Newsletter 5 May 2016

The year still whizzes by. I didn’t write a newsletter at the end of March. I simply didn’t find the time.  Last time I wrote, I was facing a heap of marking. The first few scripts of  the second round came in yesterday. I’ll have a couple of masters to mark, a few to second mark and another hundred or so undergrad assignments in ten days’ time.

We’re also getting ready for our Create festival. A few more details to follow under Future Events.

I’ve now self-published a new version of  Spooking and will be launching this from Honest Coffee     Chapel Street. Your invite is below.  

Life goes on. But the writing life’s good, isn’t it?

   

              

Bridge House

We’re currently reading through the submissions for “Baubles”, those short, snappy, sparkly stories that brighten up the darker nights like baubles enhance the Christmas tree. Watch this space. We should have our list out by the end of June.

We’re also looking at doing some single author collections. These are for authors we’ve already published. You may recycle stories we’ve already included in another anthology, and you may reedit these if you wish. You may also add in new stories. We’re aiming at a total word count of between 30,000 and 80,000 words.  

If you’re interested in this, contact me here.    

CafeLit

Remember, we’re always open to submissions. Find out how here. I’m now making the selection for The Best of CafeLit 5. I’ve been encouraging my students to submit. I’m beginning to see some of their work appearing.  

 

Chapeltown

We’re currently looking for collections of Flash Fiction. See our submissions page here.

 

Creative Café

We’re always looking for new cafés.  If you visit one of the cafés in the project and would like to write a review of between 250 and 350 – nice, too, to have a couple of pictures – send it to me here. Do the same if you find a new café. Naturally the Honest Coffee café will now be included.

I’m now going to send out a welcome letter to each new café that’s added. This will also offer them the opportunity to join the mailing list.  

 

School Visits

I’m proactively promoting my school visits associated with The House on Schellberg Street project. I’m still offering visits on this for a donation towards the project. I’ve devised a whole interactive workshop. It would be a real asset for any school teaching the Holocaust at Key Stage 3. Even if a school can’t afford a donation, I’d be happy to run the project.

Here’s some further news about the Schellberg project. I’ve added in a page referring to “deleted scenes”. You know, just like you get on some DVDs.

There is also now a page of links to some articles about the process of writing the novels.    

Query for a school visit here.

 

The Red Telephone

There will be a new call for submissions next autumn. We’re leaving it quite a while now so that we can give our current authors all of our attention.    

I’d like to remind you of our new enterprise - something between a mentoring system and an online course. Though publication is not guaranteed, we will at least look at your full book if you’ve attended one of the courses. We’re offering it for free to a few people at first. We’ll refine as we go along based on feedback from our clients. We’ll then continue to offer it at a discount for a while before going to full price when we’re completely happy with it. We’re not sure what the full price will be. Again, we’ll be guided by our current clients. Find out more here.       

Books and short stories

I have now started Shooting Hitler. Remember my ten-word pitch.

“A Führer, an anteroom, a pistol. Will she shoot him?”   

I’m keeping everything crossed for Clara’s Story which may be serialised. This an interesting new concept for me. I suppose if it’s good enough for Dickens, it’s probably good enough for me. I’m actually thinking of changing the title of Clara’s Story to Flowers on the Table. Only thinking, mind.  

Past events

April’s highlight has to be my Pushing Boundaries, Flying Higher conference. This built on the success of the 2015 conference.  We had again Melvin Burgess as a keynote speaker. He was also joined by Sara Grant, Nikki Heath, Debz Hobbs-Wyatt and Rachel McIntyre. A new feature this year was critiquing session led by Debz, Melvin and Sara. Read full details here. I’m now hoping that this can become an annual event.   

I also really enjoyed the Author’s Compass organised by the Society of Authors. This gave some fascinating insights into the process of self-publishing. Kate Harrison reported on her success that wouldn’t actually have been possible with a traditional publisher. Kate Pool and Sarah Baxter of the Society of Authors told us of some to the pitfalls in contracts.  Richard Sheehan, Katie Roden, Helen Lewis and Kevin McCann took us through the nitty-gritty. Dan Kieran, Kristen Harrison and Michael Schmidt talked us through some interesting funding models.  

Links and further info here.             

Upcoming events

On 21 May 2016 at 2.00 p.m, I’m launching the second edition of my book, Spooking. It will be at the charming Creative Café, Honest Coffee, within Salford, so highly appropriate for me. Cake, tea, coffee, soft drinks. Do bring your teenagers along.

Reserve your place here.

Giveaway

This month I’m giving away a copy of Scream a Bridge House publication. The first person to message me via Twitter that they’d like the book  -  @gilljames – gets it.  

Happy reading and writing.