Today I’ve got another guest post, this time from Ollie Wright, Assistant Editor at Manchester-based publisher The Red Telephone. If you’re hoping to get a YA (Young Adult) book published, you might want to chat to him…
The Red Telephone was born in 2009. It was the brainchild of Gill James, who runs Bridge House Publishing and is the author of many books herself. I was initially hired to do some admin and PR work, but have since taken on some editing duties for the imprint too.
I am promoting 12 books all over the place at the moment it seems. Tonight I’m going to be chatting to Simon Fielding about how it’s all going live on Leith FM between 8.30 and 10pm, so please tune in online if you have the time.
I also did an interview with Milo at The Clear Minded Creative in which I gave out advice that I should probably follow myself…
And I wrote a story about a haunted house for Howl-o-ween 2011 at Books, Biscuits and Tea, a book blog by Vicky Torzsok.
Having clicked all those, you may now read a short story I wrote for my sister, who is currently road tripping across Canada and texted me the quote in italics from the Maritime Museum in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Continue reading “Shameless Self Promotion”
This one’s for Babs – a short story in the form of a series of letters between a wee girl and her granny. It’s also dedicated to the several people who pointed out that the epistolary novel lends itself to horror…
I took a break from the blog over the weekend, which is going to be a more regular occurrence from now on in the sense that after this week I am not going to update every day. Although I severely doubt anyone is actually checking for new stuff every day anyway – I’m sure you all have lives.
Anyway, throughout November I’m going to take it down a notch and update on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. This is mainly because I don’t want to give myself reasons not to NaNo, and blog upkeep could certainly become a means of productive procrastination – the trickiest of all the procrastination types. I’ve cut myself some word count slack in other months this year, but in November I really want to hit the 50k again.
However, that’s next week. This week you can look forward to daily updates, including another guest post, this time from YA publisher The Red Telephone; a post about writing the sort of post people want to read about; and a few more completed horror shorts. Hooray!
In other news of things that are happening this very week, I’m going back on Simon Fielding’s Leith FM show. This has now moved to Wednesday between 8.30 and 10pm, so if you wish to hear my dulcet tones gracing the airwaves then that is the place to be. He’s also going to be having a chat to musician Lloyd Cole on the phone, so even if you don’t really care about my book writing shenanigans you should still tune in for that.
And finally, a friend linked me to something you may find interesting: writer and illustrator Ruth Lampi is crowdsourcing funds to publish her new book. Find out more about The Germhacht Episode here. I have to say, I’m curious as to how there can be a last immortal… worth a dollar or two, surely?
Thought I’d get in early this month with my entry for Glempy’s Pictonaut Challenge, and remind you there are ten whole days to come up with a 1000-ish word story based on this lovely picture. I wrote mine across two, so I don’t want to hear any excuses!
Continue reading “The Writing on the Wall”
I am in the process of setting up a series of guest posts from smaller or independent publishers. This one comes from Eilidh Smith of Sandstone Press.
Definitions are a tricky thing. Sometimes it is easier to say what a thing is not, rather than what it is, but I will do my best to give a picture (maybe a “sketch” would be better) of who Sandstone Press are and what we do.
Sandstone Press is an independent publishing house based in the Highlands of Scotland. Often folk use the word “small” when talking or writing about us, as if size matters, but we’re not small in outlook or ambition or in the scope of what we like to publish, so I’m not sure what that “small” means. Hopefully beautiful. Maybe special.
If I can even hazard to try and define what we do, in short, we publish bold books. Not one of the books on our shelves is just a read, they all have much more to them than that.
Continue reading “Finding the Right Words”
12 Books in 12 Months 