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.
If you don’t know of A.L.Kennedy, you should rectify that state of affairs immediately. I first came across her through her column in the Guardian, which is very funny, but she does all sorts of other stuff too – book writing and stand up being the main activities where it’s socially acceptable to follow her movements (although not in a stalker-y way). Yesterday she was at the Edinburgh book festival talking about her new novel, The Blue Book, so I went along to listen.
Kennedy began with a reading from near the start of the book – “it’s page 31. Not much has happened, not much will,” – a passage including the character description, “red shoes and amateur clown hair,” which I loved, although naturally she says it better than I do.
She was then interrupted by an enigmatic lady leaving the auditorium with the chilling words, “I know you from a long time ago.” Not the most traditional of heckles in my experience, so top marks for mystique there, especially as she proceeded to stand in front of the stage repeating the phrase over and over again…
Continue reading “A.L.Kennedy at Edinburgh Book Festival”
Last night at around 11.15pm I decided that it was time to call it quits on book five and get myself some sleep. I battered out a few paragraphs to remind myself what I wanted the last couple of chapters to entail, and set about organising my packed lunch for work. Tuna salad, for those who are nosey about such things…
The word count stands at 30323, and I think it’ll end end up around 36,000 by the time the first draft is finished. This means that overall this year, I’ve written 165,585 words of fiction across 151 days. That averages out at 1096.6 words per day, although there have been days when I haven’t written anything at all, and a few when I’ve done 10k in one go. Averages, dear reader, are relative.
Continue reading “Not-Quite-Half-Way Evaluation”
12 Books in 12 Months 