven to be quite frustrating with a number of authors not reading the guidelines properly; either only sending me part- or different content.

I welcome new submissions for everything below but PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE read the guidelines before you submit anything, and please don’t just send the content; I am human, please say “hello”! And please allow up to 2 weeks for a reply. If you’ve not heard by that time, then feel free to email me.

I would ask that you read an already-posted item to get a feel for the layout of the item you plan to submit for. It really does make all the difference. All content has to be family-friendly so no strong violence / language etc.

Because of the high volume of enquiries received across this blog (900+ outstanding to-date), I don’t schedule in advance but when I receive the content.

I don’t do book reviews – see Reviewers for some other sites that do.

Author spotlights

An author spotlight is made up of a <1,000-word third person biography, <1,000-word first-person about your writing / anything interesting writing-related, then links to you and your work (see the already-posted spotlights as examples) – ideally the text together in one document please. You can also provide a photograph of yourself and your book cover(s) to add some colour to the post. Please email me as attachments rather than email-embedded text / photos. Thank you.

Guest blog posts

Informative writing-related topics <1,000 words with a <500-word third-person biography, along with low resolution .jpg photos of yourself and / or one or two covers (as separate files please) and links to where we can find you and your writing. I like to mix the topics so if you submit please be aware that you may not necessarily get the next available slot. Please send as attachments wherever possible, thank you.

Flash Fiction Friday

If you’d like your story considered, email me your story (in full; up to 1,000 words, no more please or it won’t be flash fiction) and I’ll take a look. If it’s suitable I’ll email you with the Friday I plan to run it and it’ll be added to the schedule on this page. I’ll also then need <250 words on the inspiration behind it, a <250-word third-person biography, links to your website, blog etc., and a photo of yourself and / or book.

Post-Weekend Poetry

Email me your poem (60 lines max), <250 words on the inspiration behind it, <250-word third-person biography, links to your website, blog etc., and a photo of yourself and / or book(s).

Interviews

The full genre / format-specific interviews are currently posted on this blog weekend mornings UK time and carry a £10 / €12.50 / $15 charge. Alternatively you can have a free standard interview on http://morgensauthorinterviews.wordpress.com – (just a Q&A format though, no extra comments from me) then when it goes live I will mention it later the same day on this site. Email me and let me know which option you’d like to do and I’ll send you the relevant questionnaire.

Free eBook 5am Newsflash

Do you have a free eBook scheduled, you can email me with the following details:

email subject heading ’5am Flash’
your name
your website
short third-person author bio (<500 words)
book’s genre
short synopsis of the book (<500 words)
the dates it’s going to be free (please give me at least a week’s notice)
the full ‘purchase’ links (.com / .co.uk)
your photo and / or book cover pic (as small .jpg attachments wherever possible, not copied / pasted into the email / document)
and please say “hello”.

Online Writing Groups

In January 2013, I created five new online writing groups to share your short stories, poetry and novel / script extracts for feedback. I also post weekday 15-minute writing exercises – see Online Writing Groups.

I have loads of other information on this mixed blog including Competitions and Submission info., so do take a look around.

***

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **

For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.

I welcome items for critique for the online writing groups listed below:

Morgen’s Online Non-Fiction Writing Group

Morgen’s Online Novel Writing Group

Morgen’s Online Poetry Writing Group

Morgen’s Online Script Writing Group

Morgen’s Online Short Story Writing Group

We look forward to reading your comments.

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Posted by morgenbailey on March 31, 2013 in articles, interview, poetry, short stories, submissions, writing

Tags: 5pm fiction, agent, Amazon, author, author interview, author spotlight, Barnes & Noble, Barnes and Noble, biographers, biography, blogger, blogging, books, characters, children’s, copyediting, copyeditor, copywriter, copywriting, cozy mysteries, creative writing, crime, crime series, crime thriller, crime thrillers, critique, critique groups, debut novel, editing, editor, erotic romance, erotica, Facebook, fantasy, fantasy horror, fantasy writer, feedback, fellow authors, fiction, fiction author, five senses, flash fiction, Goodreads, grammar skills, guest blog, guest blog post, guest post, haiku poem, historical, historical author, historical writer, horror novel, indie, interview, interview with writer, interviewees, Kobo, LinkedIn, literature, memoirist, Morgan Bailey, morgen bailey, Morgen with an e, multi-genre, murder mysteries, murder mystery, mystery author, mystery series, mystery suspense, non-fiction, Northampton, novelist, novelists, novels, open mic nights, paranormal, paranormal romance, paranormal romances, pinterest, poetry, poetry collections, poetry exercises, poetry slams, pseudonyms, publisher, publishing, query letters, reading books, red pen, rejection letter, rejection letters, rejections, rhyming poetry, romance, romance fantasy, romance writer, science fiction, scriptwriters, second person viewpoint, self-publishing, short stories, short story group, Smashwords, story a day, Story A Day May, story author, story authors, story collections, story writer, submissions, suspense novelist, suspense thriller, travel memoir, travel writer, Twitter, vampire, Waterstones, western, western author, Wordpress, writer, writer interview, writing, writing competitions, writing events, writing exercises, writing fiction, writing group, writing magazines, writing novels, writing poetry, writing prompts, YA, young adult novels, youtube

Opportunity for self-published / indie novelists

17 Feb

Also see the Opportunities on this blog page.

Hello. Hopefully you will have spotted over the past few weeks that I’ve been running two novels, in instalments, every weekend evening, as the Novel Nights In slot:

Coming Up For Air by literary author, poet and interviewee Rose Mary Boehm every Sunday night, starting from 6th January; and
The Serial Dater’s Shopping List by multi-genre author Morgen Bailey (yes, that’s me!) every Saturday night, starting from Saturday 19th January.

The reason for this blog post is that Rose’s novel concludes on Sunday 3rd March, and mine on the 23rd March, and would like to give other authors the opportunity of sharing their novels with my visitors (200-500 a day).

Why did I title this ‘self-published / indie novelists’? Because invariably you can do what you like with your novels if you self-publish. When there’s a publisher involved it becomes more complicated. Of course if your publisher is willing to let you share your novel with the world (yes, WordPress provides a lovely coloured globe with their stats) then that’s great, but I’d need them to email me and tell me that it’s OK.

So, what do you need to do? In the first instance, only email me the synopsis (inc. word count of your <100,000-word novel or 30K+ novella), the first chapter and purchase links, and I’ll come back to you. Please ensure that all text is in black (with the exception of website links) and ideally no indentation. Thank you.

I welcome any genre of fiction but prefer family-friendly content. Some swearing and mild violence is acceptable as I can put a warning at the beginning of the post.

The final proviso is that your novel must be finished and available for purchase (not free) as the links will be included in every instalment. If a reader doesn’t want to wait the (up to) ten weeks to read the whole book, they can go off and buy it (and they have been).

NB. The instalments won’t necessarily be one chapter each but up to 10,000 words, hence the 10-week 100,000-word limit.

So, whilst for some readers it will be giving your book away for free (we write to be read anyway, don’t we?) it’s also an opportunity to gain extra sales.

Part 7 (of 9) of Rose’s book follows in an hour so I hope you stay and read it (the previous instalments can be read via links on the Novel Nights In page) and I look forward to hearing from you.

And there are plenty of other options to choose from on this blog,
take a look at the Opportunities on this blog page.

5 Comments

Posted by morgenbailey on February 17, 2013 in ebooks, novels, submissions, writing

Tags: agent, Amazon, author, author spotlight, Barnes & Noble, Barnes and Noble, biographers, biography, blogger, blogging, books, characters, children’s, copyediting, copyeditor, copywriter, copywriting, cozy mysteries, creative writing, crime, crime series, crime thriller, crime thrillers, critique, debut novel, editing, editor, erotic romance, erotica, Facebook, fantasy, feedback, fiction, fiction author, flash fiction, Goodreads, guest blog, guest blog post, guest post, historical, horror novel, indie, interview, interviewees, Kobo, LinkedIn, literature, Morgan Bailey, morgen bailey, Morgen with an e, multi-genre, murder mysteries, murder mystery, mystery author, mystery series, mystery suspense, non-fiction, Northampton, novelist, novelists, novels, paranormal, paranormal romance, paranormal romances, pinterest, poetry, poetry collections, pseudonyms, publisher, query letters, reading books, red pen, rejection letter, rejection letters, rejections, romance, Rose Mary Boehm, science fiction, scriptwriters, second person viewpoint, self-publishing, short stories, short story group, Smashwords, story a day, Story A Day May, story author, story authors, story collections, story writer, submissions, suspense novelist, Twitter, vampire, Waterstones, western, western author, Wordpress, writer, writing, writing competitions, writing events, writing fiction, writing group, writing magazines, writing novels, YA, young adult novels, youtube

Morgen’s Saturday Shout-out 003 – another week of changes

19 Jan

I mentioned in last Saturday’s shout-out that I’d created four new online critique writing groups (which welcome short stories, novel / script extracts up to 5,000 words and poems up to 50 lines for critique – see the Submissions page on each site) and accompanying Facebook groups and they’re ticking over nicely, with submissions on each blog, and authors chatting away to each other. I also post a set of four 15-minute exercises; poetry for the Poetry blog (http://poetrywritinggroup.wordpress.com / http://www.facebook.com/groups/388850977875934) and prose for the other three groups…

Morgen’s Online Novel Writing Group (http://novelwritinggroup.wordpress.com / http://www.facebook.com/groups/508696639153189)
Morgen’s Online Script Writing Group (http://scriptwritinggroup.wordpress.com / http://www.facebook.com/groups/319941328108017)
Morgen’s Online Short Story Writing Group (http://shortstorywritinggroup.wordpress.com / http://www.facebook.com/groups/544072635605445)

I said in the title of this shout-out that it’s been another week of changes, and two of the features on this blog have ceased:

Red Pen Critique – I know it’s a popular feature because I go into such detail and normally I wouldn’t axe something like this but now the critique writing groups are up and running, they’ve taken over where the RPC has left off.
Short Story Saturdays – this is where I reviewed or posted a guest story between 1,000 and 3,000 words. Again this has become superfluous now that the Short Story Writing Group is live, and the bonus is that I have upped the word limit to 5,000 words.

I’ve also increased the author spotlights from two nights a week (Wednesdays / Saturdays) to five nights (every week night!). This has immediately brought the lead time down considerably. Having the daily interviews booked up to the end of July is very frustrating for everyone. It’s great that it’s become such a popular slot but they are incredibly time-consuming for me, and have meant I’ve had little time for my own writing over the past year, defeating the object of quitting my job (in March) to be a full-time writer. So, the time has come for me to readjust the balance. It may not seem like it with me starting up four new groups but I’m hoping to step into the background, just posting the items and letting everyone else (although I’ll still red pen the submissions but put the scans in – and yes, I use a red pen – rather than type up my notes which took hours (because I’m so meticulous).

Anyway, this change in the spotlights has meant I now have Saturday nights free (after these shout-outs go up) so the two-week old slot Novel Nights In will not only run on Sunday evenings but also Saturday evenings; two novels in up to ten sections (so no submissions over 100,000 words) a week! Rose Mary Boehm’s novel ‘Coming Up for Air’ has been very well received so I shall be kicking off the Saturday night NNIs with my debut novel The Serial Dater’s Shopping List. I hope you enjoy it and look forward to your feedback. TSDSL is a 100,000-word novel so will run for the full ten weeks (ending Saturday 23rd March). I am welcoming submissions for novels to run after that, and after Rose’s novel which finishes on Sunday 10th March. See http://morgenbailey.wordpress.com/novel-nights-in for details.

OK, that’s about it for this week. The first two chapters of my novel will appear in about an hour – don’t be backwards at coming forwards with your comments.

***

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **

You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.

For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.

As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do, and a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words (and post stories of up to 3,000 words), or posted for others to critique (up to 5,000 words) on the new Morgen’s Online Short Story Writing Group. Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me posting it online in my new Red Pen Critique Sunday night posts, then do email me. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry and Morgen’s Online Poetry Writing Group.

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Posted by morgenbailey on January 19, 2013 in critique, ebooks, Facebook, interview, novels, short stories, submissions, writing

Tags: agent, Amazon, author, author spotlight, Barnes & Noble, biographers, biography, books, characters, children’s, creative writing, crime, critique, erotica, Facebook, fantasy, feedback, fiction, Goodreads, guest blog, guest blog post, guest post, historical, interview, Kobo, LinkedIn, literature, Morgan Bailey, morgen bailey, Morgen with an e, multi-genre, murder mystery, non-fiction, Northampton, novelist, novels, paranormal, pinterest, poetry, publisher, red pen, rejection letters, rejections, romance, science fiction, second person viewpoint, self-publishing, short story group, Smashwords, story author, story authors, story writer, submissions, Twitter, vampire, western, writer, writing, writing competitions, writing events, writing group, writing magazines, YA, youtube

Morgen’s Saturday Shout-out 002 – what a difference a week makes

12 Jan

Last Saturday I started this section of the blog to say what I’ve been up to. It did go on a bit (you can read it here) and although a lot’s happened this week, I’ll try to keep this short (I do waffle for England).

Last Sunday morning while going round the park with my dog, I came up with the idea (although it had been milling for a while) of expanding, or at least diluting, the red pen critique I do, and build a blog where others can more involved in critiquing short stories.

Morgen’s Online Short Story Writing Group was then born… and a few minutes later Morgen’s Online Poetry Writing Group… then by the end of Sunday, Morgen’s Online Novel Writing Group, and the following day Morgen’s Online Script Writing Group.

So, there are now four groups where… readers and writers critique each others’… short stories, poetry, novels and scripts. I then created Facebook pages for them (listed at the end of this post’s footer), inviting some of my Facebook friends. If you’re on Facebook, feel free to join in.

I put a shout-out on Facebook and Twitter that these blogs / groups exists and have had almost a dozen submissions already for the first three groups (so if anyone has a <5,000-word script extract they’d like to submit…!).

To-date I’ve posted:

001: Novel extract by Lianne Simon (novel group)
002: The Dreamt Child by Yvonne Hertzberger (novel group)
Poem 001: His Mac by Ina Schroders-Zeeders (poetry group)
Poem 002: Punchinello by Salvatore Buttaci (poetry group)
Poem 003: Australian Hendecasyllabics by Phillip Ellis (poetry group)
Story 001: Mine Own Land by Nathan Weaver (short story group)
Story for Critique 002: The Coffin Route by John McGowan (short story group), with Red pen session 012 – critique of ‘Shooting Stars’, a short story by Graham Smith posted in between
Nothing yet for the script group

Plus I’ve started daily exercises with four prompts for each so an hour’s worth of writing every evening for those who say they can’t find the time, or inspiration, to write… most of us, I think.

Because of these groups, I’ll be stopping the Red Pen Critique slot after the two I have booked in (tomorrow and Sunday 20th) – (a) because I’m doing the same thing in the short story and novel groups (I’m not qualified to really comment on poetry or script as I don’t write much of them but no doubt I will have something to say!) and (b) because I’ve been doing my red pen and then typing up the notes which takes a few hours each – for example I’ve written 14 sides of a shorthand notepad (about A6-size) just for a 2,200-word story!

The Short Story Saturdays (sss) slot has also now stopped because it was also posting and reviewing stories so is duplicated by the new short story group.

I’ll also be cutting down on the blog interviews: I’m currently booked up (still at one-a-day) until the end of June, when they will go to weekend mornings only, with the author spotlights then moving from Wednesday and Saturday evenings to weekday mornings. I am now charging (£10 / €12.50 / $15) for the interviews (because they take at least an hour a day to do – I add in comments as if we’re chatting) but everything else will still be free of charge. Wednesday evening will become another guest blog spot and Saturday evenings… not sure yet, maybe I’ll be posting some writing of mine.

I’ve also handed over the reins of my (in-person) Monday night writing group to a colleague who’s now going to host it every other Monday at her house. I’ll still go from time-to-time but it’s one less thing I have to do.

Last Sunday saw the start of the new Novel Nights In slot, where I run a guest novel in a maximum of 10 instalments. The novels can be self- or traditionally published but if the latter, I’ll need permission from your publisher that they’re happy to run it.

The 5pm Fiction has had a break since I started NaNoWriMo at the beginning of November but that returns February 1st. The idea was that it would give me three months to edit novel number two (a mystery written in 2009) but it’s making slow progress.

So, all-in-all a busy week with a lot of changes (I’m hoping for the better). No writing of my own done (not even the exercises – tut tut!), but hopefully the groups will more or less take care of themselves with a bit of admin from me. I will critique each one but the plan (from now on) is not to put the critique on the blog but provide links to scans of my markings. Invariably they’ll look scary but hopefully everyone will learn something from them. Each blog group has a ‘Submissions’ page stating what I need but do email me (morgen@morgenbailey.com) if you have any queries.

I quit my job in March 2012 so I could spend more time writing, I’m hoping 2013 will see me actually doing just that!

***

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **

For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.

Four new online writing groups:

Morgen’s Online Novel Writing Group (http://novelwritinggroup.wordpress.com / http://www.facebook.com/groups/508696639153189)
Morgen’s Online Poetry Writing Group (http://poetrywritinggroup.wordpress.com / http://www.facebook.com/groups/388850977875934)
Morgen’s Online Script Writing Group (http://scriptwritinggroup.wordpress.com / http://www.facebook.com/groups/319941328108017)
Morgen’s Online Short Story Writing Group (http://shortstorywritinggroup.wordpress.com / http://www.facebook.com/groups/544072635605445)

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Posted by morgenbailey on January 12, 2013 in blog, childrens, critique, ebooks, Facebook, ideas, interview, NaNoWriMo, novels, poetry, review, scriptwriting, self-publishing, short stories, submissions, Twitter, writing

Tags: agent, Amazon, author, author spotlight, Barnes & Noble, biographers, biography, books, characters, children’s, creative writing, crime, critique, erotica, Facebook, facebook friends, fantasy, feedback, fiction, Goodreads, guest blog, guest blog post, guest post, historical, interview, Kobo, LinkedIn, literature, Morgan Bailey, morgen bailey, Morgen with an e, multi-genre, murder mystery, non-fiction, Northampton, novel group, novelist, novels, paranormal, pinterest, poetry, publisher, rejection letters, rejections, romance, science fiction, second person viewpoint, self-publishing, short story group, short story writing, Smashwords, story author, story authors, submissions, Twitter, vampire, western, writer, writing, writing competitions, writing events, writing magazines, YA, youtube

Short Story Saturday story 003: The Bus Driver Who Stopped and Then Didn’t by Dan Purdue

05 Jan

Welcome to the Short Story Saturday story slot and the third story in this series. Because I have a 1,000-word limit on the Flash Fiction Fridays, I’ve decided (helped by first story contributor Jane Risdon) to add a story to the SSS slot, running roughly every other Saturday, in between the short story reviews, and here I’m delighted to share with you one of my favourite short stories (and one of the few I’ve given 10/10 to in the H.E. Bates Short Story Competition judging – this one once of the late-2011 entries – it had me hooked at the title!) by short story author Dan Purdue. The copyright remains with Dan.

Since he submitted this story, Dan’s told me that he’s submitted another for the late-2012 competition and one of the shortlisted (I only know the stories by the number our Competitions Secretary gives them and this year they all had the title / theme ‘A Walk at Midnight’ so it doesn’t help!) so I’ll get to meet him at the prize-giving next Friday 11th Jan (at Northampton’s Moulton Theatre, NN3 7RZ if you’re UK-based and free!).

The Bus Driver Who Stopped and Then Didn’t

Roland wasn’t built for running. Every flat-footed slap of his trainers onto the pavement shot a searing bolt of pain from his ankle to his hip. He was in poor shape, and right now he felt the weight of every excuse he’d ever made to skip the gym, every tube of Pringles he’d scoffed in front of the television. For a moment, Roland imagined his rippling flab, filmed and then played back in slow-motion, might have an imposing, monolithic quality, like a landslide or a chunk of ice breaking off a glacier. Then he caught sight of himself in a shop window. He looked like a giant blancmange bouncing down a metal staircase.

Roland’s lungs were filled with hot treacle. His throat was parched; his nose streamed. Sweat ran in greasy rivulets down the groove of his spine, soaking the waistband of his underpants.

A swarm of If-Onlys chased him, like a belligerent flock of birds dive-bombing without mercy. If only he hadn’t snapped a lace in the hurry to put his trainers on. If only he owned a decent travel bag, instead of having to cram everything into a decrepit rucksack. If only he hadn’t taken so long to work out what Hannah had been trying to say – that he had one last chance, providing he was sitting next to her on the plane when it left for Paris. If only he still had the car, if only he knew a shortcut, if only, if only…

So Roland ran. He ran like he’d never run before, like a man chasing down his last hope of happiness. The neighbourhood he’d lived in for years warped and changed around him. Streets stretched vindictively towards the horizon. Paving slabs reared up, determined to trip him, leaving him stilled on the pavement, a heartbroken bundle of frustration and chipped teeth. Every road he had to cross heaved with traffic, the sleepy suburb inexplicably transformed into a miniature Mumbai.

His one prayer, his mantra, was a simple one: Please, God, please let the bus be later than I am.

Maggie had only been driving the King’s Road route on her own for two weeks. It was long enough to be familiar with the journey, the timings, and the apparently permanent road works near Asda, but not long enough to be complacent. “I have to stay on my guard,” she explained to her husband over breakfast. “Let your mind wander for just a moment, and bang!” – she clapped her hands together – “you’re in a whole world of trouble.” Driving a bus, after all, was a very serious business. Her husband, never much of a talker, simply nodded and sipped his coffee.

So far that morning, Maggie had lost time stuck behind an old woman stubbornly blocking both lanes while trying to park right outside Boots. Then for a while it had seemed every traffic light in town was in on the conspiracy too. But now rush hour was dying down and Maggie was confident she’d be back on target within a couple of stops. Running late constituted a cardinal sin in Maggie’s imaginary book of bus-driving etiquette. Her passengers relied on her to chauffeur them to where they needed to be, at the exact time the bus company stated. She liked to think there were all sorts of important reasons for people to be in particular places at particular times. There was, of course, a chance that it would turn out to be something trivial, like picking up some stamps or taking a jumper that didn’t quite fit back to the shop, but Maggie didn’t like to underestimate anything.

So instead she told herself every one of her passengers was heading to a job interview, or going on a first date with a future spouse, or visiting a housebound, elderly relative. Important things. Maggie was the self-appointed keeper of their promises, the guardian of their good intentions. She drove with the dedication and care that would be appropriate if her bus was filled with world leaders travelling to an international peace summit. She didn’t think this was over the top, no matter what her husband had insinuated with his raised eyebrow. “People need to be able to rely on the timetable,” she told him. “Sometimes it’s just a few seconds here or there that decide how the most important events in life turn out.”

Roland came barrelling around the corner, head down, afraid to look towards the bus stop some two hundred metres up the road. His thighs were on fire; his arms were useless bags of meat hanging from his shoulders. His lungs hurt most of all; a cannonball of agony had struck him in the chest and lodged there. He wiped his face with his sleeve and looked up. The sight that met his eyes lifted him clean off the ground.

There were people at the bus stop. People – waiting for a bus yet to arrive. He was going to make it!

At that precise moment, two things happened. Firstly, the bus overtook him. Distracted by this, Roland didn’t notice the second thing, which was a middle-aged man in a tweed jacket finishing his conversation and swinging the door of the telephone box open. The door slammed into Roland’s shoulder, spinning him around. Fighting his own momentum, Roland stumbled and fell, crashing onto the pavement and rolling over and over.

He was only dimly aware of the tweed man’s apologies and the hands helping him to his feet and dusting him down. His gaze was fixed farther up the street, to where the bus was pulling in at the stop, its doors opening to welcome its new passengers. Beyond that, in his mind’s eye, he saw Hannah standing at the check-in desk, maybe scowling at her watch or even glancing towards the entrance. He imagined her pursed lips and the little crease of her brow as she concluded he’d let her down for the very last time.

Galvanised by this thought, Roland let out an anguished howl and pushed aside the little crowd that had gathered around him. He sprinted towards the bus, onto which the last of the waiting passengers was now climbing. Pain thrummed deep in his knee, his grazed and swelling skin chafing inside his jeans. He’d lost a shoe, the one with the broken lace, and something was tickling his neck – the fall had crushed and split his rucksack and a cable, from his phone charger or maybe the earphones of his iPod, was poking out. No matter. The pain, the shoe, the disintegrating bag – they’d all have to wait. The bus was already indicating, ready to move off again.

Maggie spotted the running man in her left-hand mirror. Her attention was focused on the right-hand side, on the stream of traffic into which she was preparing to thread the bus, but she knew better than to leave any mirror unchecked before setting off. A quick assessment revealed that the man had none of the physique, attire, or technique of a habitual jogger. He was potentially, therefore, a latecomer hoping to get onboard. Maggie plunged into a dilemma, flicking her gaze from right mirror to left as a gap in the traffic approached considerably faster than the lumbering fatty. Her chance came and she seized the opportunity, noting with satisfaction that she’d pulled away from the stop bang on time.

“You know I’m not an unkind person,” Maggie told her husband later. “But I can’t give people outside the bus priority over the ones onboard. That really wouldn’t be fair, would it?” Her husband shrugged, shook his head in a non-committal way, and went back to his crossword.

Roland couldn’t believe it. The bus belched a gritty cloud of diesel smoke in his face and drew away from him. An almighty burst of adrenaline rocketed through his body and he surged forward, managing to get within an arm’s length of the bus. He hammered on the side with his fist three times before his legs finally gave out and he dropped to his knees.

The sudden noise surprised Maggie, who hadn’t expected the chubby fellow to cover the ground so quickly. In her mirror she saw him kneeling on the pavement, a figure of such abject hopelessness that she couldn’t help but feel for him. Shaking her head, she flicked the indicator back on and steered the bus towards the kerb.

The bus stopped! Roland scrambled to his feet and limped along the length of the vehicle. He floated in a warm fog of relief, the pain and exhaustion melting away as he searched his pockets for the fare. Still panting hard, he stretched an ingratiating smile across his face, ready to gush thankfulness at the bus driver.

Somehow – despite everything – he still had a shot at getting to the airport in time.

The latecomer reached the doors. Maggie hesitated, her finger poised over the ‘open’ button. She stared at him through the glass, taking in the sweat, the reddened cheeks, and the rucksack.

“There was just, I don’t know, something about him,” she explained to her husband that night, suspecting he was only pretending to be asleep. “He had this creepy, manic grin, you know? And he was so worked up, so – what’s the word? Anxious. Yes, a bit too eager to get onboard. And that rucksack, well, you just don’t know, do you? I saw wires sticking out of it. Wires. He didn’t look like, you know… but how is anyone supposed to know for sure, these days?”

Maggie looked at the man on the other side of the door. She thought about all the lost minutes she’d worked so hard to win back and was now losing once again. She thought about her busload of world leaders. She shuddered. Picking up the agitated straggler suddenly seemed a very, very bad idea indeed.

The doors remained resolutely shut. Roland watched the small, nervous-looking woman at the wheel turn away from him and slip the bus into gear. He banged the palm of his hand against the glass as the engine note deepened and the bus began to move.

“Hey!” he shouted. “What are you doing? Open the door! Stop! Please, stop!”

But it was no use. The bus pulled out and accelerated away, leaving Roland standing, his shoeless foot in the road, watching the vehicle climb the hill. As the last glimpse of it was swallowed up by the horizon, the cannonball jammed in his ribcage detonated. The full blast of his failure squashed his lungs and cut his legs from beneath him. He staggered to a bench and sank his face into his hands.

Tears singed his eyes. His throat knotted so tightly air wouldn’t go in or out properly. His entire body quaked with muffled sobs.

Just as he was thinking nothing else could go wrong, Roland felt somebody sit down beside him. He shuffled to the end of the bench, striving to occupy as little room as possible. He curled up, ashamed of his bulk, the heat radiating from his body, the rank smell of his sweat. But the stranger moved closer. Roland drew breath and looked up, ready to tell whoever it was to get lost.

It was Hannah. She sat with her hands in her lap, swinging her legs like a child. She looked so pretty, sitting there in the dappled sunshine, Roland couldn’t be sure it wasn’t a dream. “You,” he squeaked, his voice full of helium. He cleared his throat. “You’re supposed to be at the airport…”

Hannah smiled at him. “Yeah, well,” she said. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I missed the bus.”

***

Thank you Dan for letting me share your story.

Dan Purdue lives and writes near Birmingham in the UK. His short fiction has been published in many places online and in print, including Writers’ Forum magazine, MicroHorror.com, Defenestration, Every Day Fiction, The View From Here, and The Waterhouse Review. His stories have won prizes in the 2010 Chapter One International Short Story Competition, Flash500.com, and the Seán Ó Faoláin Prize. He was also shortlisted for the 2010 James White Award and The Guardian’s 2009 Summer Short Story competition.

“Somewhere to Start From”, an anthology featuring many of his published and prizewinning stories, is available in print and as an ebook. He blogs at http://Lies-ink.blogspot.com and tweets as @DanPurdue.

You can find his book at:

Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Somewhere-Start-Dan-Purdue/dp/1447676963 (print)
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/262944 (eBook)
plus the iTunes Bookstore and other retailers.

***

Up next (in a couple of hours) is my author spotlight of non-fiction author Kathryn Vercillo, then the blog interviews will return as normal tomorrow with multi-genre author Rebeccah Giltrow – the six hundred and fourth of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, bloggers, biographers, agents, publishers and more. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further. And I enjoy hearing from readers of my blog; do either leave a comment on the relevant interview (the interviewees love to hear from you too!) and / or email me.

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **

For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.

As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do, and this feature ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words (and post stories of up to 3,000 words). Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me posting it online in my new Red Pen Critique Sunday night posts, then do email me. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.

5 Comments

Posted by morgenbailey on January 5, 2013 in competitions, ebooks, self-publishing, short stories, submissions, Twitter, writing

Tags: agent, Amazon, author, author spotlight, Barnes & Noble, biography, books, characters, children’s, creative writing, crime, Dan Purdue, erotica, Facebook, fantasy, fiction, Goodreads, guest blog, guest blog post, guest post, H.E. Bates Short Story Competition, historical, interview, Kobo, LinkedIn, literature, Moulton Theatre, multi-genre, murder mystery, non-fiction, Northampton, novelist, novels, paranormal, pinterest, poetry, prize-giving, publisher, rejection letters, rejections, romance, science fiction, second person viewpoint, self-publishing, Smashwords, story author, story authors, submissions, Twitter, vampire, western, writing, writing competitions, writing events, writing magazines, YA, youtube

Author interview no.600 with short story writer, novelist & tutor Della Galton

02 Jan

Welcome to the six hundredth (woo hoo!) of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more. Today’s is with prolific short story author, novelist and tutor Della Galton. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further.

Morgen: Hello, Della. Please tell us something about yourself and how you came to be a writer.

Della: Way back in the mists of time when I was in my early twenties I bought a house with a guy – we did it as a business project but later we became romantically linked. He decided we didn’t have enough interests in common so he asked me if I fancied joining a writing class with him. He lasted a term, I carried on. I still go to that class. It’s run by Ian Burton and is at Kinson Community Centre, Bournemouth. My erstwhile boyfriend actually said to me one day that I would never sell anything, so it’s been quite good fun proving him wrong. I did bump into him a couple of years ago and he said he’d read a couple of my restaurant reviews!

Morgen: I started by going to writing classes (lead by crime writer Sally Spedding) in 2005 and was hooked. You’re best known for your women’s magazine short stories, do you have a favourite genre and do you write any genres that they wouldn’t take, so submit elsewhere?

Della: I try to write what sells – but I think if I had to choose a favourite it would be either light hearted or very emotional. I know that’s two different ones, but it’s hard to say which I like best. Depends what mood I’m in. I also write fantasy – as in odd other worldly stories occasionally. I also write erotica, but under a pseudonym.

Morgen: I didn’t know that (about your pseudonym… maybe I should interview her another time ). Your short stories have been published in Bella, Best, Candis, Grace Magazine, My Weekly, People’s Friend, Take A Break, That’s Life, The Lady, The Weekly News, Woman, Woman’s Weekly, Writers Forum, and Yours – some of whom no longer take fiction, why do you think this is? Is there anything you think that might make them change their minds?

Della: I hope it’s nothing to do with my stories. Seriously I think it’s because not enough readers want fiction in their mag. It’s usually supply and demand with magazine editors. I doubt they’d take away something lots of people want. I have lots of students who join my writing classes wanting to write short stories for mags, but they admit they don’t actually read any.

Morgen: What a shame, and of course every writer should read, maybe they stick with novels (most people do). I have just over 100 of your short stories – I’m a nerd, having your 100+, and nearly 3,300 others, listed on an Excel spreadsheet… all in the name of research – I’d love to have been Ali or Tina in ‘The Banoffee Pie Survey’!

Della: Blimey, I’m stunned!! Tee hee, The Banoffee Pie Survey was real – well, in as much as that I did a Banoffee pie survey, it was great fun. Tasty!

Morgen: Research can be tough, can’t it. You’ve also had short stories in charity anthologies (including the gorgeous ‘Waiting’ from Sexy Shorts for Summer, I loved that Lisa and Mark were writers, and found it such a powerful story – yes, I was sniffing at the end – I also have Sexy Shorts for Christmas… Chefs… and The Beach. ). It must have been thrilling to be involved.

Della: Thank you Morgen, I’m touched that you liked Waiting. One of my favourites. No truth in that one I’m afraid.

Morgen: Two of your novels were published by Accent Press, who also publish Jane Wenham-Jones, did you find them or did they find you?

Read the rest of this entry »

14 Comments

Posted by morgenbailey on January 2, 2013 in articles, blog, competitions, critique, ebooks, Facebook, ideas, interview, LitFest, novels, self-publishing, short stories, submissions, tips, Twitter, writing

Tags: agent, Amazon, author, author spotlight, Barnes & Noble, biographers, biography, books, Bournemouth, characters, children’s, creative writing, crime, critique, Della Galton, erotic romance, erotica, Facebook, fantasy, feedback, fiction, flash fiction, Goodreads, guest blog, guest blog post, guest post, historical, interview, Kobo, LinkedIn, literature, Morgan Bailey, morgen bailey, Morgen with an e, multi-genre, murder mystery, mystery series, non-fiction, Northampton, novelist, novels, paranormal, paranormal romances, pinterest, poetry, poetry collections, publisher, rejection letters, rejections, romance, science fiction, second person viewpoint, self-publishing, short stories, short story group, Smashwords, story author, story authors, story writer, submissions, Twitter, vampire, western, Wordpress, writer, writing, writing competitions, writing events, writing group, writing magazines, YA, youtube

January-deadline writing competitions & events

01 Jan

I have a list of writing competition on my Competitions page, initially listed by month then the weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly ones. Below are the January-deadline competitions. Do email me if you know of any others…

January competitions

Children’s: Frances Lincoln.
Flash Fiction: Fiction Desk, Indies Unlimited hosts a weekly 250-word max. prompt competition – see Indies Unlimited. Also see ‘Short stories’ below.
Flash Fiction: Writer Austin Briggs runs a monthly 55-word competition (different theme each month). It’s free to enter and you can win $55 (of his own money!).
Memoir: Lightship Short Memoir Contest: Do you want to tell your own story, or an episode of it? 1st prize £1,000 closing date 31 January 2013 – judge Rachel Cusk. Thanks again to The New Writer magazine for the info.
Mixed: Christian magazine Pockets has a different theme per month.
Mixed (novels & short story collections): iWriteReadRate and Cornerstones Literary Consultancy (http://www.voteformyebook.com) are offering a monthly social competition to members of the community – see ‘Monthly’ towards the end of this page.
Non-fiction: Nature writing essays welcomed for the Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. The deadline is 6th January 2013.
Novels: www.booklinethinker.com/hookline.
Plays: Bruntwood (OPENS 31st January 2013).
Plays: The Drama Wales One-Act Play is ON HOLD for 2013 so there’ll be no competition but I’ll let you know if this changes in 2014.
Poetry: Kent & Sussex Poetry Society Open Poetry Competition has a First Prize: £1000, 2nd: £300, 3rd: £100, 4th: 4 x £50. Judge: Daljit Nagra. Entry fee: £5 per poem. 3 or more poems: £4 each. Closing date: 31 January 2013. Entries to: The Competition Organiser, 26 Courtlands, Teston, Maidstone, Kent, ME18 5AS. Put name and address on separate sheet – not on poem or enter online and pay by Paypal. For more details, go to: www.kentandsussexpoetry.com.
Poetry: other poetry competitions include Haiku Calendar, Hippocrates, Leaf Press, Strokestown, Writing / Writers’ News magazines (monthly), www.haikusoc.ndo.co.uk, www.slipstream-poets.co.uk, www.bevlit.org.
Screenwriting: Canada-based Wildsound run monthly screenwriting competitions.
Short stories: The Sophie King Prize is a romantic fiction short story competition which aims to discover a great new romance short story. The winning story will be chosen by best-selling novelist and short story writer Sophie King. The competition is run by women’s fiction ebook publisher Corazon Books, which published Sophie’s own short story collection, Tales from the Heart, earlier this year (to rave reviews) and a new edition of her novel The School Run. This free-to-enter competition is open to both published and unpublished writers resident in the UK. The winning story will be recorded by a professional actor, and broadcast from a dedicated online audio player at http://www.sophieking.info and www.greatstorieswithheart.com. The winner will also receive a beautiful silver-plated jug and £50 gift voucher courtesy of The Handpicked Collection. Entries must not have been previously published in any medium (including but not limited to print, audio and online). The Sophie King Prize will launch on Monday 12th November in association with National Short Story Week. Entrants must submit a short story of between 2,000 to 2,500 words with a romantic theme. The submissions deadline is January 10th 2013 and the winner will be announced in March 2013. More details at www.sophieking.info.
Short stories: Home-Start Bridgwater Short Story Prize has a 21st January 2013 deadline and this year’s judge is Dame Margaret Drabble.
Short stories: Hayley Sherman runs a monthly short story competition for submissions on any subject up to 2,000 words. The winners are published on the website, promoted online and receive a £10 First Writer voucher. All entrants are also considered for publication in The New Short Story Annual at the end of the year. Deadline 25th of the month. Heather Marie Schuldt runs a similar contest, although 500-750 words max., but with the same deadline.
Short stories: The Bath Short Story Award opened October 2012 for entries – see ‘March’.
Short stories: Writer Selection has a 31st January deadline and 200-2000 word count. The 2013 judge is writer / poet and Costa / Troubadour winner John Hayes. Prizes £150, £50, £25. Entry is free and all entrants receive a year’s membership (normally £10).
Short stories: Other competitions include Bury St Edmunds, Chudleigh, Fiction Desk, Five Stop Story, Glimmer Train (different category each month), Home-Start Bridgewater, Mslexia, National Galleries Scotland, Writing / Writers’ News magazines (monthly), www.flair4words.co.uk/news.

***

and an Events page based on a similar format. Do email me if you know of any others…

January events

The Writing School Leicester September term programme will have been published in July.
The London Writers’ Workshops latest programme is now available.
Two-hour weekly (Tuesday nights) creative writing sessions at the Old Cross Pub, Church Street, Stapleford, Leicestershire. Run by local writer, Dave Wood. Cost £3.75. Email him for more info.
Creative Coffee Club is where creative people meet fortnightly on a Wednesday at Screen Lounge at Phoenix Square Digital Media Centre, 4 Midland Street, Leicester LE1 1TJ (UK).
Liars’ League run a series of short fiction readings held at ‘The Lamb’ pub in Lambs Conduit Street, London on the second Tuesday of every month.
Loose Muse runs on the second Wednesday of every month. at the Poetry Cafe, 22 Betterton Street, London WC2 (closest tube = Covent Garden). This is London’s only regular event for women writers of all genres, with a generous open mike sharing session plus two featured writers each month. The night starts at 8.00 p.m. Cost: £5.00 / £3.00 concessions. I’ll be appearing there in March.
Towcester Writers’ Group meets every third Wednesday of the month. 7.30-9.30pm. Cost £3 includes refreshments. Towcester Library, Richmond Road, Towcester, Northants NN12 6EX.
Buxton’s Word Wizards slam poetry competition runs in the coffee lounge at the Buckingham Hotel, Buxton, Derbyshire, UK at 7:30pm on the last Tuesday of every month. Entry is £2.50. More info can be obtained by e-mailing Rob at: poetryslamUK@aol.com.
BookSlam reports to being “London’s best literary club night” and usually (but not always) takes place on the last Thursday of the month.
http://www.artsderbyshire.org.uk has various literary events throughout the year.
Other events in January include: www.jaipurliteraturefestival.org (India, late Jan), www.galleliteraryfestival.com (Sri Lanka, late Jan), www.stonystratford.gov.uk (late Jan), www.pitlochry.org.uk (late Jan / early Feb).

I put out a list of my New Year’s Resolutions this morning and I’m pleased to say I’ve stuck to them so far; the dog’s been taken to the park, I’ve eaten less rubbish and I’ve written a short story (whilst walking round the park). I’m working on the others.

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **

For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.

As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do, and a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words (and post stories of up to 3,000 words). Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me posting it online in my new Red Pen Critique Sunday night posts, then do email me. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.

2 Comments

Posted by morgenbailey on January 1, 2013 in autobiography, childrens, competitions, ebooks, events, non-fiction, novels, poetry, scriptwriting, submissions, writing

Tags: agent, Amazon, author, author spotlight, Barnes & Noble, biography, books, characters, children’s, competitions, creative writing, crime, erotica, Facebook, fantasy, fiction, Goodreads, guest blog, guest blog post, guest post, historical, interview, Kobo, LinkedIn, literature, multi-genre, murder mystery, non-fiction, novelist, novels, paranormal, pinterest, poetry, publisher, rejection letters, rejections, romance, science fiction, self-publishing, Smashwords, story author, story authors, Twitter, vampire, western, writing, YA, youtube

Red pen session 006 – critique of Firebound, a novel extract by Kathryn Wild

07 Dec

I originally recorded red pen critique as part of a series of podcast episodes dedicated to reading a short story or self-contained novel extract (with synopsis) and then talking about it afterwards. I am now running these on this blog.

I run a fortnightly critique group as well as critiquing other authors writing which I really enjoy so I thought I’d create podcast episodes doing this, and will now be running future ones on the blog, initially with the already-recorded episodes at 5pm daily (or thereabouts, am late today), then every Sunday evening (UK times).

Please remember that it’s only one person’s (my) opinion and you, and the author concerned, are welcome to disagree with my interpretation – I will never be mean for the sake of it, but hope you find that I’m firm but fair. I type my comments for the recording as I read through the story as a reader would think as they read the story, although they would most likely be reading, not analysing, unless they’re writers too!

Regardless of what genre you write I hope that this helps you think about the way fiction is constructed and that you have enjoyed reading another author’s work, the copyright of which remains with them, then my suggestions for any improvement.

***

The story in this post was kindly emailed to me by Kathryn Wild, a teacher who has spent the last three years in Thailand and Switzerland, working in their education systems, after four years in England. She is currently in the process of relocating again, most likely to Spain, having left the English Education system to allow herself time to travel and more importantly to write. In the space of the last two years, she has written two young adult novels (book one is almost ready to go out, book two needs editing but it is sitting in the ‘bottom draw’ so, she says, she can see it fresh when she come back to it). She is currently 20,000 words into the first draft of book three.

The novel I shall be talking about today is an urban fantasy called ‘Firebound’. Kathryn describes it as the Vampire Diaries books meets the TV show ‘Avatar – The Last Airbender’ (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0417299), with the problems that underpinned the problems of the French Revolution. To give you a flavour her synopsis begins: The underground elemental world of the Guardians is facing a rebellion and both sides are pinning their hopes on sixteen-year-old Abigail Cooper who is still grieving from her mother’s strange death and much more interested in regaining her popularity and boys than in her ability to control fire.

I create my comments as I read the story for the first time, as a reader would, so you will have had the advantage of hearing the excerpt in its entirety but hopefully what I have to say will still make sense to you. Unlike critiquing a short story where all I have to go on is a title, I do have an idea of what the extract is about having read the synopsis which does make it a little easier although I admit that I’m no fantasy expert but will do my best.

If you have any feedback on this or aspects of my website or blog, I’m always delighted to hear from you – my email address is morgen@morgenbailey.com.

And if you’re feeling brave enough to send me a short story or novel extract (with a brief synopsis please) – 3,000-words maximum – for these red pen blog sessions then feel free.

So without further ado, the story / synopsis and extract, then my feedback…

Firebound extract

Chapter One: Tattoo

Her dad still had some part of him that was a human being and he didn’t ground her for her birthday, not that it mattered. She knew what non-events birthdays had become, they didn’t celebrate them anymore and hers was so close to the day they were all dreading.

She had ran up the stairs as soon as she had got home from school. She hated being in this house. It was a family house and since the car crash that had claimed her mum’s life last year she didn’t have one of them. It was best just to stay outside and occupy her mind with other things. Things that didn’t hurt as much to think about. She threw her uniform onto the floor, kicking it out of the way and empting half the contents of her drawers, hiding the last inches of red carpet. She could almost hear her mum’s voice as she threw her blazer on the ‘to be worn again pile’.

Her mum would be having a fit if she saw the mess. ‘Abigail, this room looks like a bomb has hit it.’ She ignored the voice and the familiar shiver that ran down her back as she threw her white school shirt on the pile that screamed, ‘please put me in the washing machine’. Her mum didn’t get a say about that anymore. The fire that had engulfed her car put an end to that. She gulped letting those feelings sink in further to her stomach. She had promised herself, she wasn’t going to go there. Not today.

She reached up to touch her mum’s old necklace and felt it heat up in hands, burning them and forcing her to pull away, before she shook her head. She was just being stupid and way over sensitive. Gold didn’t just randomly heat up. At least not without something causing it to. It was just her mind playing tricks on her, it couldn’t be anything else.

Abigail took the necklace off and carefully placed it on her desk next to her History coursework that was due three days ago. She didn’t (need) any reminders tonight if she wanted to have a good time. Her brown eyes drifting back to it as she threw more clothes out of her wardrobe. She never took her necklace off, but she couldn’t wear it and put her act of being normal tonight. Her hands traced opal marks on her neck, retracing the mark and her mum’s presence and glancing back at the necklace as the sun from the window caught the opals on the golden necklace making it look like flickering flames. She shook her head turning away, her mind and the light were playing some serious tricks on her today.

She kept her outfit simple: trainers, jeans and a hoodie and headed downstairs while letting her red hair fall out of its school day messy plait half way down her back. She never wore her hair down for school, it just got in her way but Jordan liked it down. He loved to run his hands through it, almost as much as he loved to touch her skin. Making him happy would end up making her happy. Focusing on nothing but the blissful dissolution that he could offer, she paused her hand on the kitchen door.

That was her dad’s voice in there, her dad who hadn’t been home before her self imposed bedtime in months was in there, arguing with her grandmother. Her grandmother that bad been banned from the house. It didn’t make sense. But she didn’t let herself think or examine why the two of them were there, in the kitchen and fighting. They always fought and this time it seemed to be about her, or at least her name had been screamed several times but the words didn’t matter. Her dad was actually home. A relief rushed through her, lighting her up and filling her lungs with air. He did still care about her. He must. Maybe all the rejection was gone and he had stopped burying himself in his work. A faint smile formed on her lips as she pushed open the kitchen door.

She rushed in and hugged him, dropping all the guards that she used to protect herself. “Dad.”

“Happy birthday,” her dad, Thomas, pulled his stiff arms away, “shouldn’t you get going? You did make plans with your friends for tonight. You wouldn’t want to keep them waiting.”

“Guess,” she looked down, she didn’t want him to see her face. She needed time to recompose it and put back up her ‘I’m fine act.’ His early appearance obviously had nothing to do with her. She smiled towards her grandmother, Sylvia, rather than dwell on this. Dwelling on this wouldn’t help, it would only add to her problems. Her dad didn’t do family, anymore and her grandmother had braved his wrath to come and see her from the looks of it. “Hi, Gran.”

“Happy sixteenth,” her grandmother, Sylvia, crossed the room. She held her granddaughter’s face softly for a moment then letting her hand linger on her right shoulder as brushed away her hair out her face. She pulled Abigail into a hug and whispered, “Permissum incendia suscipio.”

“What?” Abigail said.

“Don’t worry about it; you have nothing to worry about now.” Sylvia said.

After several more unanswered questions and another round of verbal sparring between her dad and grandmother, Abigail headed outside. She hugged the black biker jacket to her out of habit rather than from the cold December air. She wasn’t feeling cold, she didn’t tend to get cold, she had some screwed up kind of wiring that kept her warm at all times but she did need the support it offered before she could go back to pretending that everything was still fine. She was determined to enjoy a little of her birthday.

Jordan was waiting for her at the end of her driveway. He never came up to the door if he knew that her family was going to be in and she couldn’t blame him. She didn’t like getting the third degree for being a bad influence from his parents. She hated hearing things like “That Cooper girl.” So she couldn’t blame Jordan for not wanting to get the same treatment.

“You ready?” He took her right hand and gave it a small pull, a pull that shot pain up to her right shoulder.

***

My comments:

I like the title of Chapter 1 as it implies it’s about an actual tattoo so it gives us a picture even before we start reading. Hooks are usually shorter than this first sentence is but it has power and in just 25 words tells us a lot. We already know that it’s third person, past tense and that the main two characters are a father and daughter, we’re assuming the daughter being the protagonist and father antagonist because he’s causing some conflict, albeit not as much as she had expected. It also hints at an element of fantasy by him being part-human and that something had changed over time by using the word ‘still’, although the part-human could be metaphorical. We also immediately sympathise with her because although he’s taken pity on her because it’s her birthday they’re not celebrated especially given that they something bigger to think about.

On first reading the story I stumbled over the ‘She had run (ran) up the stairs as soon as she had got home from school.’ – this could be changed to ‘she’d’ in the second or both cases. Also by saying ‘last year’ it feels present tense so perhaps better saying ‘the previous year’.

‘She hated being in this house.’ is a clear tell. What we could have her doing is something like her growling at it, something which shows us of her feelings, although we then learn why and the reasons for her behaviour.

With the next couple of sentences we have a repetition of ‘things’ and I’m not normally a fan of repetition but this is used correctly there the second instance is an emphasis of the first.

What the girl does next is great! She clearly has no respect for her possessions, and possibly her school, by throwing down the uniform which we then learn is nothing new as her floor is now covered. Whilst this could be clichéd I’d say it’s more stereotypical so nothing wrong at all with that, especially given her motivation for rebellion.

By having ‘She could almost hear her mum’s voice as she threw her blazer on the ‘to be worn again pile.’ I’d say we don’t need the next sentence (Her mum would be having a fit if she saw the mess.) because it’s implied to us how her mother would react and then we’re told how she would and then of course we have what she would have said which I especially like as we’re now told our characters name by another person, albeit it Abigail’s head.

I’m a big fan of inanimate objects having life so loved a pile of clothes screaming to be washed.

And then, wow… we find out how her mother died.

Now, because Kathryn’s just mentioned Abigail’s mother where she goes onto write ‘She gulped letting those feelings sink’, it can be read as her mother gulping so she should change ‘she’ to Abigail to avoid any confusion. Anything that can jump a reader out of a story, or make them pause, should be avoided. Having lost a parent myself, albeit 10 years ago, I found Abigail’s emotions very realistic, very strong writing.

With ‘She reached up to touch her mum’s old necklace’ I assume Kathryn means that the necklace is around Abigail’s neck but it could have been lying on a shelf… I did want to know where she was reaching up to.

I wasn’t sure from this paragraph whether the heating up had happened before. By Abigail just shaking her head it could be that she’d forgotten, but then her being curious about it implies it hasn’t so, perhaps we could have a stronger reaction like her yanking her hand back and blowing on it to cool it? Or something like that.

I’ve described my critique as firm but fair but the firm side of me can be picky… and this includes split infinitives so where we have ‘Abigail took the necklace off’ should read ‘Abigail took off the necklace’ as the verb is to ‘take off’ rather than just ‘take’ and we have that a couple of times, the second time actually I’d say should read ‘She’d never normally…’ and I may be mistaken but I think ‘put her act of being normal’ should be to put on an act. I’m sorry, I did say I was picky.

There was a sentence beginning that I read automatically adding in a word without realising it ‘She didn’t need any reminders tonight’. The original text is actually missing the word ‘need’ but my mind clearly put it in, which is odd how our brains work and presumably Kathryn missed it too.

I did say earlier that I wasn’t a fan of repetition and in that paragraph there are four instances of the word ‘necklace’ so perhaps describe it as golden earlier (especially useful so the ‘opal’ then makes sense (although I wonder if the marks would be opal in colour, perhaps this is one of the fantasy elements of the story).

Then we get a description of her, and it’s a very vivid one at that and we get to know a little about her boyfriend, Jordan, through her eyes and their loving relationship although it’s sad that she feels that has to make him happy in order to be happy herself.

We have a repetition, this time of grandmother, but again it’s emphasis so it’s fine. And I’m intrigued as to why she would be banned. We don’t learn why in this extract although I sense, from the Latin quote, that she too has a supernatural gift which Abigail’s father doesn’t approve of. Hopefully we’ll learn this later in the book.

We don’t know whether the grandmother is maternal or paternal which doesn’t really matter but may give us an idea as to whether he’s arguing with his mother or mother-in-law which would usually make a difference.

Again we sympathise with Abigail, firstly because her relatives are arguing, then we find out about her, but mainly because of how she feels about her father being home – and this is shown to us rather than told, which is good, and I liked her lungs filling with air as it’s a contrast with her gulping earlier.

When her father wishes her happy birthday we then get his name which I would have preferred to come out in speech because otherwise we could have been told it earlier.

I felt that “You did make plans with your friends for tonight.” was a little clunky and expected a “didn’t you?” at the end or perhaps just change it to a simple “You’ve made plans with your friends for tonight.”

Her then just saying “Guess” confused me a little. I read it as that he had to guess something but then reread it that she mean “I guess so”.

Again I would have liked Sylvia’s name to be in speech rather than being ‘told’ what it is. If the two adults are arguing they could easily shout each others’ names as well as Abigail’s.

With the sentence ‘Dwelling on this wouldn’t help, it would only add to her problems.’ I’m inclined to cut the ‘it would only add to her problems’ as they’re really saying the same thing and the latter is more of a ‘tell’ than the ‘dwelling’. If we didn’t know she had any problems then it would have been useful but I’d say it could go.

After Sylvia wishes Abigail a happy sixteenth (which is a good way of letting us know how old she is), we have Sylvia’s name again which we don’t need because we’ve already been told it so just her name or ‘grandmother’ would be fine.

I think ‘a moment then letting her hand linger’ should read ‘let her hand linger’ otherwise the sentence ends too early, and also ‘her right shoulder’ immediately follows the grandmother’s hand so it should read ‘Abigail’s’ right shoulder otherwise the Sylvia could be touching her own shoulder. I know we know, but again it’s the opportunity to confuse the reader that we don’t need. It’s more obvious if one character is male and one female but something to think about with two characters of the same sex.

On first reading I noticed I’d automatically added another couple of words ‘as she brushed away her hair out of her face’ which originally didn’t have the words ‘she’ or ‘of’, which again I hadn’t spotted the first time round. I stumbled a bit over that section anyway so I’d be inclined to lose the word ‘away’ but again it’s something for Kathryn to look at.

Although I don’t understand Latin I really like having it there because it firstly makes the grandmother feel ‘old and wise’ to me but also like it’s a secret code between the two of them.

I was a little confused though by ‘several more unanswered questions’ as I’d thought that the ‘don’t worry about it’ was an explanation of the Latin so perhaps this can be made a little clearer. Also would Abigail waited while they argued. Would she have said something or escaped earlier? I think she would have wanted to see more of her father and grandmother – perhaps to find a way to stop them arguing. This is something that Kathryn could expand on depending on her word count although this could of course be a section she deliberately didn’t want to elaborate on.

I liked Abigail hugging her jacket to her and then getting a hint of her ability with the fact that she never feels cold and we already have the earlier instance of the necklace burning her hand, although it’s implied that it’s the necklace doing the burning, so perhaps a link of ability passed down from her mother to her.

Where Kathryn says about Jordan, ‘He never came up to the door if he knew that her family was going to be in’ – presumably in this instance it was because of a car or two being outside the house, because if it was a surprise to Abigail that they were there, he wouldn’t have known unless she’d rung him to tell him and we’re not told that she has. I felt the rest of that paragraph, where she’s analysing why he keeps his distance could be trimmed and would she hear “that Cooper girl” unless they’re talking about her while she’s there and assumed that it would be spoken to Jordan instead so this could be tweaked. I like that way of getting her surname in though.

I love the final line because although they’re obviously close just him touching her causes her pain which I suspect has a deeper meaning to it, and therefore a great place to end.

Conclusion:

Kathryn has achieved what should be done in a novel’s first chapter; she’s introduced us to our protagonist, given a little description of her so we can form a picture, mentioned a small number of other characters, and given us their conflicts or dilemmas without giving too much away. It’s always very tempting to give as much information about the characters and setting at the beginning – known as an ‘info dump’ but we don’t have that here, and it makes us want to read on. Also as a non-reader of fantasy I don’t feel overwhelmed by the information we’ve been given. It’s a very relatable story and I suspect from Kathryn’s clear writing style it’ll continue like that.

***

Since this red pen session aired Kathryn has received other feedback and has changed the beginning of her novel to…

Chapter One: Fire

The old necklace burnt in Abigail’s hand as she touched it. The burning feeling licked over her fingers as she held it tighter. Necklaces shouldn’t burn. But there it was lighting up in her hand the same way that a struck match would have done. Abigail let her mother’s old necklace slip back through her fingers and settle back into place. It sat in its normal position round her neck, just as it should be and not burning anymore. She ran her thumb along her fingertips. Apart from the paper cut on her ring finger, they felt the same, not burning, or even burnt, not hot or even that warm. Just normal. She reached up to touch the necklace again. Her hands heated up again. She pulled them away and kicked out at a pile of dirty school shirts scattering them across the red carpet.

This was stupid. She was just being stupid and way over sensitive. Gold didn’t just randomly heat up, at least not without something causing it to. Fire may have engulfed her mother’s car last year, but flames didn’t just spring up out of nothing. It was just the anniversary coming up. It was just her mind playing tricks on her, it couldn’t be anything else.

Abigail took off the necklace and carefully placed it on her desk next to her history coursework that was due in three days ago. She didn’t need any reminders of her mum tonight if she wanted to have a good time. She was determined to have a good time. Tears over last year’s car crash could wait at least for another day. Her gaze drifted back to the necklace as she threw more clothes out of her wardrobe. She felt naked without the necklace on, unprotected, unprepared, but she couldn’t wear it and put on her act of being normal tonight. Her hands traced marks on her neck as she felt her mum’s presence join her in the room. At least she could still find a few ways that she could remember her mum even if she wasn’t here. And one of those ways was wearing, her necklace and her symbol. The sun from the window caught the opals on the golden necklace making them look like flickering flames. She shook her head; her mind and the light were playing some serious tricks on her today.

She kept her outfit simple: trainers, jeans and a hoodie. She turned to the mirror, giving her appearance a final once over. She looked okay. Her trainers didn’t have their usual crust of mud at the toe, nor were there any tears in her jeans. Her red hair flickered, like a fire sputtering into life as she let it fall out of its school day messy plait and half way down her back.

She was royally losing it today. Fan-bloody-tastic. That nonsense with the necklace was just another thing that would cut her off from the crowd if she lost it. Damn it, she was normal, better than normal. She was popular. Or at least she had been. The necklace hadn’t heated up, the symbol hadn’t flickered in the light and her hair, despite its colour, was not on fire. No flames, just a stupid overactive imagination. An imagination that could easily be put to bed when she got out of this damn house.

Abigail paused as she reached the bottom of the stairs. The noise that had been masked by Holly’s television commentary on some storms in the north of Scotland was clear down on the lower level of the house. Her feet followed the voices before she paused again, her hand on the kitchen door. Her teeth dug down on her bottom lip. By the sound of it, she should be listening to this, despite not being invited to join in the conversation. Yet Jordan was waiting for her and he hated to be kept waiting. Her hand moved off away from the door. She should head out to him. But… But… Her hand found its way back to its paused position on the door. That was her dad’s voice in there.

A relief rushed through her, lighting her up and filling her lungs with air. Her dad was home, actually home. Maybe all the fights, detentions and letters home from school had finally worked. He did still care about her. He must. Maybe the days of conversations with his answering machine were over and he had stopped burying himself in his work. Her dad who had not been home before her self-imposed bedtime in months was in there. He was in there arguing with her grandmother. Her grandmother had been banned from the house since Beth’s eighteenth birthday, over six years ago. Her dad had even kicked her grandmother out the house for a second time, the day following her mum’s funeral. Sparks had flown that day, along with the raised voices.

“Abigail is my daughter, damn it!”

“She’s my Heir and as of today, she is of age.”

“She’s is not your Heir.” Her dad sounded out every word. “She is my girl. Abi is my girl.”

“Just look at her, Thomas,” Her grandmother’s voice was the opposite to her dad’s, calm and controlled, but she too sounded out each word. “Stop and look at her, her brown eyes, her red hair, just like all her true ancestors. You can claim Holly and Bethany all you like but Abigail is my Heir, she is part of my world, not yours.”

A thud sounded against wood and the noise ricocheted through the air and pushed Abigail’s breath back down her throat. Her hand stayed frozen on the door, not wanting to push or pull away. That wasn’t her passionless dad in there. Not the man that responded to his daughter being involved in a fight by placing a note on the fridge with dates that she was grounded. It was the man who had screamed on the touchlines as she had flung herself into a tackle on the football pitch. It was the dad she had given up on still being around months ago.

“We rejected that world when you killed off your last Heir. You will not get your hands on my girl. Damn it, Sylvia. You will not get my girl. You will not treat her the same way that you did her mother.”

***

Kathryn’s website is http://www.kathrynwild.com and you can follow her on Twitter (where there’s currently this photograph of Kathryn and a beautiful tiger!).

***

If you have any feedback on this or aspects of my website or blog, I’m always delighted to hear from you – my email address is morgen@morgenbailey.com.

And if you’re feeling brave enough to send me a short story or novel extract (with a brief synopsis please) – 3,000-words maximum – for these red pen blog sessions then feel free.

Next is Flash Fiction Friday: ‘Between Floors’ (803 words) by Rowena Simpkiss

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **

As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do, and a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words. Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me posting it online in my new Red Pen Critique Sunday night posts, then do email me. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.

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Posted by morgenbailey on December 7, 2012 in critique, ebooks, ideas, novels, podcast, recommendations, review, short stories, submissions, tips, writing

Tags: creative writing, critique, feedback, Firebound, Kathryn Wild, literature, novel extract, red pen, session, urban fantasy, writing, writing tips

Guest post: Proofreading tips and techniques by Brian Karrey

06 Dec

Tonight’s guest blog post, on the topic of the editing process, is brought to you by proofreader Brian Karrey.

Proofreading tips and techniques

After an essay or other written work has been done and completed, checking to ensure it’s in the best condition follows. Proofreading work saves a lot of time and ensures that your work doesn’t go in vain. Proofing software is not efficient. This leaves your open option as the manual way. Here are some tips for you:

1. Concentration

You need to concentrate on your work if you intend to catch the small mistakes. And to do this, you need to rid yourself of all distractions in the room where you are working. This will promote your ability to see the small errors.

2. Put it on paper

Sometimes it’s hard to proof soft copy. This is because of how the eyes are naturally made not to tell the accuracy of typed work. Hard copy proofing is the best approach. Print the work out and proof it.

3. Homonyms

These are words that share same spellings and pronunciation, yet have different meanings. For most people, words like complement and compliment are distractive. They could spell disaster in an essay or exam test.

4. Contractions and the apostrophes

Contractions are difficult. Yet, many people make mistakes that include them in their writing. Words like their and they’re can hurt the credibility of your writing if they are not checked. Also check out for instances where you have used apostrophes in plurals. They are never used there and you need to correct that.

5. Checking for punctuations

A huge part of proofreading work is to check punctuations. This means looking out for words that are capitalized wrongly, missing or extra commas, periods that have been used wrongly and other typos.

6. Read work backwards

It’s essential for you to start the habit of reading words backwards. This is because, the brains makes and corrects its own mistakes. Whereas this could be amazing in the ideal world, the corrections are wrong. You need to read each word, back to back to determine which one doesn’t make sense.

7. Check the numbers

Numbers are often confusing in text. However, humans are mad about numbers and you never know what their implications are when they turn out wrong. The best you can do is double-check your number sources. Make sure the numbers you use in the essay or writing is accurate.

8. Get someone else do the proofing

This is quite straightforward. Professional editors are in the best position to see ambiguity and mistakes in work. Get some help with the proofing before hitting send or submitting.

I made the compliment / complement error when I started out posting the author spotlights until one of my contributors pointed it out to me… fortunately I hadn’t done many. Thank you, Brian!

Brian Karrey is a paper proofreader at Papersconsulting.com.

***

If you would like to write a writing-related guest post for my blog then feel free to email me with an outline of what you would like to write about. If it’s writing-related then it’s highly likely I’d email back and say “yes please”.

The blog interviews return as normal tomorrow morning with non-fiction author Liz Thompson – the five hundred and seventy-fourth of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, bloggers, autobiographers and more. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further. And I enjoy hearing from readers of my blog; do either leave a comment on the relevant interview (the interviewees love to hear from you too!) and / or email me.

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **

As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do, and a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words. Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me posting it online in my new Red Pen Critique Sunday night posts, then do email me. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.

8 Comments

Posted by morgenbailey on December 6, 2012 in articles, autobiography, childrens, critique, ebooks, ideas, non-fiction, novels, poetry, review, self-publishing, short stories, submissions, tips, writing

Tags: Brian Karrey, critique, editing, editor, feedback, proof-read, proofread, proofreader, proofreading, writing

5a.m. Flash 061212 – December deadline writing competitions

06 Dec

Every now and then at 5a.m. (probably posted by my clone) I will be bringing you a newsflash, update on what I’m doing, invited guest piece, or whatever takes my fancy, and today I’m talking writing competitions.

I have a Competitions Calendar on my blog and below are some competitions that have December deadlines.

NB. I may well not have tried these competitions myself so please take a good look at the websites before parting with money and submitting your hard work! ALSO please note that not all the competitions run each year so please check their validity before entering (and their guidelines do change from year to year).

DECEMBER

Children’s: The Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices and www.theredtelephone.co.uk.
Flash Fiction: Indies Unlimited hosts a weekly 250-word max. prompt competition – see Indies Unlimited. Also see ‘Short stories’ below.
Flash Fiction: Writer Austin Briggs runs a monthly 55-word competition (different theme each month). It’s free to enter and you can win $55 (of his own money!).
Mixed: Christian magazine Pockets has a different theme per month.
Mixed (novels & short story collections): iWriteReadRate and Cornerstones Literary Consultancy (http://www.voteformyebook.com) are offering a monthly social competition to members of the community – see ‘Monthly’ towards the end of this page.
Playwriting: New Perspectives has a £1000 prize fund for their Dream Up script competition which ends 21st December. Open to any writer living in the East Midlands area of England, the theme is ‘Starting out in the East Midlands’ and should last no longer than 10-15 minutes with a maximum of four characters. See http://newperspectives.co.uk/STEPUP for more details.
Poetry: Print Express are running their first poetry competition and this is free to enter, with the winner will receive £100 worth of Amazon vouchers. The theme is ‘Winter’ and poems must be no longer than 45 lines. The deadline for this is the 28th December 2012. You can view further details here: http://www.printexpress.co.uk/blog/2011/10/17/the-print-express-poetry-competition
Poetry: Other poetry competitions include Anthony Hecht, Holland Park Press, www.le.ac.uk/engassoc and Writing Magazine (WM: subscriber-only theme: waiting for the post).
Screenwriting: Canada-based Wildsound run monthly screenwriting competitions.
Screenwriting: www.screenplay-competition.com.
Short stories: Hayley Sherman runs a monthly short story competition for submissions on any subject up to 2,000 words. The winners are published on the website, promoted online and receive a £10 First Writer voucher. All entrants are also considered for publication in The New Short Story Annual at the end of the year. Deadline 25th of the month. Heather Marie Schuldt runs a similar contest, although 500-750 words max., but with the same deadline.
Short stories: Writers’ Village runs a quarterly short story competition which attracts entrants worldwide. Click here for the rules… and every entrant receives invaluable critique! Their winter deadline is 31st December.
Short stories: The Bath Short Story Award opened October 2012 for entries – see ‘March’.
Short stories: Five Stop Story, Glimmer Train (different category each month), Willesden Herald, www.westcountrywriters.com, Words Magazine, Writing Magazine (WM: open to all theme: first line ‘This won’t be as much fun, Jessica thought.’ / subscriber-only theme: moving on).

***

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **

As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do, and a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words. Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me posting it online in my new Red Pen Critique Sunday night posts, then do email me. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.

2 Comments

Posted by morgenbailey on December 6, 2012 in autobiography, childrens, competitions, non-fiction, novels, poetry, scriptwriting, short stories, songwriting, submissions, writing

Tags: children's, competitions, flash fiction, novels, playwriting, poetry, screenwriting, short stories, submissions, writing, writing competitions

Red Pen Critique comes to the blog!

02 Dec

My red pen podcast comes to the blog!

Up to now I’ve been doing red pen critique for my podcast (of novel extracts and short stories <3,000 words, see Podcast ‘Red Pen’ Episodes) and only putting a summary on the blog but I always find that having something written down is easier to follow than listening, especially if you want to make notes, so the red pen podcast is no more but will live on in this format… on the Red Pen Critique page.

So I’m going to be replaying the red pen critique sessions (the full script, not just the summary) on the blog at 5pm daily until I’ve caught up, dates below, then put up new ones out every Sunday night whenever I get them in (details at the end of how to apply). Sunday nights will also be Novel Nights In from 2013.

Critique: I’m firm but fair and of course you don’t have to agree with me, but I hope the feedback will help you, especially if you’re the author of that work.

Red Pen Critique to-date…

The first ‘red pen’ session episode was released on Monday 8th August 2011 featuring a 325-word flash fiction entitled ‘Green’ by San Francisco-based writer and musician J D Mader and the podcast is available via the links at the top of this page (and in the ‘Where to find me’ side menu) with a summary here and you can listen to the episode here. Full feedback was blogged here.
The second ‘red pen’ session episode was released on Monday 22nd August featuring a 1,591-word short story from Aneesa – the summary was posted here and you can listen to the episode here. Full feedback to be blogged 5pm Monday 3rd December 2012.
The third ‘red pen’ session episode was released on Monday 5th September and featured a novel extract from crime writer Lae Monie. A summary of the podcast episode was posted here and you can listen to the episode here. Full feedback to be blogged 5pm Tuesday 4th December 2012.
The fourth ‘red pen’ session episode was released on Saturday 17th September (two days early due to my mother’s 80th birthday being on the Monday!) and featured a 883-word short story entitled The Sow’s Ear by J D Mader. A summary of the podcast was posted here and you can listen to the episode here. Full feedback to be blogged 5pm Wednesday 5th December 2012.
Aneesa returned for episode no.5 which was released on Monday 10th October and featured a story called ‘You are my reasons’ -– the summary was posted here and you can listen to the episode here. Full feedback to be blogged 5pm Thursday 6th December 2012.
Episode no.6, released on Monday 24th October, was an extract from forthcoming novel ‘Firebound’ provided by teacher and writer Kathryn Wild – the summary of which was posted here and you can listen to the episode here. Full feedback to be blogged 5pm Friday 7th December 2012.
Episode no.7, released on Sunday 6th November, featured a short story by Aaron entitled ‘On the edge’ – the summary was posted here and you can listen to the episode here. Full feedback to be blogged 5pm Saturday 8th December 2012.
Episode no.8, released Sunday 27th November, was another novel extract by crime writer Lae Monie – the summary was posted here and you can listen to the episode here. Full feedback to be blogged 5pm Sunday 9th December 2012.
Episode no.9, released Wednesday 28th December – was my critique of a short extract from The Desolate Garden by Danny Kemp – the summary was posted here and you can listen to the episode here. Full feedback to be blogged 5pm Monday 10th December 2012.

Forthcoming

Red Pen no.10 will be my critique of a short story from Aaron (see episode no.7) entitled ‘Circles’ – Sunday 16th December 2012.
Red Pen no.11 will be my critique of a synopsis & extract from Lianne Simon’s novel Confessions of a Teenage Hermaphrodite – Sunday 23rd December 2012.

If you’d like your work (novel extracts or short stories up to c.3,000 words) considered for appraisal here on the blog, do email me. I will also critique longer pieces for a fee, see here. I also review short stories (<3,000 words) on this blog’s Short Story Saturdays page and if you would like feedback on your full works-in-progress or finished books (for free) from a fellow writer and / or reader, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.

Note: I am English so will edit based on UK English rather than US English although correct US spellings / wordings will remain unaltered. You can email me at morgen@morgenbailey.com.

***

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **

As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do, and a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words. Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me posting it online in my new Red Pen Critique Sunday night posts then do email me. They are fortnightly episodes, usually released on Sundays, interweaving the recordings between the red pen sessions with the hints & tips episodes. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.

2 Comments

Posted by morgenbailey on December 2, 2012 in critique, ebooks, novels, podcast, review, self-publishing, submissions, tips, writing

Tags: creative writing, critique, Danny Kemp, feedback, J D Mader, JD Mader, Kathryn Wild, Lae Monie, Lianne Simon, red pen, writing

Guest post: Rejections Slips and other Ciphers by Melodie Campbell

27 Nov

Tonight’s guest blog post, on the topic of rejections, is brought to you by short story, humour author and novelist and interviewee Melodie Campbell.

“Much as I love history sex and violence…” Rejection Slips and other Ciphers

All writers share one experience in common: Rejection. Yes, that single three-syllable word can pack more punch than a swat team of grammarians in a first year college class. I’ve known grown novelists crushed by the impact of a lone one-page letter in a returned SASE. (You can tell by the thickness of the envelope that it ain’t holdin’ no contract.) In New York, it is rumored that spurned essayists have been seen to (gasp) forgo imported and guzzle down domestic in their haste to heal the pain.

Rejection is the hurtin’, cheatin’ country song of the writer’s world.

We all know that tune. Usually sung off-key, by editors who can’t do what we authors do, but have the power to keep us out of print.

Rejection slips serve only one useful purpose as far as I can tell: they prove to Revenue Canada and the IRA that we are indeed working writers and deserve all those measly tax deductions.

But wait – is there more?

In case you missed it, there is a hierarchy of rejection slips! If you write for a living, or merely for the loving, you will undoubtedly have a collection that cries out for classification.

Keep them. Treasure them. Devote a drawer to them. (Better still, a steamer trunk.) Make your own list of rejection translations and get to know the lingo.

Here’s my list, to get you started:

“…unfortunately, it does not meet our requirements at this time.” This means No. Allow yourself ten minutes to rant, and then try another market.
“…does not meet our current needs, but we would welcome seeing more of your work.” Hey – you’ve reached them! Maybe they can’t use this piece, but they like your style. Send more. Persist. Be relentless. That’s how I first got into Star Magazine. I wore them down.
“….if you would consider revising, I would happily have another read of it.” Go, go, go! Whenever an editor gives direct encouragement, run with it. Act immediately. Revise and re-mail. Invite her to dinner. Walk his dog. Do what you have to. But don’t lose his interest.

I cherish personal replies from editors, not only for the time they take to write, but also for the hidden messages within. Some are priceless. Here are a few gems from my personal file (er…trunk):

“…not for us, but I think the ‘Idler’ uses satire.” That’s right, pass it off to the competition and hope it sinks ‘em. The ultimate publisher power play.

“…we found your novel an interesting and compelling work, however…” Shucks. I should have known they don’t publish ‘interesting and compelling’ works.

And my own personal favorite: “…much as I like history, sex and violence…” Well, gee, that’s interesting. But exactly how does this relate to my returned manuscript? By the way, what are you doing Saturday night?

That was great, thank you, Melodie!

Melodie Campbell has over 200 publications, 6 awards, and was a finalist for the 2012 Derringer and Arthur Ellis awards.

She is the Executive Director of Crime Writers of Canada.

Library Journal says this about Melodie`s third novel, The Goddaughter (Orca Books)

“Campbell`s crime caper is just right for Janet Evanovich fans. Wacky family connections and snappy dialogue make it impossible not to laugh.”

I then invited Melodie to provide an excerpt from The Goddaughter: We got through the border with no problem at all. Of course, it’s much easier getting through borders without a semi-frozen dead body pretending to be asleep in the back seat.

You can buy The Goddaughter: Amazon.uk and Amazon.com.

And A Purse to Die For: Amazon.uk and Amazon.com.

Follow Melodie’s comic blog at http://funnygirlmelodie.blogspot.com and visit her website www.melodiecampbell.com.

***

The blog interviews return as normal tomorrow morning with fantasy novelist Ginny Atkinson – the five hundred and sixty-fifth of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, bloggers, autobiographers and more. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further. And I enjoy hearing from readers of my blog; do either leave a comment on the relevant interview (the interviewees love to hear from you too!) and / or email me.

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **

Unfortunately, as I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t review books but I have a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words. Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me reading it / talking about and critiquing it (I send you the transcription afterwards so you can use the comments or ignore them) on my ‘Bailey’s Writing Tips’ p o dcast, then do email me. They are fortnightly episodes, usually released on Sundays, interweaving the recordings between the red pen sessions with the hints & tips episodes. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.

24 Comments

Posted by morgenbailey on November 27, 2012 in critique, ebooks, ideas, novels, recommendations, short stories, submissions, writing

Tags: Arthur Ellis award, critique, Derringer award, feedback, guest blog, guest post, humour author, interviewee, Janet Evanovich, Library Journal, Melodie Campbell, novelist, Orca Books, rejection, short story, Star Magazine, writing

A big thank you!

21 Nov

Just a little note to say a big “thank you” to everyone who’s taken part in, and visited, this blog over the past 20 months (well, almost 20 months… will be on the 1st December (seeing as we don’t have a 31st November)) because one of you was my 100,000th visitor last night.

A lot has happened…

558 Blog interviews (200+ more booked in and another 900 questionnaires still out in the ether!)
174 Guest blog posts
61 Flash Fiction Fridays which appear some weeks later on the Bailey’s Writing Tips podcast
48 Post-weekend Poems
the occasional 5a.m. Flash (recently advising of free eBooks, more to come!)
some Short Story Saturdays (which from this Saturday will have short stories as well as reviews!)
explaining the second-person point of view
Competitions, Events and Submission info.
my writing which includes the 5pm Fiction slot (a short story a day from 1st June to 31st October)
superseded (for November / December) by my progress on NaNoWriMo 2012
my books and books by other writers
a new Ask Me slot
I also started a section on how to create eBooks
I added some writing exercises
and some useful other sites
one of my other hats: blog design & maintenance
I’d love to do book reviews but don’t have the time so have listed some who do
there’s a page of writing tips and writing groups
and the latest page is feedback (giving and receiving – are you looking for, or can you give, feedback on works in progress or finished books?)
and finally there’s some other stuff.
Oh, and a lot’s happened to Morgen With An ‘E’ since March 2011, and you can hire me too.

So plenty to read, and you do, so thank you again for your support and here’s to another 100,000 of you finding me!

21 Comments

Posted by morgenbailey on November 21, 2012 in articles, autobiography, blog, childrens, critique, ebooks, events, ideas, interview, LitFest, NaNoWriMo, non-fiction, novels, podcast, poetry, recommendations, review, self-publishing, sentencestarts, short stories, submissions, tips, viewpoints, writing

Tags: 5pm fiction, ask me, author interviews, blog design, blog interviews, blog maintenance, book reviews, books by indie authors, competitions, critique, events, feedback, fiction fridays, flash fiction, guest blog, guest post, how to create ebooks, NaNoWriMo, podcast, poetry, second person viewpoint, short stories, submission information, useful writing sites, writing exercises, writing tips

Reader feedback wanted and offered

20 Nov

** LIST UPDATED 15 DEC 2012 – CLICK HERE FOR LATEST LIST **

Can you offer an author FREE feedback? Would you like to receive that feedback?

I came up with the idea for this page during a mini-break at a ‘pitch to the panel’ event at the Festival of Romance, Bedford, mid-November 2012. I know there are many writers out there who, for one reason or another, don’t have enough (or any!) readers / writers willing to give them FREE feedback on their works-in-progress so they can make it as good as it can be before they submit it. Could you give that feedback? Would you like that feedback?

NB. You can be on both lists – it doesn’t have to be one or the other. :)

** Because almost everyone has contact details against their name, I shall leave it that you contact each other. Obviously any enquiries I receive will be passed on but I would ask that you visit this page from time-to-time to check whether I have added anyone who is willing to read your genre or that an author is looking for feedback that you offer. Thank you again everyone for taking part. I hope to build this page into a really valuable (if not monetary!) resource for all concerned. **

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READERS (see below for readers offering feedback)

Do you like reading novels, short stories, non-fiction or poetry (anything else?) and are willing to give free, honest feedback?
Can you read them quickly (within a month)?

I’m looking to list first readers on this page (below) so please either email me or leave a comment below (and I’ll paste it into this page) with the following information…

Your name:
Your email address: (via me if preferred)
Your website (if you have one, if not I can design you one!):
Genre preferred:
Format (novel, short stories, poetry, non-fiction):
Maximum length of work to be read (___,000 words / ___ lines for poetry):
Lead time preferred (ideally no more than a month please):
Do you write? (yes/no):
Any other relevant information:

Thank you so much in advance. Writers can never have too many first readers and feedback more than “that’s good” (or otherwise) is invaluable to us and you get a free read!

NB. Don’t be under pressure to give a lengthy, detailed feedback (but it would be great if you could). You’re doing this for free so just what you can would be so gratefully appreciated. You can discuss this directly with the other author.

Readers listed here (alphabetically for now)…(note the ‘at’ in the email address should read @, with no spaces, but formatted like that to try and avoid them getting spammed! If you click on the links they should work OK)

Aaron Fuller (email c/o Morgen): Genre preferred: anything except romance! Novel synopsis and individual chapters only, not whole ones! Otherwise any. Max count: 10,000 words. Lead time: 2 weeks. Do you write? Yes. Thank you, Aaron!
Aaron Roark (aaronroark9 at gmail.com): Aaron is a writer (listed below) who would also like to give feedback, preferably fantasy or horror (no non-fiction or romance). He needs at least two weeks lead time depending on the length of the work. (50,000 words max). Thank you, Aaron!
Claire Maycock (formerly Marriott) (claire at nibenon.com, new blog coming soon at www.clairemaycock.com) Genres: non-fiction (home, garden, crafts, personal development), fiction (historical). No maximum length. Lead time to be agreed on receipt of file but will typically be three to four weeks. Do you write? Yes. Thank you, Claire!
David Ferretti (edf at wildblue.net): I write crossover fantasy (no cursing/sex). I have two finished manuscripts of my trilogy; the first is edited and has been read by several beta readers that caused me to make changes. I am the only person to read the second. I will be glad to exchange finished manuscripts with anyone who writes in the same genre. My manuscript is 119,000 words long and readers have told me that it is a fast read. If your manuscript runs <120,000 words then give me two weeks to review it. Greater length manuscripts will take a little bit longer. I prefer Microsoft Word docx or doc files. Thank you, David!
Elaine Spires (hello at elainespires.co.uk / www.ElaineSpires.co.uk): Genre preferred: all except sci-fi, horror and poetry. Do you write? Yes (several plays, a TV series, three books, presently working on fourth). Thank you, Elaine!
Hersilia Press publisher Ilaria (ilaria) Meliconi (info at hersilia-press.co.uk / http://www.hersilia-press.co.uk) is willing to offer feedback on crime novels but timescale dependent on existing workload. Grazie Ilaria!
James Munroe (MunroJim at twitter.example.com): I will read any novel set in the medieval period, and if it is good, post a review on MedievalMysteries.com, or otherwise send a brief critique direct to the author by email. Thank you, James!
Jeanne E. Rogers (echidna at gmail.com / http://warriorechidna.blogspot.co.uk/p/contact-me.html): I really like this idea, Morgen, with an ‘e.’ I would like to participate on both sides of this coin. I am a writer of middle grade fantasy, focusing on highlighting endangered animals in my stories. I would like to read fantasy, not necessarily for young people (timescale dependent upon workload – please enquire first), and I would like to have my new book, which is not complete at this point, read for some thoughts / opinions. Thanks so much! Thank you, Jean!
Kay Millward (kay.millward at yahoo.co.uk / http://www.kay-millward.com/contact-us.php): Any genre. Feedback usually within the month. Do you write? Yes.
Laurence French (laurencefrench92 at yahoo.co.uk): Hi, I’d be happy to read other authors’ works and give them feedback. I’m a published author in the UK (fiction and non-fiction), as well as having a number of articles published. I like all genres and, if the author wishes, I can do a complete proofread of their work as well. I would have to charge for that though as I work freelance. Otherwise I’m willing to read and give a critique, with suggestions and constructive comments. Thank you, Laurence!
Morgen Bailey (morgen@morgenbailey.com / http://morgenbailey.wordpress.com/red-pen-critique): short stories (any family-friendly fiction genre) up to 3,000 words or novel extracts of a similar length (with synopsis) for this blog’s Red Pen Critique slot, although the story / extract are posted on the blog so only be happy with that before offering me your writing.
Nikki Dudley (nikkisdudley at hotmail.co.uk / http://ellipsisandnovels.blogspot.com / https://twitter.com/nikkidudley20): I would like to go on both lists please! As a reader, I am interested in mystery, thrillers, crime, young adult and general fiction. I am happy to read most lengths but lets say not over 100k. I can get back in a month, maybe less. I write fiction and poetry myself. I also co-edit an online magazine. As a writer, I am writing a young adult dystopian novel set in the future. It centres around natural energy. It is around 90k words. Just looking for general f/b. Can give more info on contact. Thanks! Thank you, Nikki!
Ralph Scott (info at credittheedit.com / http://www.credittheedit.com) If it might accent the above, the staff at Credit The Edit, LLC provides detailed, complementary Test Edits on up to five pages of almost any fiction or nonfiction manuscript. Though five pages does not allow for the examination of everything that is solid or is in need of an overhaul in an author’s manuscript, it’s quite impressive just how much those five pages reveal about the merits and hurdles of the project. So feel free to tap us at least for that. That’s very kind of you, thank you, Ralph.
Rebeccah Giltrow (rgiltrow at gmail.com / http://rebeccahgiltrow.blogspot.co.uk): Any sort of fiction (novel, short story, poetry, script/play, lyric). Max. length: 50,000 words for prose, any number of lines for poetry. Lead time: 3-4 weeks. Do you write? Yes. Thank you, Rebeccah!
Robin Greene (bodicea77 at yahoo.com). Genre preferred: Fiction, anything except romance. Format: Novels or short stories. Max length: 80,000 words. Lead time preferred: about a month, probably less. Do you write? (yes/no): some have said that, yes. Thank you, Robin!

Websites where authors can put their work online for feedback include Authonomy (known as HarperCollins’ unofficial slush pile), YouWriteOn – with these two you have to critique to be critiqued, ABC Tales, Absolute Write, Chapteread, Critiquecircle, Fiction Press, Figment (aimed at teens), Scribd, Webook, Worthy of Publishing, Writers, Writers’ Cafe, StoryLane (more about you than your fiction) and Wattpad (I’m on the latter two). Ken Weene recommends http://authorsinfo.com and http://cowbird.com.

I also have a list of reviewers on this blog’s Reviews page. I offer feedback on short stories or novel chapters on my blog’s Red Pen Critique page going live (the story / extract then my feedback) every Sunday evening.

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WRITERS (see below for writers wanting feedback)

Are you looking for free feedback? If so, please either email me or leave a comment below (and I’ll paste it into this page) with the following information…

Your name:
Your email address:
Your website (if you have one, if not I can design you one!):
Title of your item:
Genre of your item:
Format (novel, short stories, poetry, non-fiction):
Word count (___,000 words / ___ lines for poetry):
Brief synopsis of item (50 words max!):
NB. Please list items separately if wanting feedback on more than one.
When you need the feedback by:
Any other relevant information:

Thank you and good luck with your works-in-progress! Please remember that the readers will be offering to do this for free so feedback will be as detailed (or otherwise) as their time allows.

Writers listed here… (note the ‘at’ in the email address should read @, with no spaces, but formatted like that to try and avoid them getting spammed! If you click on the links they should work OK)

Aaron Roark (aaronroark9 at gmail.com): My book is called The High Grass. It’s a horror story. Only the first chapter is complete, but it will be a novel. About 1100 words. Synopsis: It’s the story of a fifteen year old boy named Jimmy. He lives on a farm in north Texas with his mother and father. The farm is adjacent to a large field that no one owns where the grass is about five feet high (hence the title). There is something evil in the field that is after Jimmy. I would also like to give feedback. Need at least two weeks lead time depending on the length of the work. (50,000 words max). Thank you, Aaron.
David Ferretti (edf at wildblue.net): I write crossover fantasy (no cursing/sex). I have two finished manuscripts of my trilogy; the first is edited and has been read by several beta readers that caused me to make changes. I am the only person to read the second. I will be glad to exchange finished manuscripts with anyone who writes in the same genre. My manuscript is 119,000 words long and readers have told me that it is a fast read. If your manuscript runs <120,000 words then give me two weeks to review it. Greater length manuscripts will take a little bit longer. I prefer Microsoft Word docx or doc files. Thank you, David.
Ethan Holmes (ethanholmes-at-ethanholmes.com / http://www.ethanholmes.com): I certainly wouldn’t mind some feedback or reviews. I have five titles ranging from short story collections to science fiction to my latest title which turned out to be a self-help book I didn’t know was going to be one. You can visit my site and tell me which one(s) you would like to read. Thank you, Ethan.
Gary Showalter (gary at garyshowalter.com / http://www.garyshowalter.com): A Primer on Roses (gardening, rose care). Non-fiction. 53 pages. Rose care – from choosing a location to plant, how they grow, how to prune, how to select tools, etc. Feedback wanted: as soon as possible. Additional information: “The pamphlet is available on Amazon now, but feedback is always welcome and changes will be made where necessary, based on feedback, with credit provided for valuable feedback. I will send a PDF file with the text to first readers.” Thank you, Gary.
Gina Charles (ginacharles at earthlink.net / http://ginacharles.com). Title of item: Shift Happens, A Laypersons Guide To Awakening. Genre of item: Self-help. Format: non-fiction. Word Count: 31,289. Brief Synopsis: Know that you already have all the tools you need to experience that shift into a more peaceful, abundant, and enjoyable life. Shift Happens lights the way on the journey back to Self. Feedback: At earliest convenience.
Jason Fink (jasonfink88 at yahoo.com): Jasmine Cowl and the Salagi Talking Stick (contemporary fantasy novel, first of a potential seven-book series). 78,000 words. Jasmine Cowl is p*ssed. Fifteen years ago, the African American woman and her friends saved the world. Stuck in a boring life, even though she works for the CIA… the other one. Saddled with family, a job, and the PTA, she’s found something new. Disgruntled gnomes & talking islands force themselves into Jasmine’s life while she hunts for a powerful wand. She’s fighting for more than the world. This time she’s fighting for her kids. Feedback wanted: no real timeframe, finished it up about 3 months back. Any other relevant information: Thanks for taking a look – I’d like to know if it’s an ok read, or if it’s… not. Honesty is always appreciated! Thank you, Jason.
Jeanne E. Rogers (http://warriorechidna.blogspot.co.uk/p/contact-me.html): I really like this idea, Morgen, with an ‘e.’ I would like to participate on both sides of this coin. I am a writer of middle grade fantasy, focusing on highlighting endangered animals in my stories. I would like to read fantasy, not necessarily for young people, and I would like to have my new book, which is not complete at this point, read for some thoughts / opinions. Thanks so much! Thank you, Jean!
Kenny Johnston (alwayssmilingthroughthetears at gmail.com): Always Smiling Through the Tears (biography / memoir) 111,000 words. Synopsis: In October, 2010, Kenny put 2 nooses round his neck in the garden shed. Twice. This is his story, a story of a broken home, mixed race children, racism, adversity and heartbreak. Suicide is all too common in our broken society, and here you see it revealed from the inside, to find what actually drives somebody to the point where the pain of death is seen as preferable to the pain in life. Kenny says, ”For those, who provide feedback/reviews, I will post a free copy of the book, signed by me, if they like!” Thank you, Kenny.
Lae Monier (laemonie at aim.com / http://laemonie.wordpress.com): Wanted (psychological crime). Novel (67,147 words). Feedback wanted: two weeks from the time they get the WIP. Thank you, Lae.
Laurence French (laurencefrench92 at yahoo.co.uk): ‘Waiting for Dark’ (war / personal relationships). Novel. 80,000 words. Synopsis: A severely injured soldier from WW1 is looked after by a French nurse who takes him back to the battlefield at Ypres to lay the ghosts of his past and to rid him of the guilt he feels about the loss of his pals. No specific timeframe. Thank you, Laurence!
Nikki Dudley (nikkisdudley at hotmail.co.uk / http://ellipsisandnovels.blogspot.com / https://twitter.com/nikkidudley20): I would like to go on both lists please! As a reader, I am interested in mystery, thrillers, crime, young adult and general fiction. I am happy to read most lengths but lets say not over 100k. I can get back in a month, maybe less. I write fiction and poetry myself. I also co-edit an online magazine. As a writer, I am writing a young adult dystopian novel set in the future. It centres around natural energy. It is around 90k words. Just looking for general f/b. Can give more info on contact. Thanks! Thank you, Nikki!
Robin Greene (bodicea77 at yahoo.com): Nothing Good From Secrets (“women’s fiction, I guess”). Novel (c. 79,000 words). Synopsis: Carys’ best friend PamLynn is keeping something from her. She goes through finding out PamLynn’s father has Alzheimers, that her mother has been having her followed, and that the man she thought was her father isn’t her biological father. PamLynn is more than a friend, she’s actually her sister. Blurb: (I think) Not everyone who loves you tells you the truth. Carys’ best friend has a secret. Her mother has a huge secret. Carys even has one of her own. How does a near 40 year old woman, who wants a successful career, to live a few of her dreams, oh yes and someone to share all that with, help her friends, understand her mother, and most of all help herself? When you need the feedback by: Not in a huge rush, but as soon as possible. Thank you, Robin.

Websites where authors can put their work online for feedback include Authonomy (known as HarperCollins’ unofficial slush pile), YouWriteOn – with these two you have to critique to be critiqued, ABC Tales, Absolute Write, Chapteread, Critiquecircle, Fiction Press, Figment (aimed at teens), Scribd, Webook, Worthy of Publishing, Writers, Writers’ Cafe, StoryLane (more about you than your fiction) and Wattpad (I’m on both). Ken Weene recommends http://authorsinfo.com and http://cowbird.com.

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6 Comments

Posted by morgenbailey on November 20, 2012 in autobiography, childrens, critique, ebooks, ideas, NaNoWriMo, non-fiction, novels, podcast, poetry, scriptwriting, self-publishing, short stories, songwriting, submissions, writing

Tags: autobiography, biography, chick-lit, crime, critique, fantasy, feedback, fiction, first reader, historical, literature, mystery, non-fiction, novel chapters, novel synopsis, poetry, reading novels, red pen, romance, sci-fi, suspense, writing

Interview no.555 with writer and publisher Rosemary Kind

18 Nov

Welcome to the five hundred and fifty-fifth of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more. Today’s is with writer and publisher Rosemary Kind. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further.

Morgen: Hello, Rosemary. Can you please briefly explain the structure of your publishing house… perhaps who’s involved along the process of an acceptance to the book / story being published.

Rosemary: All submissions come into a common mailbox. Although I do a lot of the reading personally, I will farm out stories which are based on subjects I’m less familiar with, or genres that are I think another pair of eyes would be better looking at. Ultimately the say on acceptance is mine and as far as possible I will give feedback to writers telling them where more work is required, rather than simple rejections. A surprising number of stories are later accepted following rework. Most of the work from there is done by me. I do the formatting and final checking for errors as well as much of the uploading to the internet. We have other technical support when I come unstuck, but fortunately I can cover most things.

Morgen: It’s great that you can give some feedback. Most don’t, or can’t because they simply don’t have the time. I mentioned in the introduction that you also write, does this help with deciding which projects to take on?

Rosemary: Yes I do, although since launching www.alfiedog.com I’ve had precious little time to write. What I write has little bearing on what I accept, but there will always be genres that are personal favourites. My own writing is an eclectic mix and in many ways was the trigger for the project. I was all too aware how limited the paid outlets are for short stories, particularly if you don’t write for the classic magazine market.

Morgen: It is indeed, and even that’s been shrinking. In the UK, even in the time that I’ve been writing (seven years) we’ve lost (for fiction) the likes of Bella, Best, Woman, Woman’s Own, Chat etc. The $64,000 question: out of all the submissions you receive, what makes a story stand out for all the right reasons?

Rosemary: The ones you remember are the ones that move you. If they inspire me, challenge me, make me laugh out loud, cry, or scare me witless then they are the remarkable ones and the ones you promptly tell everyone about.

Morgen: My favourite story from last year’s H.E. Bates Short Story Competition was called ‘The bus driver who stopped and then didn’t’ (I later found out was by Dan Purdue and we’ve since got in contact). Having flicked through the titles, that was the one I was looking forward to reading so I saved it ’til last and was one of the few I marked 10/10. Unfortunately it didn’t make the top 10 (I was one of a handful of first round judges) but I still remember it clearly. And then, without naming names, what makes a story stand out for all the wrong reasons?

Rosemary: Sometimes a story is completely flat. The characters don’t come to life. The scenery is grey and there is nothing to transport you from the real life surrounding your desk. You can very often tell from the email that accompanies the submission if it is going to be very hard work. If you groan before so much as opening the attachment, then you begin reading the story looking for excuses to turn it down. First impressions are everything. I do still try to read to the end, but every so often you reach a point where you realise no amount of time spent reading and making suggestions is going to bring a story up to scratch.

Morgen: I read to the end of all the stories I receive for the H.E. Bates but on some (rare) occasions it has been hard. I start at 10/10 and work downwards, including punctuation etc. because it should be word perfect, but then I’m a hard task master and silly mistakes (missing / adding a rogue word) is unnecessary. It shows it was either submitted in a hurry or without due care. What genres do you accept? What would you suggest an author do with a cross-genre piece of writing?

Rosemary: We accept all but the most violent and totally exclude erotica. Our aim is for the site to be a place the whole family can go. We aren’t afraid of difficult issues, but gratuitous violence or sex is not what we are about. Cross genre is not a problem. We can put a story against multiple categories and every so often we receive something and think – ‘great, let’s create a new category’.

Morgen: That’s how I like to view this blog as I know I have viewers of <13 and >90 (I’ve interviewed one of the latter!) and have only had to put content warnings on two pieces so far, only done major edits to one short story submitted and not refused anything so far (not such a hard task master on that score). Is there a genre that you haven’t published and would like to?

Rosemary: No, we have had submissions right across the board.

Morgen: Is there a genre that sells better than others or that you can’t get enough of?

Rosemary: As a reader I just love receiving humour and we do have a very strong humour section, but as far as sales go they are fairly evenly spread.

Morgen: How can an author submit to you?

Rosemary: They need to read our submissions guidelines http://alfiedog.com/submissions/submission-process. We only accept submissions by email, but everything you need to send and the file formats we accept are all outlined.

Morgen: Very helpful, thank you. Can you suggest some do’s and don’t’s when submitting to you.

Rosemary: We have covered some of the key faults which occur in blog posts on our ‘Alfie Dog Bites’. This link will take you straight to some of our writing tips http://alfiedog.com/category/writing-tips. Unsurprisingly it is the old faithfuls of show v tell, spelling, correct tenses and punctuation.

Morgen: Ah yes. I have a new page of tips (http://morgenbailey.wordpress.com/tips) which mentions some of these. I think as a writer (or really any other profession… or life!) you never stop learning. This is a question that I ask authors but I think is just as relevant to you as a publisher: what was the first book / story you published?

Rosemary: Personally it was Poems for Life, a book of poems to raise money for Age Concern www.poemsforlife.co.uk. Under the guise of www.alfiedog.com the first short story we accepted as by Patsy Collins.

Morgen: Do you run competitions, do you think they help with a writer’s success?

Rosemary: Not at present, but we are thinking of launching one next year. I think they can be a good way for a writer to gain confidence and of course, there is the financial reward for those who secure prizes.

Morgen: There is. I’m involved in two; a short story (http://morgenbailey.wordpress.com/competitions-calendar/he-bates) and poetry competition (http://morgenbailey.wordpress.com/competitions-calendar/nlg-poetry-competition), although the latter may turn into poetry and flash fiction, and it’s interesting seeing it from the other side of the fence, juggling entry fees against prizes and judge / postal costs etc. It’s not as simple as it looks. To your knowledge, have any of your published books / stories won or been shortlisted in any competitions?

Rosemary: Yes, many have.

Morgen: Excellent. What do you feel about an author writing under a pseudonym? Do you think they make a difference to their profile? And would you recommend an author writing under different names for different genres?

Rosemary: This is a tricky one. If you do use a pseudonym you need it to be appropriate. If you write a story in voice which is clearly male, then calling yourself Elizabeth is unlikely to fool the reader. There can be perfectly good reasons to take a pseudonym, it is entirely the choice of the writer – although if they suggest something highly inappropriate that would damage their sales then we would point that out.

Morgen: I’ve come across some strange ones (mentioning no names ) but I think if your name is John Smith then it’s worth considering because you become a brand. Try and Google John Smith. Now for, in theory, a simple question: what’s your opinion of eBooks, do you publish them and do you read them?

Rosemary: I read them, we publish them. The main focus of our publishing is the e-story market, but with the possibility of a printable format. Interestingly we sell more of the printable format, but these can still be read on screen.

Morgen: That is interesting, especially in the days of Amazon selling more eBooks than paper books. Poetry and short stories are, in my opinion anyway, the two most hard done by genres… what do you see as the future for them? Do you think the eBook revolution will help, given that eBooks seem to be getting shorter?

Rosemary: I wholeheartedly agree. I started www.alfiedog.com because there is a need for a real market for short stories where writers can earn royalties and where readers can be sure of the quality.

Morgen: As (predominantly) a short story writer, I totally agree. Since I’ve been writing (seven years) I’ve seen the market in women’s magazine fiction dwindling. It’s really sad. Is there a plot that’s written about too often?

Rosemary: There are plots that are repeated. If you take something that is obvious you need to have a different angle. Find me a reason to want to accept your version of events. Even the most commonly covered subjects can have a worthwhile angle that a reader will enjoy.

Morgen: They can. There are only so many scenarios (boy meets girl etc; West Side Story = Romeo & Juliet). Do you have to do a lot of editing to the stories you accept or is the writing usually more or less fully-formed?

Rosemary: It varies from author to author. There are some we can accept without change, but many need a little assistance.

Morgen: Unless we have a second opinion we’re usually too close to our own writing, and another person will often come up with some great suggestions. For your purposes, does it matter what point of view a story is written in? Have you ever printed any in second person? What’s your opinion of second person?

Rosemary: Second person if very hard to make work and writers rarely manage to stick to it exclusively and fluently. We have no preference, except that writers have some understanding of what point of view involves.

Morgen: True, and I’ve seen some stories where they switch unintentionally. If the writer (and reader) imagines they are that person, it does make it easier. Have you had any surprising feedback about any of your published works?

Rosemary: Yes. I never cease to be thrilled when people enjoy my own writing and I have had some wonderful encouragement for the work we are now doing with Alfie Dog.

Morgen: Isn’t that great. Most of us write to be read and when a reader takes the time (and effort) to let us know they enjoyed (or otherwise!) that we do then it makes it all worthwhile (or makes us learn!). What advice would you give aspiring writers?

Rosemary: Never give up. Be prepared to learn from everyone and everything. Don’t keep your writing in a drawer. If other people don’t read your work you won’t have the chance of feedback that could improve your writing. If you don’t succeed first time round that is not necessarily an indication that you won’t succeed next time. Rejection is part of the game, learn from it if you can, but don’t give up.

Morgen: Absolutely. Get your work out there (says she who has files of short stories and three and a bit novels!). What do you think the future holds for a writer?

Rosemary: A need to evolve to meet whatever markets develop. Over generations writing has developed from the preserve of the elite, to availability to the masses. Now many people take their entertainment from films, TV or video clips, but behind all good fiction sits the writer developing the story.

Morgen: We do, and for me there’s nothing like it, especially if I’m ‘winging’ it. I think it’s never been a better time to be a writer. We do have to work harder than ever before at the marketing but we have so many more opportunities. Given that more emphasis these days is put on the author to market their published works or indeed themselves as a ‘brand’, how involved are you generally with your authors post-publication?

Rosemary: We stay close to our authors and have tried to build a sense of belonging. Those authors who promote their work definitely sell more copies than those who don’t and we are now trying to share tips from the more successful ones with all our authors. We also write press releases and flyers that the authors can adapt by adding their own details so they can promote their own work on the site in any publicity they may do.

Morgen: That sounds like a great topic for a guest blog post if you have time sometime. Apart from your website, how do you market yourselves? Are your authors involved in marketing for you / themselves?

Rosemary: We encourage our authors to do as much promotion as they feel able to. In addition to that we use flyers, social media and press releases for all key events and achievements. Funds are tight, so whilst we would love to do a full scale advertising campaign that will have to wait until a little further down the track.

Morgen: I’m sure it’s the same for every company. It all comes down to resources and why wouldn’t the author want to make themselves known? In which country are you based and do you find this a help or hindrance with letting people know about, or distributing, your publications?

Rosemary: As we are internet based we could be anywhere. We are in the UK, but we have good links across the globe and have writers and readers in a surprising number of countries covering every inhabited continent.

Morgen: Most of my enquirers are in the US and they assume I am so are (hopefully pleasantly) surprised when I say I’m in the UK but as you say, we could be anywhere. What do you think of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and more business-related such as LinkedIn? Do you think they’re invaluable or too time-consuming?

Rosemary: You avoid being involved at your own risk, but they are very time intensive for the return they bring. You have to be there, but if you could devote the same energy to other approaches the time might be better spent. The reason you use them is that they are low cost and enable easy access to a very wide potential audience. What you really need is the tipping point effect. Once you cross into global brand territory the same time investment reaches many more people. You have to climb the mountain first.

Morgen: It is that. Marketing is usually the answer to ‘what’s your least favourite aspect of your writing life?’ because it’s so time-consuming. Are you involved in anything else writing-related?

Rosemary: I’m part of the online writers group Alpha Writers and love our annual challenges. It is a closed group, often with a waiting list for places and we all find ourselves counting down to the days in the month that the challenges are issued, last month’s entries sent anonymously for judging and eagerly open the results of the month before to see what our colleagues thought of our efforts. It’s addictive.

Morgen: I keep thinking I should join an online writing group. I run or belong to four local (in-person) ones and get so much out of it. I should investigate what’s out there. What do you do when you’re not working?

Rosemary: I am Chairman of the Entlebucher Mountain Dog Club of Great Britain and work to develop the breed here. When I came back to the UK from living in Belgium, four years ago, there were just 10 of the breed in the country. We’ve built that number to 31 with more litters planned over the next few years. It’s very exciting to see the breed gaining recognition. We have four including two breeding bitches, so we have litters each year to bring up too.

Morgen: Oh how sweet. I have a rescue dog (a 12-on-Boxing-Day Jack Russell / Cairn cross) and I’d love to live on a farm (a writers’ retreat) with loads of dogs. Is there anything else you’d like to mention?

Rosemary: If you have any thoughts of things we need to change or improve we are always happy to hear them.

Morgen: Please do let us know… comments section below. Thank you, Rosemary. I’m chuffed you could join me today.

***

If you are reading this and you write, in whatever genre, and are thinking “ooh, I’d like to do this” then you can… just email me and I’ll send you the information. They do now (January 2013) carry a fee (£10 / €12.50 / $15) for the new interviews on this blog but everything else (see Opportunities on this blog) is free.

If you go for the interview, it’s very simple; I send you a questionnaire (I have them for novelists, short story authors, children’s authors, non-fiction authors, and poets). You complete the questions, and I let you know when it’s going to go live. Before it does so, I add in comments as if we’re chatting, and then they get posted. When that’s done, I email you with the link so you can share it with your corner of the literary world. And if you have a writing-related blog / podcast and would like to interview me… let me know.

Alternatively, if you’d like a free Q&A-only interview, I now have http://morgensauthorinterviews.wordpress.com on which I’ve rerun the original interviews posted here then posted new interviews which I then reblog here. These interviews are Q&A only, so I don’t add in my comments but they do get exposure on both sites.

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **

For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.

As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do. I welcome critique for the four new writing groups listed below and / or flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays. For other opportunities see (see Opportunities on this blog).

The full details of the new online writing groups, and their associated Facebook groups, are:

Morgen’s Online Non-Fiction Writing Group

Morgen’s Online Novel Writing Group

Morgen’s Online Poetry Writing Group

Morgen’s Online Script Writing Group

Morgen’s Online Short Story Writing Group

We look forward to reading your comments.

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Posted by morgenbailey on November 18, 2012 in competitions, ebooks, Facebook, interview, self-publishing, short stories, submissions, tips, Twitter, writing

Tags: agent, Alfie Dog Fiction, Amazon, author, author spotlight, Barnes & Noble, biographers, biography, books, characters, children’s, creative writing, crime, critique, erotic romance, erotica, Facebook, fantasy, feedback, fiction, flash fiction, Goodreads, guest blog, guest blog post, guest post, historical, interview, Kobo, LinkedIn, literature, Morgan Bailey, morgen bailey, Morgen with an e, multi-genre, murder mystery, mystery series, non-fiction, Northampton, novelist, novels, paranormal, paranormal romances, pinterest, poetry, poetry collections, publisher, rejection letters, rejections, romance, Rosemary Kind, science fiction, second person viewpoint, self-publishing, short stories, short story group, Smashwords, story author, story authors, story writer, submissions, tips, Twitter, vampire, western, Wordpress, writer, writing, writing competitions, writing events, writing group, writing magazines, YA, youtube

Interview no.501 with publisher Martyn Forrester

25 Sep

Welcome to the five hundred and first of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more. Today’s is with Managing Director of publishing house Apostrophe Books Martyn Forrester. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further. Martyn mentions Robert Ford who I interviewed in August – you can read our interview (after Martyn’s please ) here.

Morgen: Hello, Martyn. I’d like to jump straight in and ask you whether there is a genre that sells better than others or that you can’t get enough of?

Martyn: Perversely, the genres that sell best aren’t the ones we’re interested in. What we can’t get enough of is literary fiction that conventional publishers can no longer afford to take the risk on – that was our original mission when we launched earlier in 2012. We’re talking experimental, cutting edge fiction like The King Of Spain, by Robert Ford (http://apostrophebooks.com/kingofspain). Robert’s a movie editor, and you can tell by the way he uses his literary cameras. The result is a collection of vivid images that stays in your head a long time after you’ve finished reading.

Morgen: I wrote a TV script for the now defunct Script Frenzy in April 2010 and whilst I didn’t enjoy the process (I’ve since converted it into the beginning of a novel) it has made me think more about the construction of visual media. I’m sure there will be writers reading this interview who are looking for a publisher, how can they submit to you?

Martyn: Submit fiction to us through Fiction Fast-Track, our new competition in which we publish an e-book voted for by the public every two months: http://apostrophebooks.com/fictionfasttrack (we have just published our first winner). Writers submit their complete novel or collection of short stories, and we upload a sample for the public to vote on. For non-fiction, we take submissions by email. We also hunt down writers ourselves, often by sampling self-published works.

Part of our aim is to give new life to books we’ve loved in the past. In theory these should be easy enough to track down, but it’s often taken a lot of detective work to trace authors.

Finding exciting new work is becoming easier by the day. We’ve even had some coy approaches from agents who like the idea of launching their authors’ new work in ebook format. We have an ebook coming out later this year whose author has been on the New York Times bestseller list many times – their Madison Avenue agent specifically wanted a boutique ebook publisher, and we’re thrilled he chose us – especially as we don’t pay advances!

The ebook market is maturer in the States, and agents and publishers have been able to see that the ebook and hardback markets don’t cannibalize each other – they cross-fertilize. I see a rosy future in which we all happily co-exist. After all, part of our mission is to find conventional hardback / paperback homes for our new authors – if we love their writing enough to publish it, we want to see them reach as wide a readership as they possibly can.

Morgen: I’d say only a handful of people I’ve spoken to / interviewed only read eBooks. I see them running alongside each other quite happily, in fact I know of readers who have both… of the same book! (if it’s good enough of course) Can you suggest some do’s and don’t’s when submitting to you.

Martyn: Please make sure your work has been edited, even if it’s by a friend. Spelling mistakes and poor grammar make our teeth itch. It’s like singing out of tune at a music audition.

Morgen: The X-Factor factor of publishing. Are there authors that you deal with on a regular basis and / or perhaps represent directly?

Martyn: We have been asked to represent authors, but being an agent is a full-time job. Informally, we’re happy to get great work we’re publishing in front of the right people in the right agencies or conventional publishing houses, but after that we’ll step back.

Morgen: Again most authors I’ve spoken to appreciate that the emphasis is on them to do the marketing, “a necessary evil” some have called it. You mentioned your competition, do you think they help with a writer’s success?

Martyn: I think competitions can be a fantastic springboard. Any contest open to public vote can be skewed by a contestant’s friends and supporters, but by and large you can tell how well a book is going to do. Robert Ford’s The King Of Spain attracted a lot of votes and positive comments, and sure enough it went straight in at Number 1 on the iTunes New & Noteworthy feature.

I think the book and author get a lot of publicity they wouldn’t have otherwise. The media like reporting competition winners – look at the coverage The Orange Prize winner got this year. The launch of Fiction Fast-Track was reported as far afield as the San Francisco Chronicle and the Times of India, and internationally on Yahoo.

Morgen: Don’t you just love technology (I’m so grateful I grew up with an older brother). You spoke of agents earlier, do you think an agent is vital to an author’s success? How would you suggest an author gets one?

Martyn: Between us, we’ve been in publishing for 30 years and we know how tall the slush piles are in most publishers’ offices. Mind you, they are in agencies too. In general, get yourself a good agent and you’re home and dry. Not because of the money – these days, you’re very unlikely to receive an advance that lets you give up the day job – more in terms of editorial advice and guidance. An experienced agent has a price beyond rubies.

Morgen: Most of the authors I’ve spoken to who have them would say the same. Now for, in theory, a simple question: what’s your opinion of eBooks, do you publish them and do you read them?

Martyn: We love them – we only publish ebooks! And Amazon have just announced that their customers are buying more Kindle books than print books, both hardback and paperbacks, so it looks like we’ve made a good decision to only publish ebooks. So far in 2012, Amazon say that for every 100 print books sold on the site, it has sold 114 Kindle books, excluding free Kindle books. What’s most encouraging, though, is the news that in the UK, Kindle readers buy four times the number of books they did before owning a Kindle. As long as people are involved in the magic of reading, does it matter whether it’s via an iPad, a hardback or a cereal packet?

Morgen: I had heard that. Mine are only eBooks (so far ). Poetry and short stories are, in my opinion anyway, the two most hard done by genres… what do you see as the future for them? Do you think the eBook revolution will help given that eBooks seem to be getting shorter?

Martyn: I see a huge future for them. We are bringing out a stunning poetry collection in September, and if it’s successful, we’ll look to establish a list. We’ve already published our first collection of short stories, Pork by Cris Freddi (http://apostrophebooks.com/books/fantasy/pork) – a powerful and unusual collection of animal stories for adults. We’re on the hunt for good short stories. A lot of people write one or two good ones, but not enough to fill a collection.

Morgen: As a short story author, that’s great news. Is there a plot that’s written about too often?

Martyn: There is now – it’s the 50 Shades plot, or as we call it, Boy Beats Girl.

Morgen: Ah yes. It’s like vampires, it goes in and out of fashion although Dracula has always been popular. Writers should write what they want to, there will be a market for it somewhere. I loved your music audition analogy earlier, do you have to do a lot of editing to the stories you accept or is the writing usually more or less fully-formed?

Martyn: We expect submitted work to be already edited, but no work is perfect and there are always a few tweaks we can suggest.

Morgen: For your purposes, does it matter what point of view a story is written in? Have you ever printed any in second person? What’s your opinion of second person?

Martyn: Not a fan of the second person. Mind you, books written in the present tense don’t float our boat either but you still see plenty of them, so what do we know?

Morgen: <laughs> Although second is my favourite point of view, and I write a second person story every Friday for my 5pm fiction slot, I’m sensible enough not to write anything long in it. It’s wearing as a writer and reader. Have you had any surprising feedback about any of your published works?

Martyn: It’s cheesy to say this this, but the greatest feedback comes when writers we admire choose to come aboard.

Morgen: Flattering for sure. What advice would you give aspiring writers?

Martyn: It’s obvious, but: keep writing. Monica Dickens used to spend the first two hours of the day writing furiously, and then she’d throw it away and start her working day. It’s the same for aspiring writers. Just because you wrote it, doesn’t make it good. The very least you can do is cut the first three paragraphs of your first chapter. And then, as Elmore Leonard says, cut the stuff people don’t read.

Morgen: Absolutely, start with the action, although I don’t throw anything away regardless of how bad it is because I like to think it can be whipped into shape, or if not it shows me where I’m going wrong or how far I’ve come when it’s finished. Regardless of what you write, you can’t edit a blank page.

Martyn: The other thing is, don’t be afraid to expose your work to criticism. If you’re worried about showing your work to others, it’s probably for a good reason – it most likely needs another edit. Be brave and send your work out to publishers, and enter it in competitions – of course we’d suggest Fiction Fast-Track as the first port of call!

Morgen: Of course. What do you think the future holds for a writer?

Martyn: I think we’re in danger of heading for a world where you have to be able to afford to be a writer, like the gentlemen scientists of the 19th century. That’s why Apostrophe Books is trying to incubate and showcase great new voices. It’s not a money making mission; it’s a labour of love.

Morgen: I’ve not charged for anything on this blog and therefore not made a penny out of it but it’s part of me (some of my writing friends have called it an obsession and I’d agree with that, about writing certainly). I’d say that’s what it has to be for everyone in this industry.

Martyn: For the last couple of years now, the big mainstream publishers have been caught in a perfect storm of high overheads and dwindling sales. They are having to concentrate their resources on their surefire franchises, and it’s being left to independent publishers to champion new writing – look at the number of independent publishers on this year’s Booker long list. Hardback indie publishers tend to have been set up with good intent and decent war chests, and they can fill the void – as long as the good intent and war chests hold up!

The costs, and therefore risks, to us as ebook publishers are much lower – not least because all the elements like cover design, formatting and proofreading can be bought out.

Morgen: Absolutely. It cost me nothing but time to put mine online and it was a fun process. What do you think of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and more business-related such as LinkedIn? Do you think they’re invaluable or too time-consuming?

Martyn: Social media sites are really important these days, but it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that because you have a lot of followers, you have a lot of buyers. It’s not the same thing. We use Twitter (@apostrophebooks) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/apostrophebooksltd) to update our followers daily and to reach new readers – and new writers. We’re also on LinkedIn, and starting to build a presence on Pinterest (http://pinterest.com/apostrophebooks). Join us!

Morgen: I’m pretty new to Pinterest but have heard good things about it so I will have to check you out. Thank you, Martyn.

***

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **

For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.

The full details of the new online writing groups, and their associated Facebook groups, are:

Morgen’s Online Non-Fiction Writing Group

Morgen’s Online Novel Writing Group

Morgen’s Online Poetry Writing Group

Morgen’s Online Script Writing Group

Morgen’s Online Short Story Writing Group

We look forward to reading your comments.

2 Comments

Posted by morgenbailey on September 25, 2012 in autobiography, childrens, competitions, ebooks, Facebook, interview, non-fiction, novels, poetry, scriptwriting, short stories, submissions, Twitter, viewpoints, writing

Tags: agent, Amazon, Apostrophe Books, author, author spotlight, Barnes & Noble, biographers, biography, books, characters, children’s, competition, creative writing, crime, critique, ebooks, erotic romance, erotica, Facebook, fantasy, feedback, fiction, flash fiction, Goodreads, guest blog, guest blog post, guest post, historical, interview, iTunes, Kobo, LinkedIn, literature, Martyn Forrester, Morgan Bailey, morgen bailey, Morgen with an e, multi-genre, murder mystery, mystery series, New York Times, non-fiction, Northampton, novelist, novels, Orange Prize, paranormal, paranormal romances, pinterest, poetry, poetry collections, publisher, publishing, rejection letters, rejections, Robert Ford, romance, science fiction, second person viewpoint, self-publishing, short stories, short story group, Smashwords, story author, story authors, story writer, submission, submissions, Twitter, vampire, western, Wordpress, writer, writing, writing competitions, writing events, writing group, writing magazines, YA, youtube

5a.m. Flash 240812 – Submission info. (mixed genres)

24 Aug

Every now and then at 5a.m. (probably posted by my clone) I will be bringing you a newsflash, update on what I’m doing, invited guest piece, or whatever takes my fancy. Today is the ninth (and final) in a mini-series of submission information (previously children’s & YA / flash fiction / non-fiction / novels / poetry / sci-fi, fantasy, horror /scripts / short stories). To-date I’ve not listed any songwriting and only have two so have listed them here with the mixed formats…

Songwriting

http://www.newpages.com/classifieds/calls lists a variety of opportunities in varying genres.
Red Hot Velvet welcome features on new bands, interviews and articles.

Mixed

Arabesques Editions is an Algerian-based magazine publisher but takes a variety of English language submissions.
Baen Books is after non-fiction and fiction.
Carina Press take a variety of books in a variety of genres.
Cerise Press welcome photography, art, fiction and poetry.
Character i welcomes short stories, poetry and art in first person point of view (hence the ‘i’ ).
damselfly press seeks fiction, non-fiction and poetry.
Female First online magazine is seeking shorts & poetry from female & male authors.
Fiction Magazine & Journal is calling for contributions: will publish work from leading writers, nationally and internationally, both established authors and first time writers.
fourthirtythree is an audio magazine where authors read their own stories & you can just listen.
The Incongruous Quarterly ”publishes the unpublishable” and is currently seeking submissions of fiction and poetry for the Companion Animals issue (deadline 17 September).
Literary Submission Helper does what it says on the tin: “we currently have 500 fiction and non-fiction submission opportunities, across all genres, 50 of which have been made available for free.”. You get a sample for free but have to pay to see all 500+ across the genre range.
Mighty Creatives: job opportunities based in the Midlands area, UK.
A brilliant resource is My Perfect Pitch.com which has a page of publishers currently accepting book submissions.
New Pages list of literary magazines and their Classifieds/calls page lists a variety of opportunities in varying genres.
Open Pen is London’s first ‘open literature’ magazine, completely comprised of reader-submitted creative writing.
Open to Interpretation seeks themed poetry, fiction or non-fiction.
Planet Magazine welcomes short stories, poems and proposals for articles and reviews.
Rusty Nail is a new magazine taking submissions of prose (<3,000 words), poetry, book reviews and artwork.
Scintilla Press welcomes fiction, non-fiction, poetry and book reviews.
Sentinel Literary Quarterly seeks poetry, short stories, essays, plays, reviews and interviews.
Shroud Magazine’s reading period is 1st May to 31st July.
Slice Magazine welcome short fiction, non-fiction and poetry.
Online poetry and short story magazine Sparkbright is for international writers and welcome submissions.
Still Crazy has opportunities for writers aged 50+.
The Subterranean Literary Journal welcomes prose (short stories, essays, reviews), poetry, art and illustrations… and “everything else, we love to be surprised and we’ll consider publishing almost anything”.
Summersdale seek quotes, quips and witticisms.
Vintage Script seeks historical articles and short stories.
Weave Magazine seeks poetry, fiction, non-fiction.
What The Dickens magazine is “always looking for submissions of not only fiction and poetry but also non-fiction and articles. I even accept artwork, photo’s, book reviews, film reviews and so on. I do set a theme for each issue though can be flexible around the non-fiction side of things. There are also competitions and give-aways which are all free to enter”.
Womagwriter’s blog http://womagwriter.blogspot.com is one of the best places I know for women’s magazine guidelines.
http://writersguidelines.blogspot.com does what it says on the tin; is packed with submission info.
WritersReadersDirect welcomes fiction and non-fiction in a variety of formats.
www.writingeastmidlands.co.uk/services/opportunities is a great list of opportunities.
Xenith is open to “most forms and genres of writing: poetry (5 max per submission), fiction (max 8000 words), flash fiction (5-500 words), plays, creative nonfiction, graphic novels, comics and comic strips, unsent letters, experimental, sci-fi, literary mainstream, whatever”. Essays, articles and columns also welcome. Submit by email (no attachments) to patrick.nathan@gmail.com.
Other mixed opportunities include The Beat, Bust, Cezanne’s Carrot, The Corner Club Press, Dead Drunk Dublin, The Literary Bohemian, The Long & The Short of It, New Orleans Review, New Welsh Review, Novel Magazine, The Ofi Press, Pentimento Magazine, Persimmon Tree, The Pygmy Giant, The Shine Journal, Splinter Generation, Step Away, The Waiting Room, Wet Ink, WritingRaw.

If you do have any more information that could go on this page or find any broken links, old information etc., please email me.

And I’ve added a new sub-page (opportunities on this blog) which details the opportunities on my blog, you just need the questionnaire for your genre.

***

You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything… and follow me on Twitter where each new posting is automatically announced. You can also read / download my eBooks and free eShorts at Smashwords, Sony Reader Store, Barnes & Noble, iTunes Bookstore, Kobo and Amazon, with more to follow. I have a new forum, friend me on Facebook, like me on Facebook, connect with me on LinkedIn, find me on Tumblr, complete my website’s Contact me page or plain and simple, email me. I also now have a new blog creation service especially for, but not limited to, writers.

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Posted by morgenbailey on August 24, 2012 in articles, autobiography, childrens, ebooks, non-fiction, novels, poetry, review, scriptwriting, short stories, songwriting, submissions, viewpoints, writing

Tags: articles, fiction, first person viewpoint, flash fiction, non-fiction, novels, opportunities, poetry, scriptwriting, short stories, songwriting, submission information, submissions, writing

5a.m. Flash 230812 – Submission info. (short stories)

23 Aug

Every now and then at 5a.m. (probably posted by my clone) I will be bringing you a newsflash, update on what I’m doing, invited guest piece, or whatever takes my fancy. Today is the eighth in a mini-series of submission information (previously children’s & YA / flash fiction / non-fiction / novels / poetry / sci-fi, fantasy, horror / scripts)…

Short stories (see above for flash fiction)

www.alfiedog.com launched in May offering short story downloads in multiple formats and already carry over 500 stories from more than 130 authors around the world. “We are always open to submissions. All work is read and edited before being accepted and we don’t accept everything which is submitted, although we do try to suggest areas for improvement where this is possible.” Sounds good to me.
Bound Off usually welcomes submissions for their short story podcast but they’re currently closed until 1st September 2012.
Burrst.com is a great site for “short pieces of fiction – bursts of 1,250 words or less, both written and spoken” and welcomes new submissions.
CAKE.shortandsweet welcomes flash fiction and short stories for their magazine. They say “CAKE.shortandsweet is a brand new short story project to help unpublished writers get their work seen by the public. We take submissions of excellent stories from anyone and everyone who’s never published their writing. Every month we publish a few of the very best and distribute them to cafés and an independent library in Manchester. We strive to give detailed feedback on any stories that we don’t use, because we want to help writers grow and improve their work. The Portico Library has strong ties to the Manchester Literature Festival and also runs an annual young writers’ prize, so there are excellent opportunities for new writers getting involved with CAKE.shortandsweet.”. NB. You don’t have to live in Manchester, or even the UK, to submit. Also see their Facebook home page, Facebook events page and they’re also on Twitter.
Carve Magazine publishes short fiction quarterly.
Welsh writing group Clebran welcomes short pieces (in Welsh and / or English). No payment but it gets your name out there and you can read all their publications for free online.
Comma Press accepts one (two maximum) short stories for their bi-annual new writer showcase.
Dahlia Publishing, founded in 2010 and based in Leicester, aims to push the boundaries on creativity and diversity and engage BME readers. They’re keen to work with regional writers and talented young people to open the door to a career in publishing. If you’re writing a book or are a writer based in the region. Their submission guideline page says their looking for ‘Chick lit, Crime, Historical, Romantic, Multicultural, Young Adult and Children’s’ but not ‘Sci-Fi, Weird, Erotica, Horror, Gothic’. They ‘happy to accept poetry and short stories, when presented as a coherent collection’ and are ‘keen to publish first time authors’.
Daily Science Fiction welcomes original science fiction and fantasy which is posted / emailed every weekday with shorter pieces Monday to Thursday then a longer piece on Fridays.
Online literary magazine Dog Weed seek poetry, fiction, and non-fiction.
echook welcome short stories from 750 to 2,500 words,
Empirical magazine welcomes submissions of poems, short stories and novel extracts.
Enchanted Conversation – see Fairy Tale Magazine.
Fairy Tale Magazine (formerly Enchanted Conversation) accepts stories up to 3,000 words and poetry. No theme but submissions should “evoke the feel of classic pre-1900 fairy tales”.
Farragos Wainscot is a quarterly journal of the literary weird in fiction, poetry, and experimental wordforms. Unfortunately they no longer take submissions but this may change in the future so do keep looking from time to time (plus it’s an interesting site).
Female First online magazine is seeking shorts & poetry from female & male authors.
Fiction365 accepts stories up to 4,000 words. Payment: “small amount”.
Short Story Submission Guidelines for ‘The Fiction Desk’ can be found here.
US-based Flashquake is a quarterly ezine publishing flash fiction/non-fiction (max 1000 words) and short poetry (max. 35 lines). Email submit@flashquake.org. Submissions not accepted in February, May, August or November. Payment is US$5 to US$25.
Glimmer Train welcomes unpublished stories.
Grass Roots Magazine welcomes ‘New Love Stories’.
Interlitq “accepts submissions for short fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. We do not accept any unsolicited material that has been previously published. If the material appears anywhere online, including your personal blog, we cannot consider it for publication.”
Iota Magazine welcomes submissions of short fiction in any genre, including life writing and memoir for consideration for the second fiction issue. Please send short stories of between 2,000 and 6,000 words. All stories must be the original work of the author. We accept translations as long as they are identified as such. All work must be typed and double spaced. Please also send proposals (150 words) for features or essays. We also accept new fiction, biography and life writing for review, and copies should be sent to the Fiction Reviews Editor at the address below. Please email submissions and proposals to fiction@iotamagazine.co.uk.
Australian literary magazine Island publishes “quality short stories (Aus$100), poetry (Aus$60), extracts from forthcoming novels, and articles and essays on topics of social, environmental and cultural significance (Aus$100 per 1,000 words).”
The Leading Edge is a semi-professional speculative fiction magazine produced at Brigham Young University, (Utah, USA). You can submit <10,000 words, payment is 1 cent per word ($10 min) + 2 mag copies. They also accept sci-fi/fantasy poetry. Payment is $10 for the first 4 pages, $1.50 for each subsequent page of published poetry. Two contributor copies are also provided. They also buy illustrations.
Literary Submission Helper.com has various opportunities including their short story page. You get a sample for free but have to pay to see all 500+ across the genre range.
Litro accepts short stories, flash fiction and creative non-fiction (max 3,000 words).
Interactive fiction is now available on mobile phones. Mobile books or ‘moooks’ are designed for instant viewing across a wide range of mobile networks worldwide, with first service availability in the UK. This new interactive storytelling concept is the brainchild of mifiction; a Surrey based company with a mission to introduce interactive books, ‘moooks’ across the mobile platform. The interactive nature means that the reader has the power to decide what happens in the story. At a number of points within each chapter, the reader has a choice of options to determine the outcome, giving an immense number of possible story variations. With more interactive fiction books in the pipeline, mifiction is keen to receive submissions from budding new authors, who can obtain further information by emailing contact@mifiction.co.uk. To find out more about mifiction go to www.mifiction.co.uk, where an example chapter of “The Three Tears” is available for anyone to try for free; simply enter your email address, create a password and explore interactive fiction for yourself.
The Moth is a quarterly arts & literature magazine features poetry, short fiction and pictures by established and up-and-coming writers and artists from Ireland and abroad.
A brilliant resource is My Perfect Pitch.com which has a page of publishers currently accepting book submissions.
The Mystery Place welcomes short stories from 2,500-8,000 words (occasionally <12K).
Poland-based New Europe Writers welcomes unpublished fiction and poetry based on set themes. Max 4000 words.
http://www.newpages.com/classifieds/calls lists a variety of opportunities in varying genres.
Canadian publication The New Quarterly which takes submissions of short stories, poems, essays etc. See website or write to The New Quarterly, c/o St Jerome’s University, 290 Westmount Road North, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G3.
Founded in 1988, New Welsh Review is Wales’ leading literary quarterly and welcomes poetry and fiction submissions. They pay £28 per poem (6 max per 6-month period) or c £80 per short story (one per 6-month period). Post to Kathryn Gray, Editor, New Welsh Review, PO Box 170, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion SY23 1WZ or email submissions@newwelshreview.com. Feature proposals to editor@newwelshreview.com. Allow up to 3 months for a reply.
One Story is a non-profit seeking 3,000-8,000 word fiction (submissions 1 Sept-31 May only).
UK-based Paragram is looking for poetry and flash fiction (max 500 words) for their anthologies. See the website for latest theme.
Paraxis is a new online publisher of short stories. “We relish fiction with elements of the strange, uncanny or fantastic. We will be featuring new stories, reprints, artwork and essays.”
US-based online magazine Pedestal welcomes poetry of any length or form (max 6 submitted at one time) – payment US$40 per poem – and fiction max 4,200 words (one story per submission) or flash fiction (1,000 words max) – payment for fiction is US8c per word. Subscriptions to the magazine are free (currently c. 16,000 site visits per month). Genres covered include science fiction, horror, mystery and romance especially if character driven. Response c. 4-8 weeks. Pedestal publishes 4-5 times a year and includes c. 4 stories, 15 poems, reviews and interviews.
Rusty Nail is a new magazine taking submissions of prose (<3,000 words), poetry, book reviews and artwork.
189 year old American bi-monthly magazine Saturday Evening Post welcome anecdotes/photos, non-fiction (on home, pet finance, 45+, how-to topics) and fiction (preferably light humour), ideally 1,000 to 2,000 words. Payment from $25 to £400+. Target audience is mainstream middle-aged American. Simultaneous submissions accepted. Response time is just 3-6 weeks.
Norfolk-based (UK) annual literary magazine The Savage Kick seeks submissions that will “make readers sit up and listen”. Short stories / novel excerpts (<6000 words) or articles / interviews (<3000 words). Response times are quick (aim <2 weeks!) but payment rates low £20 stories / £15 articles/interviews. They recommend you read the magazine before submitting.
Short Stories For Women takes, as the name would suggest, short women’s fiction (500-4,000 words).
Sollitary Magazine takes poetry, non-fiction, and fiction. Although Mexican, you don’t have to be.
California-based Three Penny Review welcomes fiction (max 4000 words) and poetry (max 100 lines). Payment US$400 per story / article, US$200 per poem plus year’s free subscription.
Canadian Tin House is looking for fiction (one story per submission), poetry (five poems max) and ‘economical, cultural and environmental’ non-fiction. Simultaneous submissions accepted.
Untied Shoelaces Of The Mind is an online magazine that acquires fiction in many genres and pays USc3 per word (up to US$30). Submissions via the website’s form only, not by email or post.
What The Dickens magazine is actively looking for fiction, poetry, non-fiction and articles.
Womagwriter’s blog http://womagwriter.blogspot.com is one of the best places I know for women’s magazine short story (and others) guidelines.
The Yellow Room welcomes submissions of short stories by UK women writers.
Other short story opportunities include The Fiction Circus, Stand Magazine.

If you do have any more information that could go on this page or find any broken links, old information etc., please email me.

And I’ve added a new sub-page (opportunities on this blog) which details the opportunities on my blog, you just need the questionnaire for your genre.

***

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Posted by morgenbailey on August 23, 2012 in ebooks, short stories, submissions, writing

Tags: flash fiction, opportunities, short stories, submission information, submissions, writing

5a.m. Flash 220812 – Submission info. (scripts)

22 Aug

Every now and then at 5a.m. (probably posted by my clone) I will be bringing you a newsflash, update on what I’m doing, invited guest piece, or whatever takes my fancy. Today is the seventh in a mini-series of submission information (previously children’s & YA / flash fiction / non-fiction / novels / poetry / sci-fi, fantasy, horror) on the topic of scripts, not many so do let me know if you know of any more…

Scripts

A STAGE KINDLY Musical Theatre Initiative launches Literary Department with call for submissions – free opportunity for writers and composers. Thanks go to The New Writer magazine for that info.
Circalit “enables novelists, screenwriters and playwrights to showcase their writing to film producers, book publishers and literary agents”.
SKYLINES at Theatre Centre – A new development programme for playwrights wanting to write for young audiences. Thanks again to The New Writer magazine for that info.
Literary Submission Helper.com has various opportunities including their playwriting page. You get a sample for free but have to pay to see all 500+ across the genre range.
http://www.newpages.com/classifieds/calls lists a variety of opportunities in varying genres.
WAC Theatre accepts unsolicited theatre script submissions.

And I’ve added a new sub-page (opportunities on this blog) which details the opportunities on my blog, you just need the questionnaire for your genre.

***

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Posted by morgenbailey on August 22, 2012 in scriptwriting, submissions, writing

Tags: opportunities, scriptwriting, submission information, submissions, writing

5a.m. Flash 210812 – Submission info. (sci-fi, fantasy, horror)

21 Aug

Every now and then at 5a.m. (probably posted by my clone) I will be bringing you a newsflash, update on what I’m doing, invited guest piece, or whatever takes my fancy. Today is the sixth in a mini-series of submission information (previously children’s & YA / flash fiction / non-fiction / novels / poetry)…

Sci-fi / fantasy / horror specific

Clarksworld Magazine, a monthly online sci-fi / fantasy / horror mag. Each issue (currently no. 57) contains work from established authors and at least two pieces of original fiction, and annually printed in an anthology entitled ‘Realms’. Word count is 1,000-4,000 max. Payment is $0.10 per word. Response time c. 50 days. E-mail enquiries / submissions to clarkesfiction@gmail.com either within the body of the e-mail or as an .rtf file attachment. Include cover letter with contact details, publishing history and relevant personal info.
Crossed Genre take science-fiction and fantasy.
Daily Science Fiction welcomes original science fiction and fantasy which is posted / emailed every weekday with shorter pieces Monday to Thursday then a longer piece on Fridays.
Escape Pod is “the premier science fiction podcast magazine. Every week we bring you short stories from some of today’s best science fiction stories, in convenient audio format for your computer or MP3 player. We pay our authors, but we will always be 100% free.” (they rely on donations and sponsorship). Their submission guidelines are on http://escapepod.org/guidelines.
Kasma Magazine invites original and intelligent science fiction of 500-4,000 words.
The Leading Edge is a semi-professional speculative fiction magazine produced at Brigham Young University, (Utah, USA). You can submit <10,000 words, payment is 1 cent per word ($10 min) + 2 mag copies. They also accept sci-fi/fantasy poetry. Payment is $10 for the first 4 pages, $1.50 for each subsequent page of published poetry. Two contributor copies are also provided. They also buy illustrations.
A brilliant resource is My Perfect Pitch.com which has a page of publishers currently accepting book submissions.
http://www.newpages.com/classifieds/calls lists a variety of opportunities in varying genres.
Salt Publishing imprint Proxima is dedicated to science-fiction, fantasy and horror.
Rune Wright welcomes SF, fantasy, horror and paranormal.
Salon Futura is an online and eBook magazine dedicated to speculative fiction.
Static Movement specialises in dark / horror anthologies and welcome submissions.
Theurgy Magazine is a journal specialising in speculative fiction, fantasy, and science fiction.
The Tiny Globule seeks short stories for a new series of sci-fi, horror and fantasy anthologies. 3,000 words max.
Other sci-fi, fantasy and / or horror opportunities include Darwin’s Evolution, Dragon Dreamz, SFX, Trembles Magazine.

If you do have any more information that could go on this page or find any broken links, old information etc., please email me.

And I’ve added a new sub-page (opportunities on this blog) which details the opportunities on my blog, you just need the questionnaire for your genre.

***

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Posted by morgenbailey on August 21, 2012 in ebooks, submissions, writing

Tags: fantasy, horror, opportunities, sci-fi, science fiction, submission information, submissions, writing

5a.m. Flash 200812 – Submission info. (poetry)

20 Aug

Every now and then at 5a.m. (probably posted by my clone) I will be bringing you a newsflash, update on what I’m doing, invited guest piece, or whatever takes my fancy. Today is the fifth in a mini-series of submission information (previously children’s & YA / flash fiction / non-fiction / novels)…

Poetry

Canadian print magazine The Antigonish Review welcome poetry in any form (preferably 3-4, 8 max – payment US$30 per page), articles (1000-4000 words – payment US$100 flat rate) by post (Bonnie MsIsaac, Office Manager, PO Box 5000, St Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada B2G2W5. Fiction (500-3000 words – payment US$100 flat rate) can be emailed (TAR@stfx.ca).
Best Poems is an annual print Anthology – free to submit.
Bloodaxe Books welcome new authors with full-length collections.
Dahlia Publishing, founded in 2010 and based in Leicester, aims to push the boundaries on creativity and diversity and engage BME readers. They’re keen to work with regional writers and talented young people to open the door to a career in publishing. If you’re writing a book or are a writer based in the region. Their submission guideline page says their looking for ‘Chick lit, Crime, Historical, Romantic, Multicultural, Young Adult and Children’s’ but not ‘Sci-Fi, Weird, Erotica, Horror, Gothic’. They ‘happy to accept poetry and short stories, when presented as a coherent collection’ and are ‘keen to publish first time authors’.
Online literary magazine Dog Weed seek poetry, fiction, and non-fiction.
Empirical magazine welcomes submissions of poems, short stories and novel extracts.
French-based Equinox seeks contemporary poetry.
Fairy Tale Magazine (formerly Enchanted Conversation) accepts stories up to 3,000 words and poetry. No theme but submissions should “evoke the feel of classic pre-1900 fairy tales”.
Farragos Wainscot is a quarterly journal of the literary weird in fiction, poetry, and experimental wordforms. Unfortunately they no longer take submissions but this may change in the future so do keep looking from time to time (plus it’s an interesting site).
Female First online magazine is seeking shorts & poetry from female & male authors.
Firebird Poetry is where poets can upload their poetry for free.
Interlitq “accepts submissions for short fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. We do not accept any unsolicited material that has been previously published. If the material appears anywhere online, including your personal blog, we cannot consider it for publication.”
Australian literary magazine Island publishes “quality short stories (Aus$100), poetry (Aus$60), extracts from forthcoming novels, and articles and essays on topics of social, environmental and cultural significance (Aus$100 per 1,000 words).”
Kumquat Poetry is a new webzine “dedicated to publishing the out-there, the experimental and the best frontier-fracturing new poetry around”.
The Leading Edge is a semi-professional speculative fiction magazine produced at Brigham Young University, (Utah, USA). You can submit <10,000 words, payment is 1 cent per word ($10 min) + 2 mag copies. They also accept sci-fi/fantasy poetry. Payment is $10 for the first 4 pages, $1.50 for each subsequent page of published poetry. Two contributor copies are also provided. They also buy illustrations.
Literary Submission Helper.com has various opportunities including their playwriting page. You get a sample for free but you have to pay to see all 500+ across the genre range.
The Moth is a quarterly arts & literature magazine features poetry, short fiction and pictures by established and up-and-coming writers and artists from Ireland and abroad.
A brilliant resource is My Perfect Pitch.com which has a page of publishers currently accepting book submissions.
Poland-based New Europe Writers welcomes unpublished fiction and poetry based on set themes. Max 4000 words.
http://www.newpages.com/classifieds/calls lists a variety of opportunities in varying genres.
Canadian publication The New Quarterly which takes submissions of short stories, poems, essays etc. See website or write to The New Quarterly, c/o St Jerome’s University, 290 Westmount Road North, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G3.
Founded in 1988, New Welsh Review is Wales’ leading literary quarterly and welcomes poetry and fiction submissions. They pay £28 per poem (6 max per 6-month period) or c £80 per short story (one per 6m). Post to Kathryn Gray, Editor, New Welsh Review, PO Box 170, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion SY23 1WZ or email submissions@newwelshreview.com. Feature proposals to editor@newwelshreview.com. Allow up to 3 months for a reply.
Quarterly US print / electronic magazine Ocean welcomes non-fiction stories, articles, essays, poems about the ocean (scientific, creative, environmental, recreational and spiritual).
UK-based Paragram is looking for poetry and flash fiction (max 500 words) for their anthologies. See the website for latest theme.
US-based online magazine Pedestal welcomes poetry of any length or form (max 6 submitted at one time) – payment US$40 per poem – and fiction max 4,200 words (one story per submission) or flash fiction (1,000 words max) – payment for fiction is US8c per word. Subscriptions to the magazine are free (currently c. 16,000 site visits per month). Genres covered include science fiction, horror, mystery and romance especially if character driven. Response c. 4-8 weeks. Pedestal publishes 4-5 times a year and includes c. 4 stories, 15 poems, reviews and interviews.
Poet and Geek seeks experimental and thoughtful poetry.
Poetry is the Poetry Foundation’s magazine and accepts submissions of up to 4 poems.
Poetry24 seeks news-related and topical poetry.
Poetry Ireland Review welcome unsolicited submissions worldwide.
Irish broadcaster RTÉ invites contributions of original radio essays, reportage, appreciations, memory pieces, travel writing, personal accounts of events/happenings, and occasionally poetry for ‘Sunday Miscellany’, a radio and web programme.
Rusty Nail is a new magazine taking submissions of prose (<3,000 words), poetry, book reviews and artwork.
Skylight Poets is a new magazine (August 2012) currently welcoming submissions.
Sollitary Magazine takes poetry, non-fiction, and fiction. Although Mexican, you don’t have to be.
California-based Three Penny Review welcomes fiction (max 4000 words) and poetry (max 100 lines). Payment US$400 per story / article, US$200 per poem plus year’s free subscription.
Canadian Tin House is looking for fiction (one story per submission), poetry (five poems max) and ‘economical, cultural and environmental’ non-fiction. Simultaneous submissions accepted.
Well Versed is a weekly poetry column of the Morning Star, published every Thursday, in print and online.
What The Dickens magazine is actively looking for fiction, poetry, non-fiction and articles.
Other poetry opportunities include Acumen Literary Journal, Carcanet, FlippedEye, Flambard Press, Penned in the Margins, South Poetry Magazine.

If you do have any more information that could go on this page or find any broken links, old information etc., please email me.

And I’ve added a new sub-page (opportunities on this blog) which details the opportunities on my blog, you just need the questionnaire for your genre.

***

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Posted by morgenbailey on August 20, 2012 in ebooks, poetry, submissions, writing

Tags: poetry, submission opportunities, submissions, writing

5a.m. Flash 190812 – Submission info. (novels)

19 Aug

Every now and then at 5a.m. (probably posted by my clone) I will be bringing you a newsflash, update on what I’m doing, invited guest piece, or whatever takes my fancy. Today (which is my birthday, by the way ) is the fourth in a mini-series of submission information (previously children’s & YA / flash fiction / non-fiction)…

Novels

Avon Impulse invites submissions of various length in all sub-genres of romance.
Circalit “enables novelists, screenwriters and playwrights to showcase their writing to film producers, book publishers and literary agents”.
Empirical magazine welcomes submissions of poems, short stories and novel extracts.
New imprint FireStep Publishing welcomes manuscripts and ideas from new authors in the military genre.
Independent publisher Indigo Dreams are always on the lookout for quality work and are particularly seeking novels and non-fiction with a USP (unique selling point).
“Are you an aspiring author looking to upload your work, start or continue to build your readership, sell your books online, join a community of like-minded people, connect with readers looking for new stories, receive feedback to help you prove and improve your writing? iWriteReadRate is here to help you in your quest, to support you on your journey, and to give you a place to call your own. We’re writers just like you, so everything we’re doing is with your best interests at heart. We’re here to help you navigate the waters of eBook publishing, and we’re based in the East Midlands as well!” See www.iWriteReadRate.com for info.
Linen Press – exceptionally fine writing by women, for women.
A brilliant resource is My Perfect Pitch.com which has a page of publishers currently accepting book submissions.
Rickshaw Publishing is “on the hunt for quality submissions to entertain and enthral our in-house team. So all you unpublished wordsmiths out there: fire up you Interweb machines, read our submissions policy and get sending. We’re looking for authors that show bags of potential – without necessarily having a finished book – but please think how to give your projects the best chance of getting picked up”. Their submissions page is here.
Norfolk-based (UK) annual literary magazine The Savage Kick seeks submissions that will “make readers sit up and listen”. Short stories / novel excerpts (<6000 words) or articles / interviews (<3000 words). Response times are quick (aim <2 weeks!) but payment rates low £20 stories / £15 articles/interviews. They recommend you read the magazine before submitting.
Wink Publishing only publishes eBooks from unpublished writers and “wants to help new writers find their readers”.
Other novel opportunities include Comet, Wild Wolf Publishing.

If you do have any more information that could go on this page or find any broken links, old information etc., please email me.

And I’ve added a new sub-page (opportunities on this blog) which details the opportunities on my blog, you just need the questionnaire for your genre.

***

6 Comments

Posted by morgenbailey on August 19, 2012 in ebooks, novels, submissions, writing

Tags: novels, opportunities, submission information, submissions, writing

5a.m. Flash 180812 – Submission info. (non-fiction)

18 Aug

Every now and then at 5a.m. (probably posted by my clone) I will be bringing you a newsflash, update on what I’m doing, invited guest piece, or whatever takes my fancy. Today is the third in a mini-series of submission information (previously children’s & YA / flash fiction)…

Non-fiction

Canadian print magazine The Antigonish Review welcome poetry in any form (preferably 3-4, 8 max – payment US$30 per page), articles (1000-4000 words – payment US$100 flat rate) by post (Bonnie MsIsaac, Office Manager, PO Box 5000, St Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada B2G2W5. Fiction (500-3000 words – payment US$100 flat rate) can be emailed (TAR@stfx.ca).
Backhand Stories welcomes flash fiction/short stories, essays and reviews. They don’t pay but it’s always lovely to see your work in ‘print’ (online).
New visual arts magazine Canned is looking for writers to comment on theories, trends, projects artists and artworks within the discourse of contemporary practice. For more information you can also email them.
Classic Cars features are usually c.2,000 words (interview) and 2,5000 (single car feature).
Dangerous Little Books only publish non-fiction.
Delayed Gratification welcome non-fiction articles.
Online literary magazine Dog Weed seek poetry, fiction, and non-fiction.
Fifty Magazine welcomes articles aimed at those 50+.
US-based Flashquake is a quarterly ezine publishing flash fiction/non-fiction (max 1000 words) and short poetry (max. 35 lines). Email submit@flashquake.org. Submissions not accepted in February, May, August or November. Payment is US$5 to US$25.
Gardening articles are welcome at: Kitchen Garden, Gardens Illustrated, The English Garden, Gardener’s World, Garden Design Journal and Grow Fruit & Veg.
H2Open Magazine invites articles about open water swimming.
Happy Homes USA welcomes “virtually anything you’ve got to say about your own home maintenance and improvement experience”.
Should you be a gardener Home Farmer magazine is looking for submissions, especially those of a traditional nature. Contact: Home Farmer, The Good Life Press Ltd, PO Box 536, Preston, England PR2 9ZY (or e-mail editor@homefarmer.co.uk).
Independent publisher Indigo Dreams are always on the lookout for quality work and are particularly seeking novels and non-fiction with a USP (unique selling point).
Ink Byte welcomes new articles and ideas for articles. Drop Steve Beisner or Melinda Palacio a note at editors@inkbyte.com.
Interlitq “accepts submissions for short fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. We do not accept any unsolicited material that has been previously published. If the material appears anywhere online, including your personal blog, we cannot consider it for publication.”
Australian literary magazine Island publishes “quality short stories (Aus$100), poetry (Aus$60), extracts from forthcoming novels, and articles and essays on topics of social, environmental and cultural significance (Aus$100 per 1,000 words).”
Itchy City magazine welcomes pieces about various cities around the UK.
Litro accepts short stories, flash fiction and creative non-fiction (max 3,000 words).
Lonely Planet welcomes emailed travel articles.
MG Owners Club welcome reports, reviews and articles. Details from MG Owners Club, Octagon House, Swavesey, Cambs CB24 4QZ.
A brilliant resource is My Perfect Pitch.com which has a page of publishers currently accepting book submissions.
http://www.newpages.com/classifieds/calls lists a variety of opportunities in varying genres.
Canadian publication The New Quarterly which takes submissions of short stories, poems, essays etc. See website or write to The New Quarterly, c/o St Jerome’s University, 290 Westmount Road North, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G3.
Quarterly US print/electronic magazine Ocean welcomes non-fiction stories, articles, essays, poems about the ocean (scientific, creative, environmental, recreational and spiritual).
Photo Pro & Photo Professional Magazine welcome well-illustrated articles (sent an outline). Email editorial@bright-publishing.com.
Irish broadcaster RTÉ invites contributions of original radio essays, reportage, appreciations, memory pieces, travel writing, personal accounts of events/happenings, and occasionally poetry for ‘Sunday Miscellany’, a radio and web programme.
Sailing Today pays £125 each for the first three 2,200-word pieces. Yachting Monthly is another opportunity and you can email yachting-monthly@ipcmedia.com.
189 year old American bi-monthly magazine Saturday Evening Post welcome anecdotes/photos, non-fiction (on home, pet finance, 45+, how-to topics) and fiction (preferably light humour), ideally 1,000 to 2,000 words. Payment from $25 to £400+. Target audience is mainstream middle-aged American. Simultaneous submissions accepted. Response time is just 3-6 weeks.
Norfolk-based (UK) annual literary magazine The Savage Kick seeks submissions that will “make readers sit up and listen”. Short stories / novel excerpts (<6000 words) or articles / interviews (<3000 words). Response times are quick (aim <2 weeks!) but payment rates low £20 stories / £15 articles/interviews. They recommend you read the magazine before submitting.
Sollitary Magazine takes poetry, non-fiction, and fiction. Although Mexican, you don’t have to be.
California-based Three Penny Review welcomes fiction (max 4000 words) and poetry (max 100 lines). Payment US$400 per story / article, US$200 per poem plus year’s free subscription.
Canadian Tin House is looking for fiction (one story per submission), poetry (five poems max) and ‘economical, cultural and environmental’ non-fiction. Simultaneous submissions accepted.
What The Dickens magazine is actively looking for fiction, poetry, non-fiction and articles.
Other non-fiction opportunities include Kensington Review, Vintage, HerStoria, St Anthony Messenger Press, Weavings.

If you do have any more information that could go on this page or find any broken links, old information etc., please email me.

And I’ve added a new sub-page (opportunities on this blog) which details the opportunities on my blog, you just need the questionnaire for your genre.

***

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Posted by morgenbailey on August 18, 2012 in non-fiction, submissions, writing

Tags: non-fiction, opportunities, submissions, writing

5a.m. Flash 170812 – Submission info. (flash fiction)

17 Aug

Every now and then at 5a.m. (probably posted by my clone) I will be bringing you a newsflash, update on what I’m doing, invited guest piece, or whatever takes my fancy, and yesterday’s started a mini-series of submission information (yesterday’s was children’s & YA)… do let me know if you know of any more.

Flash Fiction (Short Stories will be listed in a few days’ time)

www.alfiedog.com launched in May offering short story downloads in multiple formats and already carry over 500 stories from more than 130 authors around the world. “We are always open to submissions. All work is read and edited before being accepted and we don’t accept everything which is submitted, although we do try to suggest areas for improvement where this is possible.” Sounds good to me.
Backhand Stories welcomes flash fiction/short stories, essays and reviews. They don’t pay but it’s always lovely to see your work in ‘print’ (online).
Burrst.com is a great site for “short pieces of fiction – bursts of 1,250 words or less, both written and spoken” and welcomes new submissions.
CAKE.shortandsweet welcomes flash fiction and short stories for their magazine. They say “CAKE.shortandsweet is a brand new short story project to help unpublished writers get their work seen by the public. We take submissions of excellent stories from anyone and everyone who’s never published their writing. Every month we publish a few of the very best and distribute them to cafés and an independent library in Manchester. We strive to give detailed feedback on any stories that we don’t use, because we want to help writers grow and improve their work. The Portico Library has strong ties to the Manchester Literature Festival and also runs an annual young writers’ prize, so there are excellent opportunities for new writers getting involved with CAKE.shortandsweet.”. NB. You don’t have to live in Manchester, or even the UK, to submit. Also see their Facebook home page, Facebook events page and they’re also on Twitter.
Welsh writing group Clebran welcomes short pieces including flash fiction (in Welsh and / or English). No payment but it gets your name out there and you can read all their publications for free online.
C,MMAS & C:l:NS is look for fiction and poems of 250 words or less. You can submit up to six of these per person.
Daily Science Fiction welcomes original science fiction and fantasy which is posted / emailed every weekday with shorter pieces Monday to Thursday then a longer piece on Fridays.
Enchanted Conversation – see Fairy Tale Magazine.
Fairy Tale Magazine (formerly Enchanted Conversation) accepts stories up to 3,000 words and poetry. No theme but submissions should “evoke the feel of classic pre-1900 fairy tales”.
Female First online magazine is seeking shorts & poetry from female & male authors.
Fiction365 accepts stories up to 4,000 words. Payment: “small amount”.
US-based Flashquake is a quarterly ezine publishing flash fiction/non-fiction (max 1000 words) and short poetry (max. 35 lines). Email submit@flashquake.org. Submissions not accepted in February, May, August or November. Payment is US$5 to US$25.
www.joannemerriam.com/seven-by-twenty is a great opportunity for anyone who enjoys writing flash fiction– the maximum is 140 characters… about 20-25 words!
Litro accepts short stories, flash fiction and creative non-fiction (max 3,000 words).
http://www.newpages.com/classifieds/calls lists a variety of opportunities in varying genres.
UK-based Paragram is looking for poetry and flash fiction (max 500 words) for their anthologies. See the website for latest theme.
Paragraph Planet publishes daily 75-word flash fiction.
US-based online magazine Pedestal welcomes poetry of any length or form (max 6 submitted at one time) – payment US$40 per poem – and fiction max 4,200 words (one story per submission) or flash fiction (1,000 words max) – payment for fiction is US8c per word. Subscriptions to the magazine are free (currently c. 16,000 site visits per month). Genres covered include science fiction, horror, mystery and romance especially if character driven. Response c. 4-8 weeks. Pedestal publishes 4-5 times a year and includes c. 4 stories, 15 poems, reviews and interviews.
Rusty Nail is a new magazine taking submissions of prose (<3,000 words), poetry, book reviews and artwork.
Short Stories For Women takes, as the name would suggest, short women’s fiction (500-4,000 words).

If you do have any more information that could go on this page or find any broken links, old information etc., please email me.

And I’ve added a new sub-page which details the opportunities on my blog, you just need the questionnaire for your genre.

***

2 Comments

Posted by morgenbailey on August 17, 2012 in short stories, submissions, writing

Tags: flash fiction, opportunities, short stories, submissions, useful information, writing

5a.m. Flash 160812 – Submission info. (children’s/YA)

16 Aug

Every now and then at 5a.m. (probably posted by my clone) I will be bringing you a newsflash, update on what I’m doing, invited guest piece, or whatever takes my fancy, and Sunday’s was on competitions so today is submissions for children’s & Y.A.… it doesn’t look like many but the My Perfect Pitch link leads you to more. Do let me know if you know of other sites that are looking for children’s & Y.A., or if you write it and would like to take part on the blog.

Children’s / YA

New independent publisher Mythmaker is looking for new writers to submit original children’s and young adult fiction.
Other opportunities for children’s authors include Undiscovered Voices.
A brilliant resource is My Perfect Pitch.com which has a wonderful page of publishers currently accepting book submissions.
http://www.newpages.com/classifieds/calls lists a variety of opportunities in varying genres.
The Writing Squad is a development programme for writers aged 16-20 living, working or studying in the north of England.

And I’ve added a new sub-page (opportunities on this blog) which details the opportunities on my blog, you just need the questionnaire for your genre.

***

2 Comments

Posted by morgenbailey on August 16, 2012 in childrens, submissions, writing

Tags: children's, submissions, useful information, writing, YA

Author interview no.458 with writer and publisher Robert B Marks

11 Aug

Welcome to the four hundred and fifty-eighth of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more. Today sees the first of a two-part interview with writer and publisher Robert B Marks (who will be returning in March to talk more about his writing). A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further.

Morgen: Hello, Robert. Can you please briefly explain the structure of your publishing house… perhaps who’s involved along the process of an acceptance to the book / story being published.

Robert B. Marks: Legacy Books Press is a micro press – I take care of the contract negotiations, editing, typesetting, and quality control, and I contract out sales and publicity to people who know more than I do.

Morgen: Publicity is something that a lot of authors struggle with (myself included). Do you write yourself? If so does this help with deciding which projects to take on?

RBM: I do – I also edit. I’ve been very lucky in a few ways. I’ve been able to work as an author with Pocket Books and Osborne / McGraw-Hill, learning a great deal about how they took care of editing and quality control, and then I was able to spend a few years editing for the Queen’s University Electrical and Computer Engineering department and Faculty of Law. So, when I started LBP in 2007, I had a good handle on my craft.

Morgen: The $64,000 question: out of all the submissions you receive, what makes a book / story stand out for all the right reasons?

RBM: When you can tell it’s a labour of love, put simply. Michael Kaminski’s The Secret History of Star Wars was like that.

When somebody’s book is a true labour of love, it shows. It becomes far more than the sum of its parts.

Otherwise, I like to see a new angle on something, or even better a book on some corner of history that almost nobody has ever covered.

I was absolutely thrilled when John-Allen Price wrote The War that Changed the World about this little-known war that lasted about two months and yet shaped the world we live in, and which just about nobody else has written books on in a very long time.

Morgen: I’ve often heard that there are only so many fiction plots (I think seven is the most often quoted number) so it’s interesting that you talk about duplication in non-fiction. Without naming names, what makes a book proposal / story stand out for all the wrong reasons?

RBM: When it’s very clear that the author knows absolutely nothing about my publishing company, and very clearly hasn’t read the submission guidelines. I state up-front that I’m looking for non-fiction history books. All of the books on the website are popular and academic non-fiction history books. Why somebody would send me a family saga or a historical romance novel is beyond me – it doesn’t stop people from sending me them, though.

I’ve also seen some submissions that are just dreadful – as in “the book is so completely unpublishable or the query is so inept that I’m wondering if this is a joke” dreadful. I think the strangest was from this fellow in the United States who pitched me a book about how Christianity in America was getting the message wrong, and offered to travel across the United States proselytizing to promote it. In the end, professionalism really does stand out – if you’re not professional in your initial query or manuscript, why would anybody expect you to be professional enough to work with in general?

Morgen: My submission guidelines are pretty simple… well, I basically will host anyone who writes (regardless of genre) but it does stand out when someone’s not read them and either sends me something completely different (for instance an interview they’ve done with someone else) or random text which doesn’t fit any format. I’d always recommend reading one of whichever option they plan to go for so they get a feel for it. What genres do you accept? What would you suggest an author do with a cross-genre piece of writing?

RBM: Right now it’s all non-fiction history books, with a focus on less-covered corners of history. I am looking into launching a fiction line once I have more infrastructure built – my own e-book The Traveller on the Road of Legends was basically an initial foray to test the proverbial waters. But the earliest that will be happening is 2014 (and, I must stress that I am NOT accepting fiction submissions at this time, nor will I be until 2014 at the earliest, so please do not send me any until I announce otherwise on the LBP website).

Morgen: I’m sure someone will try (please don’t, folks). How can an author submit to you?

RBM: Well, ideally I want a query letter first – preferably through email – with an outline of the project, the target market, and the first three chapters of a completed manuscript. If it’s an established author, an estimated completion date will serve as opposed to a completed manuscript.

Morgen: That sounds very ‘normal’. Can you suggest some ‘do’s and ‘don’t’s when submitting to you.

RBM: Do read the Legacy Books Press website and the submission guidelines and hints. Don’t think you can ignore them, or hand me a clear rough work in progress without any track record and have me accept it. Don’t give me a query letter riddled with spelling and grammar errors – if you can’t get those right in your query, why should I even look at your manuscript?

The biggest thing, though – and I’m fairly sure that this goes for a number of publishers across a number of subjects and genres – is that if your query is interesting enough for me to read your first three chapters, you ultimately have around 10 manuscript pages to impress me, tops. Even there, you have to grab me with your first paragraph, and then keep me interested for the first page, and then the next nine. I’m a history buff, and if you can’t grab me in your first few pages, how are you supposed to grab the reader who decides what books go onto the bookstore shelves, or a customer perusing those shelves?

And, for that matter, and yes, I am paraphrasing a scene from Adaptation to a degree, I publish history books – it is the one subject in which the whole of human activity is represented. Wars, betrayals, love, great romances, the rise and fall of civilizations, corruption and virtue in the corridors of power, they’re all there, often stranger than fiction can ever be. If you can’t find a way to make that interesting, you’re doing something wrong.

Morgen: That can be said really for any kind of writing, can’t it, especially if the authors themselves are bored by whatever they’re writing (as happens). Are there authors that you deal with on a regular basis and / or perhaps represent directly?

RBM: One of the things I am trying to do for the long term is build a regular roster of authors. I’ve had some success there. Kjeld Hald Galster’s second book – a really amazing study of modern coalition warfare in Afghanistan and the lessons of history – has just entered pre-release sales and publicity and is available for pre-order, and John-Allen Price is working on his second book for me, this one about the rise and fall of fascism in the United States in the 1930s, which should be coming out next year.

Morgen: This is a question that I ask authors but I think is just as relevant to you as a publisher: what was the first book / story you published?

RBM: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Agora: Ancient Greek and Roman Humour, by R. Drew Griffith and myself. It was a textbook for a course at Queen’s University, and it launched Legacy Books Press. The funny thing is that Drew and I had written the book with no such intentions – we were going to have it published in the traditional manner, with my agent representing us once we got to the contract negotiation stage. The manuscript ended up at this small publisher and promptly fell into contract negotiation hell – the offered contract started with the publisher adding his personal name to the copyright and went downhill from there. So, after months of getting nowhere in negotiations with this place, which shall remain nameless, I decided to start a publishing company of my own and just publish the thing myself.

The thing is that I’m an old-school author first and foremost. Part of my professional ethos is that you don’t self-publish (even putting up The Traveller on the Road of Legends five years in was something I had to spend a lot of time getting comfortable with in my head before I did it). I didn’t really feel like a real publisher until I’d published The Secret History of Star Wars, by Michael Kaminski.

Morgen: It clearly helps having a writing background and of course being a “history buff”. What do you feel about an author writing under a pseudonym? Do you think they make a difference to their profile? And would you recommend an author writing under different names for different genres?

RBM: It really depends. If you do write under a pseudonym, it has to be a credible one. “Thargon the Destroyer” may sound like a cool pseudonym for an internet post or story, but it lacks any credibility in print, or even professional online, media. That said, there are no shortage of cases where a pen name is a professional necessity – my mother, who wrote Harlequin Intrigue novels back in the 1980s, had to use a pseudonym because part of Harlequin’s basic contract was copyrighting the author’s name for exclusive use. And, there are no shortage of cases where an author becomes known for one genre of literature, and then has trouble being accepted in another. Ultimately, I guess it depends on the case. For my own authors, I prefer them to use their real names, as it is non-fiction, and that does help with credibility, I think.

Morgen: I’m sure you’re right because it’s all about getting the name known and unless you already have a following as one name or publish the book as ‘Joanna Trollope writing as Caroline Harvey’ (which to me defeats the object) then a secondary name I guess would be like starting from scratch. You mentioned earlier that you had an agent so perfect timing for another semi-priceless question: do you think an agent is vital to an author’s success? How would you suggest an author gets one?

RBM: When it comes to traditional publishing, absolutely. The most important thing an agent does is negotiate the contract, and the ability to do this properly is vital. The agent is basically a safety net to prevent a publisher from screwing over an author in the contract phase. If you ever find a publisher who is unwilling to negotiate with your agent, it’s time to run away very fast.

Morgen: Now for, in theory, a simple question: what’s your opinion of eBooks, do you publish them and do you read them?

RBM: I do publish them, I don’t read them (I prefer printed books), and I think they are a very good complement to the printed page. In my case, my first professional publication was an e-book for Pocket Books titled Diablo: Demonsbane back in 2000, right at the beginning of the very first e-book revolution, so I’ve seen e-books develop right from their beginnings.

The thing that really bothers me is technology pundits, who seem to not only believe that just because a technology is new is must therefore be better, and who also seem to take a Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome approach to e-books and printed books – you can almost hear them chanting: “Two formats enter! ONE FORMAT LEAVES!” And it’s all ridiculous. The way they write, there’s an actual break from reality. Despite all the market figures saying otherwise, I’ve read no shortage of people declaring that the printed book is dead, and anybody printing actual paper books is using an obsolete business model.

Here’s the thing – according to the latest figures from the Association of American Publishers, which recently expanded its sample size considerably, the book industry netted around $30 billion last year (which means that the gross was probably around $60 billion). E-books occupied around $2 billion of that net. So, in around a dozen years of development, it hasn’t broken the 10% market share mark yet. There are no signs of the sort of format takeover that occurred with the DVD format vs. VHS, where the former wiped out the latter in five years flat. There are, however, a lot of signs that e-books are a growing and healthy complementary market, related to but separate from printed books, and if I had to make an educated guess, I would say that they are most closely related to the mobile phone app market.

Morgen: I’ve only had a handful of interviewees say that they read eBooks only. I have so many books dotted (OK, much more than dotted) around my house that I don’t think I’ll ever get through them all… and I have a Kindle. Changing direction slightly, poetry and short stories are, in my opinion anyway, the two most hard done by genres… what do you see as the future for them? Do you think the eBook revolution will help given that eBooks seem to be getting shorter?

RBM: Absolutely, although I think that it is a bit of a fallacy to say that e-books are getting shorter. Back in 2000, when I wrote Demonsbane, I was specifically instructed by Pocket Books to keep it at between 20,000 to 30,000 words. So, the trend towards shortness was there right at the beginning.

The thing you have to keep in mind is how people consume written material. Different material is consumed in different ways. So, newspaper articles, for example, are consumed in a very active manner – readers like to discuss them, and so any newspaper that doesn’t have an online presence where readers can post comments is at a disadvantage. Longer fiction and non-fiction is consumed in a very passive manner – readers like to sit down and read passages for long periods of time, so what can deliver that in a simple, easy-to-use format is best (and let’s face it, you can’t get much simpler than a printed, bound book). When it comes to short fiction and poetry, e-readers are very good at delivering them in nice, bite-sized pieces. I’d say that it’s an ideal way to deliver single stories or poems.

Morgen: I have (with short stories anyway). I’m quite an impatient reader; I like to read the story in one go and seeing as I have very little spare time I go for short stories or a Quick Read at the longest (generally an hour’s-worth). Do you have to do a lot of editing to the stories you accept or is the writing usually more or less fully-formed?

RBM: I won’t accept a book for publication unless it’s in a publishable state to begin with. That said, I don’t think there’s a book out there that doesn’t need a couple of editing passes to make it truly shine. So, when I get a manuscript, I do at least two editing passes to make sure that everything works, and that the things that need expanding on get expanded on. And they all need it, even the ones that are publishable from the outset.

Ultimately, any given writer is one of the worst editors of their own work. The problem is this – the author knows what he or she was trying to say in the book, so s/he will project that onto it in the editing pass. You need that extra set of eyes just to make sure that the book says what the author thinks it says.

All that said, the key to successful editing is invisibility. The end reader should never be able to detect that an editor’s hand was involved in a book. If I’ve done my job right, my authors’ books shine, and the reader will never know what edits needed to be made – it will seem like the entire book popped out of the author’s head fully-formed. That is what good editing is. If you can detect the editorial pen, it’s a sign of bad editing.

Morgen: That’s true, and yes, we are far too near our writing – we knew what was meant when we wrote something, besides another opinion will not only find what needs to be chopped (I have two of my novels, both fairly edited to death already, with one of my first readers. I’d dropped them in to her and she started on them whilst I gave her husband an I.T. lesson and by the time we’d finished the pages had significant splashes of colour on them). Pat’s a poet and loves detail so it was really interesting to see she’d chopped so much out). Have you had any surprising feedback about any of your published works?

RBM: Not really. Surprising sales results, certainly. Sometimes you never know what is actually going to stick and do well. And, I love it when something does better than expected, like a public domain reprint of Jomini’s Art of War outselling a new book on ancient humour – it’s always a thrill.

Morgen: I tend not to keep an eye on my Amazon page as I don’t have much out at the moment but Smashwords email me every time I have a sale and that’s a thrill (especially as it doesn’t happen very often, I’m hoping that will change when I have my novels online). Is there a story, section or theme of a book that you’ve printed, or yet to print, that you’re particularly fond of? And why?

RBM: I like to joke that Legacy Books Press is my way of expanding my personal library in the single most expensive and time-consuming manner possible. I am, however, generally wanting to publish books that I would buy if I found them in a book store. So, I guess the books I’m really hoping to find are the ones I don’t yet know I really need to publish, if that makes any sense. My favourite books tend to be the ones where one of my authors uncovers and explores this new corner of history that I’ve never heard of, and that receives almost no coverage.

Aaron Miedema’s Bayonets and Blobsticks, I think, is a great example of this. He discovered an entire realm of World War I bayonet fighting that just about everybody else has ignored or discounted. You’ve got this massive, world-wide war that has received tons of coverage over the years, and he found something new. It was an honour to bring it to print.

Morgen: I volunteer in one of my local Red Cross shops and war books are some of the fastest to go out (especially when we have our Red Cross week and do a window display of them all). Non-fiction is more popular than fiction, I suppose because it’s easier for people to know they’re going to like it. What advice would you give aspiring writers?

RBM: Keep writing, and be professional.

Morgen: Are there any writing-related websites and / or books that you could recommend?

RBM: I keep coming back to one source in questions like this – On Writing, by Stephen King. I don’t necessarily agree with what he says about outlines, but when it comes to style, I think a writer could do worse than to use it as his or her bible.

Morgen: ‘On Writing’ has been the most recommended book in these interviews (and almost every time I say I have it but I haven’t read it yet… and um, I still haven’t). Given that more emphasis these days is put on the author to market their published works or indeed themselves as a ‘brand’, how involved are you generally with your authors post-publication?

RBM: I try to have as much involvement as possible with my authors, and to be honest, I wish I had more than I’ve been able to have. Legacy Books Press started out as a micro press on a shoestring budget, and it’s in the next twelve months that I’m hoping to bring about the last stages in turning it into a proper small press. So, a lot of effort has been made to expand the infrastructure and learn the business side of the trade, and I’ve been blessed to have patient, kind authors who are willing to take the journey with me.

That said, publicity can be hard. You’d think that getting book reviews would be easy, but I can’t count the number of review copies that I’ve sent off to journals and magazines only to see the copies disappear and the reviews either materialize years after the fact, or not at all. Last year, I finally had the resources to contract out to Smith Publicity, which now serves as the publicity arm of Legacy Books Press on new releases, and it was just a revelation to watch them work. They took an integrated approach, not just pushing review copies, but also marketing the author at the same time. I haven’t looked at publicity in the same way ever since.

Ultimately, I see the relationship between myself and my authors as a long-term one. I want them to come back to me with new projects, and I want to do right by them, no matter how long it takes. I do believe that an author should be an active participant in the marketing of their own work, but at the same time, the driving force should be the publisher. So, I’ve told all of my authors that while they can order new author’s copies at any time, if they want to use them for publicity purposes, to tell me what they want done and let me do it. They shouldn’t be bearing the costs for that.

Morgen: Wow. You sound like a “proper small press” to me. Apart from Smith Publicity and your website, is there any other way that you and your authors market yourselves?

RBM: It’s funny you should mention that, as I don’t think the Legacy Books Press website has ever been that active in the marketing of LBP’s books. The real marketing has been through book reviews and media coverage. One of the things I learned from Smith Publicity is that when you’re getting a book review or interview, one of the things you want the reviewer or writer to do is link directly to where the customer can buy the book, rather than to your website – the minute you require that extra click, you lose a lot of potential sales.

At this point, Legacy Books Press is in the process of implementing a new book release model as part of the transition to a small press. When you’re a micro press, you tend to release books in a certain way – you don’t have a lot of pre-release publicity, and you tend to focus your efforts mainly on getting people to buy your book online. So, you release the book first, and then focus on the publicity and marketing later. The problem is that this actually cuts you off from most of the book market – online sales in 2011 only accounted for 18.5% of the total, so you’re literally missing out on over 80% of potential sales.

Kjeld Galster’s new book, Crucial Coalition, is the test run for the new model. The book is coming out on November 15th. The book has now gone to the printer, and is available for pre-order at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble. For the next six weeks, The Cadence Group, who are handling the sales and marketing, will be pitching the book to bookstore chains and libraries. From the middle of September to the publication date, Smith Publicity and Legacy Books Press will be conducting a publicity campaign, and the reviews and publicity should be coming in from October to March.

The interesting thing is how so much of this works. The majority of the pre-release publicity, while certainly meant to be seen by consumers, is heavily aimed at the bookstore chains. Before any bookstore chain will even touch a book, they want to know that it’s new, that they can have it on their shelves for the publication date, and that it will be backed up by a publicity campaign. If they see all these things, the price point is good, and they like the book, they’ll give it shelf space.

This really is the most crucial marketing of all – if you do these things correctly and you can get the shelf space in the bookstores and the attention of the libraries, you can chase thousands of sales at a time. If you don’t, you’re left chasing dozens at a time.

Morgen: You’re lucky, in the UK our bookshops are dwindling. Here in Northampton (middle England) we have a population of over 200,000 and one bookshop (Waterstone’s). In which country are you based and do you find this a help or hindrance with letting people know about, or distributing, your publications?

RBM: I’m based in Canada, and I’m using print-on-demand printing from Lightning Source, which is owned by Ingram. So, when it comes to getting books to the people who order them, I’ve got worldwide distribution.

The funny thing is, as I mentioned above, so little of this matters when it comes to getting the attention of the people who count with these books. It’s almost all methodology. You need to have the four to six month lead time before the book is released to take care of it all. You need to get the sell sheets out to the bookstores and libraries. You need to get the cataloguing in progress (CiP) data to boost the library sales (and there are a number of libraries who will buy a book based entirely on the CiP information crossing their desk). You need to back up the sales effort with publicity. That’s what opens the door.

And once that door is open, it really seems like there’s a ripple effect. The bookstore sales help drive the online sales, as a lot of people browse in the bookstores, and then buy online. Those four months before the book’s release can determine whether you’re going to sell hundreds of copies, thousands of copies, or tens of thousands of copies. They really make or break the book. And nobody tells you that when you start up a micro press of your own.

Morgen: It certainly sounds more complicated than most people (I’m speaking for myself here) would imagine… and a lot more hard work, especially ‘before the event’. What do you do when you’re not working?

RBM: I do a number of things. I spend a lot of time with my fiancee. I also make honey wine, play the violin (badly), and practice German Longsword fighting.

Morgen: I’m not a wine fan but honey wine sounds nice… and German Longsword fighting intriguing. Is there anything else you’d like to mention?

RBM: Well, besides making a shameless plug for the amazing work by Michael Kaminski, Kjeld Hald Galster, Aaron Miedema, and John-Allen Price, I suppose I should also plug my new fantasy e-book, The Traveller on the Road of Legends. It’s a good read, as are they all.

Morgen: Thank you so much, Robert. I look forward to chatting with you again (and finding more about ‘The Traveller on the Roads of Legends’) in March.

***

Robert B. Marks is an author, writer, editor, publisher, and researcher living in Kingston, Ontario. He holds Bachelor of Arts degrees in Medieval Studies and English Literature from Queen’s University, and a Master of Arts degree in War Studies from the Royal Military College of Canada, and has conducted strategic communications research for the Department of National Defence. He is the author of Diablo: Demonsbane, the e-book that launched the entire Diablo fiction line; Garwulf’s Corner, one of the first computer games issues columns ever to appear on the internet; The EverQuest Companion: The Inside Lore of a Game World, a book exploring the background, history, and community of EverQuest; and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Agora: Ancient Greek and Roman Humour.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Agora: Amazon.com (paperback), Amazon.co.uk (paperback), Barnes & Noble, Powells.com (PDF version)

The Secret History of Star Wars: Amazon.com (paperback), Amazon.co.uk (paperback), Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com (Kindle version)

The War that Changed the World: Amazon.com (paperback), Amazon.co.uk (paperback), Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com (Kindle version)

The Face of the Foe: Amazon.com (paperback), Amazon.co.uk (paperback), Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com (Kindle version)

Bayonets and Blobsticks: Amazon.com (paperback), Amazon.co.uk (paperback), Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com (Kindle version)

Crucial Coalition (pre-order): Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

And the link to the Legacy Books Press website is www.legacybookspress.com.

Robert will be returning on 20th March 2013 to talk more about his writing.

***

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Posted by morgenbailey on August 11, 2012 in ebooks, interview, non-fiction, novels, review, submissions, writing

Tags: Aaron Miedema, agent, Amazon, Association of American Publishers, author, author spotlight, Barnes & Noble, biographers, biography, books, Caroline Harvey, characters, children’s, creative writing, crime, critique, ebooks, erotica, Facebook, fantasy, feedback, fiction, flash fiction, Goodreads, guest blog, guest blog post, guest post, Harlequin, historical, interview, Joanna Trollope, John-Allen Price, Kjeld Hald Galster, Kobo, legacy books, Legacy Books Press, LinkedIn, literature, McGraw-Hil, Michael Kaminski, Morgan Bailey, morgen bailey, Morgen with an e, multi-genre, murder mystery, non-fiction, Northampton, novelist, novels, Osborne, osborne mcgraw hill, paranormal, paranormal romances, pinterest, Pocket Books, poetry, poetry collections, publisher, Queen's University, Quick Reads, R. Drew Griffith, rejection letters, rejections, Robert B Marks, romance, science fiction, second person viewpoint, self-publishing, short stories, short story group, Smashwords, Star Wars, story author, story authors, story writer, submissions, Twitter, vampire, western, Wordpress, writer, writing, writing competitions, writing events, writing group, writing magazines, YA, youtube

5a.m. Flash 060812 – The New Writer

06 Aug

Every now and then at 5a.m. (probably posted by my clone) I will be bringing you a newsflash, update on what I’m doing, invited guest piece, or whatever takes my fancy, and today is about The New Writer magazine and their subscriber newsletter. They provide so much information in the newsletter that replicating their latest edition (which I had permission from the lovely Merric to do so) would have run to 12 Microsoft Word pages, hardly a ‘flash’, so I’ve done a bit of a synopsis here…

The newsletter starts off with news and views around the internet and from useful sites to events around the UK.
It’s then packed with competition information (some of which I hadn’t got already so have added, accredited of course, to my blog’s competitions page), submission opportunities and much more.

The New Writer is an incredibly active magazine beyond the page and their own opportunities include…

TNW’S editor Suzanne Ruthven is also Commissioning Editor for Compass Books at John Hunt Publishing. Compass Books for new writers focuses on practical and informative ‘how-to’ books. Written by experienced authors who also have extensive experience of tutoring at the most popular creative writing workshops, the books offer an insight into the more specialised niches of the publishing game. All submissions for Compass Books should come initially in the form of a biography, synopsis and full chapter breakdown to suzanneruthven333@gmail.com. Writers’ guidelines can be found at http://www.compass-books.net/submissions.html&i=11. Compass Books is also on Facebook.
The New Writer Magazine Online Writing Course: Plotting & Coursing The Novel. This is an ideal course for those who have just started a novel, and for those who have got ‘bogged down’ with an existing one. Discover how to kick-start the narrative with Suzanne Ruthven, editor of The New Writer who has tutored this course at Horncastle College (Lincs) and the University of Wales’ Writers’ Summer School. Participants should have completed at least the first 2-3 chapters, and be able to submit a full synopsis of the novel at the time of registration. The course includes: Lesson One Who’s going to read my novel?, Lesson Two: Plot and Theme, Lesson Three: Characterisation, Lesson Four: Pace and narrative style, Lesson Five: Bones and Padding, Lesson Six: Publishers and Agents. The fee is £20 per lesson paid in advance via PayPal. This ensures that the writer pays only for the tuition received and can withdraw from the course at any time. For more information send an email to suzanneruthven333@gmail.com marked Subject: online writing course.
The New Writer’s website (http://www.thenewwriter.com) explains, “It’s different and it’s aimed at all writers: the short story writer, the novelist, the poet, feature writer, anyone with a serious intent to develop their writing to meet the expectations of today’s editors. Launched in September 1996, in every issue you’ll find original short stories, a showcase for new poetry, articles, book reviews, market information, news and readers’ views.”
Apart from being incredibly supportive of writers on the page, and via email, The New Writer can also be found on Facebook (where you can ‘like’ them… and I’m sure they’d love it if you wrote something on their wall) and Twitter (where you can follow them and again I’m sure interaction would be appreciated).
Subscriptions (see http://www.thenewwriter.com/subscribe.htm) are just £27 for 18 months’ worth of magazines or £49 for three years. I’ve been a subscriber for at least double that and it feels like it has ‘grown’ as I have.
They welcome (from subscribers) articles, features, shorts (including a 300-word max micro fiction… regular readers of this blog will know how much I love my flash fiction and I keep meaning to submit!), news items, poetry and even a ‘Writer’s Rant’ – see their guidelines page for more details.
Speaking of shorts… The New Writer recommends Catherine Smith’s The Biting Point from Speechbubble Books.
TNW Index: You can now check on the contents of the first 100+ issues of The New Writer. The new improved index is now available as an attachment, simply email admin@thenewwriter.com and type Index in subject. The TNW index will give you details of every feature, fiction and poem that has appeared in the magazine since the first issue in 1996 in alphabetical order by author. In addition, TNW back issues are available (not many left of the first dozen or so – but there are some) at £1.50 each (to subscribers only) plus p+p (see the magazine). So if you see something you fancy it couldn’t be easier to read it. If you live in the UK and request the Index and do decide to order some back issues, please send a cheque payable to The New Writer if it comes to £5 or more, otherwise please send postage stamps to The New Writer, PO Box 60, Cranbrook, TN17 2ZR. If you live overseas please email (admin@thenewwriter.com) for a quote.
They also have a Writer’s Library with a great selection of books.
Almost finally, classified ads printed in The New Writer magazine are charged at the following rates for all ads up to 50 words: £10 as a one-off; £15 in two consecutive issues; £20 in three consecutive issues. Further placings, longer ads and small display ads by negotiation. Again an email will do the trick.
Oh and they even kindly mentioned me (which I hadn’t spotted until I started compiling this ‘flash’)… “Amazing list of 440+ interviews with writers, poets, agents, publishers etc by Morgen Bailey can be found here: http://morgenbailey.wordpress.com/blog-interviews” which just goes to show how supportive they are of writers… ‘new’ or otherwise.

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Posted by morgenbailey on August 6, 2012 in competitions, ebooks, Facebook, ideas, recommendations, submissions, Twitter, writing

Tags: Catherine Smith, competitions, recommendations, Speechbubble Books, submissions, The New Writer, The New Writer magazine, tips, writing

Daily interview no.441 with writer and publisher Sam Smith

25 Jul

Welcome to the four hundred and forty-first of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further. Today’s is with novelist, poet and publisher Sam Smith, and today we talk about his writing and publishing so I hope you’re sitting comfortably with a large mug or glass of something.

Morgen: Hello, Sam. Please tell us something about yourself, where you’re based, and how you came to be a writer.

Sam: I’m currently based in Maryport, Cumbria, and have just started to receive my state pension. I decided to become a writer though in 1968 when sitting above Breakwater beach in Brixham, Devon, having just read Henry Miller’s ‘Smile at the Foot of a Ladder’. It was his then one work of fiction and I decided that if my own worthless self could create something as wonderful as Henry’s my life would at last be worth something. I became a writer that day. Took a fair while longer to become an author.

Morgen: I’ve not read any Henry Miller but what an inspiration. What genre do you generally write and have you considered other genres?

Sam: First thing I wrote was a poem, but what I most wanted was to create whole worlds, so I got stuck into some novels. Wrote 3 the first year – one mainstream, one fantasy and one SF – all long-since destroyed. And I have since continued switching genres, from crime, SF and mainstream to historical fiction. Also poetry.

Morgen: What a shame you’ve destroyed them. Even if they were dreadful they could have shown you how far you came but then I guess you’ll know that already. What have you had published to-date? Do you write under a pseudonym?

Sam: I write under my own name, Sam Smith, though because of my output I am considering a pseudonym. I’ve had 27 full books published so far. That’s 18 novels, one war memoir, and 9 full poetry collections.

Morgen: Wow. Have you had any rejections? If so, how do you deal with them?

Sam: I had 23 years of rejections. I’ll rephrase that: I had 23 years of not getting published. There were of course many straightforward. “Thanks but no thanks.” But at least once in every one of those 23 years a publisher or an agent expressed an interest. But then the interested editor left that publisher, or the one-man-band publisher went bust or died, or the agent couldn’t find a publisher for that book… The last of those 23 years saw a new publisher getting me to rewrite a whole novel… and when that enterprise too went tits up I decided, desperate to see something of mine in print, to try getting some of my poetry published. I hadn’t up until then. Within months I had magazines accepting my work, some of which had been written 21 years before.

Having become a publisher and publisher’s editor myself I know that some submissions, however well-written, are simply not to my taste or are not what I’m looking for at that moment, and not wanting to enter into a correspondence by giving a specific reason for not taking that work, I return it with a pro forma rejection. I knew that when submitting work such had to be the case, so I looked for somewhere else to submit the work. Or I looked at the work again. Or both.

Morgen: How frustrating but you clearly love writing or you wouldn’t have stuck at it – they say “a successful writer is one who didn’t give up” and I think most of us are still working on that. Have you won or been shortlisted in any competitions?

Sam: I had a poem, ‘Important Information for Canoeists’, longlisted in the 1996 Forward Prize. Even got to read on Radio 3! My SF novel, We Need Madmen, won the 2004 Skrev prize for science fiction. My thriller, Sister Blister, was entered for the 1996 (I think it was) Booker prize. That year’s chair of the judges, Simon Jenkins, however refused to read it as it was the first eBook to be entered for the competition. Sister Blister is now also available in hardback. My SF novel, The End of Science Fiction, was shortlisted for a 2001 Eppie. And my poetry collection, ‘An Atheist’s Alphabetical Approach to Death’, was shortlisted for the 2009 Erbacce Competition.

Morgen: Congratulations (and I love your titles). Do you have an agent? Do you think they’re vital to an author’s success?

Sam: I don’t. And I’m not sure that one needs an agent nowadays in order to get published. If anything it’s harder to get a genuine literary agent to read an MS now than it is a publisher. But once published an agent would certainly be helpful in getting promotional bookings and in the negotiating of rights – foreign rights, performing rights, audio rights, film rights, etc. For instance I tried for over a year to get Michael Douglas to read Sister Blister. I thought it was the kind of novel that would really appeal to him. I even tried getting hold of him via Catherine Zeta Jones, via their agents, any name I came across remotely connected to Michael Douglas. Then a review of Sister Blister suggested that the principal character would be well played by the late Pete Postlethwaite. He didn’t get back to me either. An agent could well have opened doors for me then.

Morgen: What a shame. Michael is great but I loved Pete Postlethwaite… very down-to-earth British. Are your books available as eBooks? Were you involved in that process at all? Do you read eBooks or is it paper all the way?

Sam: All of my in-print novels are. Only one of my poetry collections, The Complete Pieces. Although most of my fiction sales now are digital, I’m still not sure about eBooks for poetry, where so much can depend on the appearance of the poem and different e-readers can alter the shape of that poem. Add to that many poetry books being an artwork in themselves, and I think we might well see a divergence here between the publishing of fiction and the publishing of poetry. Especially as most sales for poetry continue to be in paper form and take place at author readings, personal appearances.

When Smashwords started I did look out a couple of my older works and got them converted to eBooks. At the moment I have a logjam of recent works awaiting publication and I could see no likelihood of those older two, ‘2 Bridgwater Days’ and ‘The Eviction from Quarry Cottages’, finding a conventional publisher so I adapted them to eBooks on Smashwords, price per copy up to the reader. And if no-one pays to read them they are at least now being read and not stuck in the bottom of my cupboard.

Morgen: That’s pretty much how I feel and have free eShorts and only charge $1.49 for the eBooks, and I write to be read rather than make a load of money (although both would be nice). How much of the marketing do you do for your published works or indeed for yourself as a ‘brand’?

Sam: With the ease of social networking one can very easily fall prey these days to over-exposure. Especially if all that one does is to promote one’s own work, mention one’s own appearances. On the likes of Facebook and Twitter for instance one very soon scrolls past those authors who mention nothing, yawn, but themselves and their own works.

Having begun my published life as a writer with poetry, and always happy to go along to a reading, I find the face-to-face promotion of my poetry far easier than that of my fiction. Just in the number of poetry venues on offer as opposed to those for fiction. Read a few poems and, with a bit of luck, the audience won’t haven’t lost interest, will want to read more and some in the audience just might buy the collection. How much does one read aloud of a novel, though? And make it entertaining? I shared a platform with Margaret Drabble at the Porlock Literary Festival and it was such hard work that I reverted to reading some of my poetry.

What do I do for Sam Smith the brand? I suppose I try to keep myself in the public eye, as here. But mostly with my other work – publishing The Journal, Original Plus, and as editor for other publishers, my hope is that possible readers are curious enough to look for and try a work of mine.

Morgen: I listen to (and take part in) Radio Litopia every Sunday night (they’re on a break now ’til 26th August) and one of the regular panellists said he gets loads of Twitter followers who follow, he follows back then he gets bombarded with ‘buy my book / feature my book’ requests, bad enough but he says most don’t even build a rapport with him first. Did you have any say in the titles / covers of your books? How important do you think they are?

Sam: Neil Marr of BeWrite Books says that although you can’t judge a book by its cover, a good cover can certainly sell a book. I agree with that. What Neil and I don’t always agree on is the cover itself. My daughter Shelley, for instance, came up with a terrific cover for ‘The Care Vortex’. Neil didn’t like it, and we ended up with one that Shelley and I were none too happy with.

Shelley has come up with some terrific covers for me – for my novel ‘Marks’ and the poetry collection of ‘pieces’. And that’s aside from those she has done for Original Plus. But I’ve been lucky in my book covers.

Tony Szmuk did a great cover for ‘The Secret Report of Friar Otto’ ; and David of dpdotcom came up with an excellent cover for ‘Something’s Wrong’.

Morgen: They are striking and that’s what you want, isn’t it. What are you working on at the moment / next?

Sam: I’m in the process of building up a couple of poetry collections, provisionally titled ‘Changes to Your Terms and Conditions’ and ‘Scenes from a Country Life’. And I’m working on a novel provisionally titled ‘Trees’.

Morgen: How intriguing. Do you manage to write every day? Do you ever suffer from writer’s block?

Sam: Whatever day job I’ve had I’ve always snuck in at least a couple of hours writing a day. Often it’s a rewriting, but whatever its nature I’ve made sure that if only for 10 minutes I’ve been sat at my desk.

And no, Morgen, I have never suffered from writer’s block. Does such a thing truly exist? I’ll admit to dry periods. But, if uninspired, I have simply ploughed on putting pen to paper; and when I have worked out what I was trying to say, chucked the draft away.

Morgen: My interviewees’ opinion of writer’s block I’d say is about half:half but as you say putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) does the trick for me… even just a keyword can set something going. Do you plot your stories or do you just get an idea and run with it?

Sam: Both. Start off with a loose plot, a plot outline, and then run with ideas as they arise.

Morgen: I love that. Do you have a method for creating your characters, their names and what do you think makes them believable?

Sam: I have no formula as such. Don’t like the Dickensian trait of names that fit the characters. If anything I prefer to write against name type – create a soft character with a hard G name. And what, and I speak now as an editor, renders characters readily unbelievable is poor dialogue. So many novels’ credibility collapse because of clunking dialogue.

Morgen: You sound like a prolific poet, why do you think it’s such a difficult market to break into?

Sam: Is poetry a difficult market to break into? I suppose it depends what you mean by market. I can’t think of anyone, aside from stand-ups, who got rich writing poetry. Or publishing poetry.

If you mean, Morgen, that poetry is difficult to get published then I’d say the opposite. It’s very easy to place most kinds of poetry somewhere – from klunking end rhymes to off the wall free verse. And I notice that now self-publishing poetry on the web is being seen for what it is, lacking any form of quality control, that paper poetry magazines are making a comeback. The Journal is certainly picking up subscribers by the issue. And in a recession!

Morgen: That’s really encouraging. I’ve been surprised how many people write. I’ve ‘spoken’ to over 1,000 authors (I have another 200 interviews booked in with another 700+ questionnaires sent out) and I’m sure I’ve only seen the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Are there any tips you could give to someone wishing to write poetry?

Sam: Read poetry. Check out the poetry libraries, see what magazines are publishing what. And if you can’t get physically get along to any of the libraries check out the sample magazines they have on their websites. And once written don’t waste your time or the editors’ sending to inappropriate magazines.

Morgen: Not reading the guidelines is the biggest bugbear I’ve heard of… and you’d think it would be so simple. Do you write any non-fiction or short stories?

Sam: I’ve written short stories as exercises; a one WW2 memoir, Vera & Eddy’s War, and articles and reviews, most of which are on my website under the heading of Hate Mail on my website.

Morgen: Do you do a lot of editing or do you find that as time goes on your writing is more fully-formed?

Sam: I write draft after draft after draft… and still find that the wastepaper basket is this writer’s best friend.

Morgen: Do you have to do much research?

Sam: For fiction, yes. Nothing worse than the book being published and then you discover the one piece of information… collapse of hitherto stout fictional edifice.

Morgen: Someone will find it if there is one. What point of view do you find most to your liking: first person or third person? Have you ever tried second person?

Sam: Depends on the book. Often I’ll find third person too restrictive, doesn’t allow for inner dialogues, and switch to third. And sometimes I’ll find the first person too restrictive, the narrative being confined to only what they know, so I’ll switch to the third. The second person can come across with either a fake intimacy or as hectoring. Can sometimes work in a poem, possibly in an epistolary novel.

Morgen: Second person is like writer’s block… it has a split ‘audience’. Personally I love it but most editors (and many readers) don’t so I write it for pleasure more than to submit anywhere. Do you have pieces of work that you think will never see light of day?

Sam: Some I hope don’t. At least in their present form.

Morgen: You’re a publisher as well as a writer, can you please briefly explain the structure of your publishing house… perhaps who’s involved along the process of an acceptance to the book / story being published.

Sam: My publishing house – actually it’s a small garret room – is a poetry press, and like the room, Original Plus is a very small press; and, like my room, the press has only enough room for me in it.

Morgen: Compact and bijoux (as an advert a few years ago). You’re a writer yourself, does this help with deciding which projects to take on?

Sam: I started the press having been published by Odyssey Press, then based in Coleridge Cottage. Derrick Woolf, who ran the press, showed me the nuts and bolts of how it was done. His enthusiasm was infectious. I began with The Journal of Contemporary Anglo-Scandinavian Poetry – all then A5 and perfect bound. It wasn’t until 2000 then I switched to the A4 (A3 folded) version.

But, yes, being a writer myself definitely influences what work I take both for The Journal and for Original Plus. Often it is the kind of work that I know better than to even attempt myself.

Morgen: The $64,000 question: out of all the submissions you receive, what makes a book / story stand out for all the right reasons?

Sam: I can go beyond poetry here as, once I’d been published, I got taken on by a few publishers as reader and / or fiction editor. And what makes a book stand out is a feel for language. By which I don’t mean flowery, but that it both engages and cheers – in that one wants to applaud its use. Even if that is pared-to-the-bone narrative.

Morgen: For me, flowery just means a writer is trying too hard (a polite way of saying “showing off”)… ‘purple prose’ as the phrase goes. And then, without naming names, what makes a book proposal / story stand out for all the wrong reasons?

Sam: Sloppy self-editing. Over-selling, by which I mean their claims for their own work are excessive. Immediate evidence that their concept of good writing is an over-use of adjectives. A tin ear for dialogue. A belief that sex alone / violence alone / sentiment alone sells. And what is guaranteed to put any editor off – being told in the introductory letter that here is an opportunity to make loads of money.

Morgen: I’m one of the judges of the H.E. Bates Short Story Competition and the last couple of years I’ve been really surprised (and if I’m honest, disappointed) at how unnecessarily vile some of the content of the submissions has been. I like, and write, dark (and this year the Head Judge is crime writer Stephen Booth so we’ll probably have plenty of those) but you wouldn’t want to read some of them while eating. What genres do you accept? What would you suggest an author do with a cross-genre piece of writing?

Sam: Poetry aside, for those publishers I’ve worked for the only genre they seemed to draw the line at has been erotica. As for anything cross-genre I’d suggest the author decide which is the dominant genre and present it as such. My novel, The End of Science Fiction, for instance is a crime novel set at the end of the world, the title though categorises it as SF.

Morgen: Is there a genre that you haven’t published and would like to?

Sam: No.

Morgen: Is there a genre that sells better than others or that you can’t get enough of?

Sam: Poetry is a hard sell. As for what in fiction sells better than others … the publishers I work for know better than I.

Morgen: How can an author submit to you?

Sam: Through the BeWrite Books website, and for The Journal and Original Plus.

Morgen: Can you suggest some do’s and don’t’s when submitting to you.

Sam: If you haven’t had poetry published by The Journal, or if I have had no other contact with you, I very much doubt if I’d consider publishing a collection. And certainly not outside the UK. I work on a covering costs basis and postal charges make publishing a collection for anyone outside of the UK a non-starter. Best always to try a sample of your poetry at The Journal first.

Morgen: Are there authors that you deal with on a regular basis and / or perhaps represent directly?

Sam: Running the magazine and the press, as well as all my other hats, yes there are many authors I deal with on a regular basis, indeed far too many to pick out and name here.

Morgen: This is a question that I ask authors but I think is just as relevant to you as a publisher: what was the first book / story you published?

Sam: From the poets published in the original Journal of Contemporary Anglo-Scandinavian Poetry came the first Original Plus collection, Don Ammons’ Andetsteds. Don is an American exile living in Denmark; and we published a dual text collection, his wife Betty Søndergaard having made the translations into Danish.

Morgen: Do you run competitions, do you think they help with a writer’s success?

Sam: Although I’ve been asked to judge competitions before this is the first year I’ve run a competition – the Silversmith Poetry Competition. It’s a collaborative effort with my daughter’s Maison Vee company, first prize publication in The Journal and choice this year of a pair of Maison Vee earrings.

As to competitions in general, how helpful to the writer they are depends on the competition, the publicity it gets, and its purpose. If its purpose is solely to raise funds for the organisers then it’s best to give it a miss. And one also has to be wary for how long the competition might hang onto the winner’s copyright, meaning that’s the one limited outing that piece of writing might get.

Morgen: I spotted a conversation on LinkedIn only this week where a publisher had announced a new romance short story competition with a prize fund of $1,000 but a fee of $39. I queried this and gave some example comparisons of established competitions and after some discussions with myself and a couple of other LinkedIn members, they reduced it to $15. To your knowledge, have any of your published books / stories won or been shortlisted in any competitions?

Sam: Not that I’m aware. Can’t remember. I’m of that age….

Morgen: Oh dear. Well, I’m going to be 45 in just under a month and my memory has always been fairly shocking(ly bad). What do you feel about an author writing under a pseudonym? Do you think they make a difference to their profile? And would you recommend an author writing under different names for different genres?

Sam: I suppose if a writer is slumming it, churning out predictable commercial work for the sake of the pennies, then probably a pseudonym for that genre is probably a good idea and must needs be kept secret. Other than that I don’t see the point. The result gets publicised as ‘Stephen King writing crime under the name of ….’

Morgen: It does indeed: Stephen King writing as Richard Bachman, and Joanna Trollope writing as Caroline Harvey. Another semi-priceless question: do you think an agent is vital to an author’s success? How would you suggest an author gets one?

Sam: Seems that the only way to get an agent these days is to enrol on an expensive writing course that guarantees that the participants’ works will be seen by a visiting literary agent. As to their being vital, that more than a few literary agents are becoming publishers now suggests that even they are questioning their role.

Morgen: I’ve noticed that too. Now for, in theory, a simple question: what’s your opinion of eBooks, do you publish them and do you read them?

Sam: Original Plus doesn’t publish ebooks. As I’ve said elsewhere poetry doesn’t lend itself to eReaders ability to change typeface, size, etc. But the publishers I work for have all enthusiastically embraced eBook publications. From my own royalty statements I know that digital sales are now well in excess of paper.

I have eReader downloads on my PC, but haven’t yet got around to reading any books on them. Oh, apart from those I’ve reviewed. Meanwhile I have shelves of paperbacks waiting to be read and have felt no need yet to acquire an eReader.

Morgen: I have one (a Kindle Touch) but still read both, most people do. Poetry and short stories are, in my opinion anyway, the two most hard done by genres… what do you see as the future for them? Do you think the eBook revolution will help given that eBooks seem to be getting shorter?

Sam: I think eBooks might well be the saving of the short story, but believe that this is where printed poetry returns to being an art form. Not that types of poetry won’t find themselves in an eBook, but for sales it will still be paper.

Morgen: Is there a plot that’s written about too often?

Sam: No. Always a new twist to an old tale.

Morgen: I like that. Do you have to do a lot of editing to the stories you accept or is the writing usually more or less fully-formed?

Sam: Some submissions arrive needing but an occasional tweak. Some require being returned to the author for substantial rewriting, and which then – the central concept being attractive – require editing aplenty.

Morgen: I’ve heard mixed reports of Dan Brown’s and EL James’ (Fifty Shades of Grey) writing but they’re so popular because they tell a good story (I guess ). Have you had any surprising feedback about any of your published works?

Sam: The majority of critical responses thus far have been positive.

Morgen: Excellent. Is there a story, section or theme of a book that you’ve printed, or yet to print, that you’re particularly fond of? And why?

Sam: I loved the shaped poetry in Carol Thistlethwaite’s ‘The Field Book’ (BeWrite Books); and I loved the narrative prose that accompanied the poetry and drawings in Siobhan Logan’s ‘Firebridge to Skyshore’ (Original Plus)

Morgen: What advice would you give aspiring writers?

Sam: Persist!

Morgen: A successful writer is one who didn’t give up. Are there any writing-related websites and/or books that you could recommend?

Sam: BeWrite Books’ submission guidelines lay out pretty starkly the state of publishing today.

Morgen: Ooh interesting… given that more emphasis these days is put on the author to market their published works or indeed themselves as a ‘brand’, how involved are you generally with your authors post-publication?

Sam: Aside from press releases and publicity I try to get along to their launches, push their books to sympathetic reviewers, enter their books for competitions and generally help where I can. Where the authors are not in the UK then generally all I can offer is moral support.

Morgen: Apart from your website, how do you market yourselves? Are your authors involved in marketing for you / themselves?

Sam: You said before how involved authors have to get involved in the promoting of their books. If they don’t the book dies and I’m left with boxes of books crowding me out of my garret room. Once an author overcomes their stage fright and gets stuck in, the books tend to sell themselves. Always though they require the author doing something, even if it’s only going through their address book, joining every conceivable forum, while still staying in their garret. Going beyond their garret or garden shed, if they can wangle themselves some air time on their local radio, TV, some space in their local paper… a piece of mine in a local paper once got picked up by Reuters… Who knows where it all ends up? I took to organising a festival for several years, its one purpose the selling of books. That worked. The hope is that all these efforts take on a life of their own. But if one doesn’t even get out there and try the certainty is that nothing will happen.

Morgen: Absolutely. Like me with this blog, you get out what you put in. You’re based in the UK, do you find this a help or hindrance with letting people know about, or distributing, your publications?

Sam: I’ve never had any problems letting people know. Distribution however relies on our mismanaged and now very expensive postal service.

Morgen: It is, isn’t it? Now they’ve hiked their prices (and I mean really hiked; a first class stamp going from 46p to 60p in April), I do wonder if they’ll start making a profit. They certainly won’t from me, I send very little by post. What do you think of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and more business-related such as LinkedIn? Do you think they’re invaluable or too time-consuming?

Sam: It really is hard to estimate the sales generated by such sites; and I’m sure that too much exposure on them can be counter-productive. They can certainly be time-consuming. For the moment though the jury’s still out….

Morgen: I’ve heard that no-one should tout more than 10% of the time (vs 90% informative) but I’d say less than that would be good… 5% maximum). Apart from the stories in your publications, what do you like to read? Any authors (including those you’ve published) that you’d like to recommend?

Sam: At the moment I’m working through the entire ouvre of Haruki Murakami. Interspersed with heavier doses of A S Byatt. Dannie Abse is top of my poetry reading stack, Christopher Pilling’s translations of Catullus next…

Morgen: What’s your favourite / least favourite aspect of your writing life? Has anything surprised you?

Sam: Robert Schumann, when describing how it was when he composed, said that it was like touching moments as they passed. Beyond that simple exhilaration what has given me the most pleasure has been people getting in touch with me from different parts of the globe and saying what my words have meant to them.

I don’t think there is a least favourite. Maybe that’s the surprise. No, I know what the surprise was, and it was a real treat, being asked to read my poetry at the Nunney Jazz Café. To be up on stage with some excellent jazz musicians exceeded my wildest expectations. And they invited me back! Twice!

Morgen: How exciting! If you could invite three people from any era to dinner, who would you choose and what would you cook (or hide the takeaway containers)?

Sam: I’ve met a few of my literary heroes, and have invariably found myself tongue-tied, or blurting out something I blush about years after. Writers should stay each in their rooms and communicate sparingly with one another.

Morgen: Oh dear. Some writers I know are quite shy and would be happy to be locked away for time immemorial but I love going to writers’ conferences etc. (I’m booking two today – one over my birthday weekend and another a couple of weeks later… probably my only ‘holidays’ for the rest of this year). Is there a word, phrase or quote you like?

Sam: Dear Sam… (You wouldn’t believe, Morgen, how many people submitting call me Sir or Madam, even after being previously published by The Journal. And sometimes the discourtesy of no introductory letter at all. Such abruptness does not generate a positive response to the submission.)

Morgen: Needless to say I get ‘Morgan’ all the time (even ‘Morgan with an E’!). I get ‘Sir’ or ‘Mr’ too despite my caricature being splattered everywhere… being called that shows me that they’ve not even opened my website before contacting me… not a great first impression. Are you involved in anything else writing-related other than actual writing or marketing of your writing?

Sam: I’ve been editing The Journal (once ‘of Contemporary Anglo-Scandinavian Poetry’) for almost 2 decades now, and publishing Original Plus poetry collections. I also act as publisher’s reader for one publisher and have been editor for a couple others. I also started and ran the Taunton Poetry Festival, we called it the Brewhouse Bash, for 3 years; and I’ve organised one-off events since. I suppose what takes up most of my time now, beyond the above, is being one of the fiction editors for BeWrite Books as well as their poetry editor

Morgen: How lovely. I’ve volunteered at three literature festivals (Oundle, Chorleywood, Chipping Norton) and had a wonderful time. What do you do when you’re not writing?

Sam: I walk, cycle and clamber up the fells here.

Morgen: You mentioned forums earlier, are you on any forums or networking sites? If so, how valuable do you find them?

Sam: I’m on a few, but find them as much a distraction as a help.

Morgen: Oh me too but sometimes I just have to ignore that ‘ping’ (hard to do). What do you think the future holds for a writer?

Sam: The great majority of writers will need day jobs. Which is no bad thing. Which I would not have relished being told when younger and having to go from one day job to another, all of which took me away from my writing. Some of the experiences those jobs gave me though proved invaluable to me as a writer.

If someone needs to write then they will write. Getting read will be another matter all together.

Morgen: Isn’t it just. I gave up my day job in March and turned to having lodgers to pay for it but now can’t imagine having a proper job again. I’m living many authors’ dream. Is there anything else you’d like to mention?

Sam: My friend, the poet Paul Lee, died last year. Here is a short poem of his from ‘The Light Forecast’ (Original Plus).

‘The voice goes dumb’

The voice goes dumb
in the crackling mobile

I edge forward
in the nervous dark

hear the waves launch
from the harbour walls

adding the words of centuries
to the swell of sadness

Morgen: That’s really moving, thank you Sam. Where can we find out about you and your work?

Sam: My website – http://thesamsmith.webs.com.

Morgen: Is there anything you’d like to ask me?

Sam: Yes. How did you come by all those stars on your Smashwords books. Mine have been up there for ages and got not one review yet.

Morgen: Really? That’s a shame. Well, as you can tell I blog a lot so I talk to a lot of people. I have my eBooks as links at the end of each post and am fairly prolific on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. I occasionally tweet about the free ones hoping that it will lead people to buy the $1.49 ones and it works on the odd occasion. They say that you get out what you put in and with over 1,100 posts on this blog it certainly feels like I’ve put in plenty. Thank you, Sam.

I then invited Sam to include an extract of his writing and this is the opening poem of ‘pieces’. Sam says… “and probably one of the best things that happened to me as a writer. I read extracts from the unpublished ‘pieces’ at the Purple Patch Poetry Convention in Birmingham. Kevin Troop was in the audience and offered there and then to publish the whole collection.”

Love is love: a tenderness shown, fingertips
brushing at specks on a beloved’s shoulder;
unconscious acts of familiarity, hand or wrist
taken when walking, and the whole body turning
in towards and touching the other, hip to chest. Love.

Tower guards fire bursts down at the dogs
that disturb the graves beyond the fence.
Gate sentries have been seen to follow,
with their gunsights, a highflying crow
or gull, say “Bang.” The dogs are left unburied,
grave rags and pink bones partially uncovered.

Bartering morsels for medicines, attentive to
the other’s every breath, this one man advertises
his love, beams his pleasure in his lover’s recovery.
Other prisoners look on this enactment of love’s gestures
with dumb wonder, recall themselves being fathers,
that same gentling kiss upon a son’s sharp hair,
headslant smile of companionship to a beside-them wife.

and the synopsis of Sam’s book ‘Something’s Wrong’…

The tale entire presents itself as the transcript of 18 double-sided tapes, all of which have been recorded by a 50+ paranoid schizophrenic.

The making of these tapes began as his attempt — an aide memoir and thus a means of bringing some order to his fragmented thoughts — to discover the ‘something wrong’ that he feels is hiding away somewhere within his mind.

Cataloguing all that he feels might be important he describes his day-to-day life in a residential home in a seedy seaside town. He reports too on the puzzling behaviour of the town’s inhabitants, along with that of the staff and the other residents of the home.

While he tries to work out what it is that is wrong there is a robbery, arson, and a local girl is murdered. All of which he initially suspects himself being responsible for. Then he helps an evicted girl move into a stone hut, and this action on behalf of another frees him from his self-suspicion.

The ‘something wrong’ that he had subconsciously registered, but belatedly realises with the arrival of this year’s statement, is that the trust fund that his late father created for his welfare is being used to pay for his enforced stay in the for-profit residential home.

Editor of The Journal (once ‘of Contemporary Anglo-Scandinavian Poetry’), publisher of Original Plus books, Sam is also proud to be Poetry Editor of BeWrite Books. Born Blackpool, England 1946, now living in Maryport, Cumbria, freelance writer, Sam has been a psychiatric nurse, residential social worker, milkman, plumber, laboratory analyst, groundsman, sailor, computer operator, scaffolder, gardener, painter & decorator… working at anything, in fact, which paid the rent, enabling him to raise his three daughters and which hasn’t got too much in the way of his writing. He now has several poetry collections and novels to his name.

***

Update December 2012: ”BeWrite Books will cease trading March 30th 2013… but as one door closes another can be seen slightly ajar, and so on we go. IDP have scheduled the release of my novel, Marraton, for some time in 2013 and Original Plus has just brought out Paul Lee’s final collection, ‘Us: who made History.’ The next issue of The Journal contains a selection of entrants for the Silversmilth Poetry Competition as well as the winning poem by Alethea Redfern, who I’ve lost contact with. So, Morgen, if you know of anyone who knows Alethea please tell her to please get in touch.” I don’t, Sam, but I see she’s on Facebook and Pinterest.

***

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See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

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The full details of the new online writing groups, and their associated Facebook groups, are:

Morgen’s Online Non-Fiction Writing Group

Morgen’s Online Novel Writing Group

Morgen’s Online Poetry Writing Group

Morgen’s Online Script Writing Group

Morgen’s Online Short Story Writing Group

We look forward to reading your comments.

8 Comments

Posted by morgenbailey on July 25, 2012 in articles, competitions, ebooks, interview, non-fiction, novels, poetry, short stories, submissions, writing

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5AM FLASH 250712: two flash fiction pieces accepted in CAKE

25 Jul

Every now and then at 5am (probably posted by my clone) I will be bringing you a newsflash, update on what I’m doing, invited guest piece, or whatever takes my fancy, and today I have a little woo-hoo for yours truly.

I’ve had two flash fiction pieces accepted for issue 3 (July 2012) of ‘CAKE short and sweet’, a magazine that is distributed free around eating establishments in Manchester, England and available online. My two pieces (out of the ten stories in the magazine) are…

The last two digits

Tucking herself away in the darkest corner of the town’s only library, Rosie opened the book where the corner was creased and started reading.

Click here to read more…

For the first time in a long time

As you turn the key you wait for movement, anything, but nothing happens. It’s old so you don’t wind it again, but you’d love to see the ballerina in action.

Click here to read more…

***

Thank you, Sarah.

I love flash fiction and write mostly shorter pieces for my daily 5pm Fiction slot. This blog lists various submissions and competitions for this format. If you know of other opportunities that aren’t listed, please do email me.

***

Unfortunately, as I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t review books but I have a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words. Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me reading it / talking about and critiquing it (I send you the transcription afterwards so you can use the comments or ignore them) on my ‘Bailey’s Writing Tips’ podcast, then do email me. They are weekly episodes, usually released Monday mornings UK time, interweaving the recordings between the red pen sessions with the hints & tips episodes. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.