Martin and I have been away for almost a month though you
will probably have noticed I've still been doing some work. When the "day
job" is what you would do even if you weren't paid you're bound to carry
on working aren't you? We spent most of
our time on Nerja, in the south of Spain. That is the place that got me writing
in the first place. Again I've come back bursting with ideas. Swimming, walking
and relaxing in the sun form part of the deal and really seem to aid my
creativity.
Getting away from television and social media also helps, I
think. Naturally I didn't completely give up on the latter but it was certainly
limited. Reading a lot is also useful. Today I've just read an article in The
Independent with advice from Stephen King. He recommends getting rid of the
television and reading a lot. The article is
here
if you'd like to read it.
I'm torn a little about television: I do enjoy some of the dramas.
However, I watched absolutely none for a whole month and now that I'm home and watching
it more again I'm not enjoying it as much as I used to. I think King has a point.
News about my writing
I'm glad to say
that whist away I picked up three ideas for near future stories. At some point
I'll write those. In the meantime I'm carrying on with Peace Child 4, Schellberg 5
and my book about the dark side of children's literature.
Catalogue of books for children
You may remember I started this last month.
It is growing apace.
You can find it
here.
Useful links for writers
My list of links for writers is also growing steadily. Find it
here.
1940s Group
Just a reminder: this
is a Facebook group for all people who write about the 1940s. Fiction
and non-fiction, for young and old. Topics might then be: the Holocaust, World War
II, Civilian Experience (all sides) and the battle front. We can exchange ideas
about research and marketing. We may promote books and stories, - the last day
of every month and on launch / release day.
Of course, with my
Schellberg Cycle I'm constantly in that world.
Dreamteam
I'm pleased to have
added Janet Howson as a reviewer. Janet will review any sort of fiction and
poetry.
Find Janet and
other members here.
This is a personal recommendation. Initially I intend to use
my Dream Team a lot myself but gradually I would add in people that friends and
friends of friends have recommended.
What happens?
You sign up to a mailing list and every time a request comes
in we mail it out to you or the enquirer contacts you directly via my web site.
The conversation then carries on between you and the person making the request.
You may also have a page set up on my blog and you may update that once a
year.
Interested? You may sign up for more than one category.
Beta readers sign up
here.
Illustrators sign up
here.
Proof-readers sing
up here.
DO REMEMBER THAT
AT ANY TIME YOU’RE APPROACHED AND YOU’RE BUSY IT’S PERFECTLY FINE TO SAY NO.
Slush Pile
Yes, we have one. Or at least we are starting one now for
all of the imprints. All of the submissions we already have will be read in
order and in fact we'll move them as of today into the A Pile. Thereafter,
submissions from authors who are published in one of our anthologies, already
published in one of our imprints or are published on CafeLit, web site is
enough, will go into the A-list and all
others will go into the B List aka slush
pile.
Bridge House
I've finished
editing my twelve stories for Crackers. This
went very smoothly and quickly this time. The standard is certainly getting
higher.
We’re still getting
plenty of interest in our single-author collections. These are for authors
we’ve published before and they may include stories we’ve already published,
ones they’ve had published elsewhere and new ones. The description for this is
now on the web site. http://www.bridgehousepublishing.co.uk/index.php/single-author-collections
We’ve already had some enquiries and we’re currently working on several anthologies.
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 70,000 words.
CaféLit
Stories are now
all being posted at 4.00 p,m, Afternoon Teatime, Kaffee and Kuchen time and it's also when the
kids are home from school. Just the right time for a cuppa and a good story.
In September we had stories from: James Bates, Peppy Barlow,
Andrew Bramwell, Robert Daley, Megharshri Dalvi Matthew Roy Davey, , Jeanne
Davies, Richard C Elder, Robert Ferguson, Laura Gray, A.K. Hata, Janet Howson,
Celia Jenkins, Pat Jourdan, Clyde Liffey, Dawn Knox, Roger Noons, Jenny Palmer,
Hannah Retallik, Rich Rurshell Kathy Sharp, Allison Symes, Fiona Spreadborough
and Dennis Zaslona The most popular post in the last 30 days has been A K Hata's
Words
of Change. You can view our stories
here.
Some exciting news: thanks to the efforts of Richard Elder.
Waterstones Belfast are now really interested in promoting CaféLit. All ideas
of how they might help gratefully received.
Here's a reminder of how we select stories: I open my inbox
and I'll often see four or five submissions. I'll select the best of the bunch
and schedule it for in a few days' time. I'll let you know. I may reject one or
two but ones that are basically sound I'll keep forever or until they’re
published. Consequently if one you've
submitted to us has not been rejected, and you find a home for it elsewhere,
let us know the name of the story and the date you submitted and we'll remove
it from the archive. Try to include the drink each time. Do put CafeLit in the
subject line so we can identify your submission. Remember to include your bio
(50-100 words including links for longer stories, just links for 100 words or
less) each time. I haven't got time to look up an old one and in any case your
bio is probably changing all the time.
.
We're always open
to submissions. Find out to submit here. Remember,
this gives you some exposure, you can add in a short CV each time, and there's
always the chance that your work might be accepted for the annual anthology.
We have some
seasonal opportunities coming up now:
Autumn in general
Halloween
Guy Fawkes
11 November – end of
World War I
Winter
Christmas
New Year
Valentine's Day
So, get writing.
On offer for
CaféLit authors is a page on our web site. See examples here. The list is growing. Click on the names to
find out more about the authors and to access their work. If you're a CaféLit
author and would like a web page, use the ones there to get ideas. You need to
send me between 250 and 350 words about yourself, an attractive image, a list
of up to six publications, up to six awards and up to six links. I then also
link the page to your stories on CaféLit. Send to gill at cafelit dot co dot
uk.
Chapeltown
Our Chapeltown
authors continue to be very proactive in promoting their work. They have
managed to get their books into shops and libraries. They are also buying lots
of author copies and are getting on to blogs – mine included, of course.
Roger Noons has
made a short film with A Howard-Smith: Where
There's Life. This features a few of his stories from Slimline Tales. A really very well produced DVD. Watch out BBC!
Charlie Parker, up your game.
Roger will shortly
be selling copies of this with his books.
Creative Café
I've not managed to
add any new cafés this month but do have a few lined up.
Keep sending
suggestions and review them if you can.
I'm continuing my
tour of creative cafés where I collect stories for an anthology. In some cases,
writers may offer them and in others customers may tell me their story and I'll
write it for them. Do you know of a café that might be interested in this? Let
me know if you do.
Remember you can
now buy merchandise for the Creative Café project. The profit on anything you
buy here goes to the Creative Café Project. Check this out here.
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 words – nice, too, to
have a couple of pictures – send it to me here.
Do the same if you find a new café.
The Red Telephone
I have some books now lined up to read. I'm particularly
interested in near-futures speculative YA fiction.
Facebook Group for the Imprints
Scribblers Sans Frontières - Here you can:
·
Discuss all technical issues re our books
·
Exchange marketing ideas
·
Advertise and report on your events
·
Promote any of your titles or successes
·
Share good practice and ideas
·
Get help with writing problems
·
Anything else appropriate
Please come and join us if you're
eligible. Or you can ask me to sign you up.
School Visits
I’m proactively promoting my school visits associated with
The House on Schellberg Street
project. I’ve now developed a whole workshop for this. It starts off with a
board game, includes some role play and creative writing and ends with a
discussion.
It is now possible to purchase the kit to work on on your
own. Find details
here.
Costs for my workshops = travel expenses plus £400 for a
full day and £200 for a half day. This includes all materials and some
freebies. Two schools near to each other might consider splitting the day and
halving the travel expenses and fees. This is open to negotiation in any
case.
I also offer a free half day visit, though you pay my travel
expenses, if you allow me to promote my books.
I’m continuously adding materials for schools to the site
that are different from the ones I use for the workshops. I’ve recently added
in resources and books to do with the topic. See them
here:
Query for a school visit
here.
I’m also happy to tailor a visit for your agreed donation.
This can be for either a
Schellberg Cycle
visit or a creative writing workshop. Any monies raised this way will go
specifically to a project I have for a non-fiction book about a journey that
will follow the footsteps of
Clara
Lehrs. I’m hoping to do the whole journey by train, including departing via
my nearest Metrolink station. It’s important to feel the rails beneath my
feet.
I offer as well standard author visits which include
readings from my books, Q & A sessions and creative writing exercises.
Please remember, with these as well, I’m open to negotiation
if you can’t afford the full price.
Free listing for our writers
If you are one of
our writers and would like to offer school visits, please contact me. I'm offering
a free listing on the imprint pages.
State: age groups
you are prepared to work with, a definition of your work, distances you are
prepared to travel. Appropriate links. Please provide an image.
Upcoming events
I have four events
to mention:
- I'm hoping to run a workshop on marketing for indie writers /
publishers. This will be free of charge but you may make a donation if you
wish. This will enable me to put on further events.
- A Pushing Boundaries, Flying
Higher Master Class about writing the young adult novel.
London Event
This will follow
our normal pattern of events.
There will be:
- general mingling
- cash bar
- an opportunity to buy books at an advantageous
rate
- “speed-dating” where you get to speak to as many people as
possible in the room i.e. promote yourself to readers, swap tips with
other writers
- author readings
- latest news from me
- collection for the Mustard Seed charity
- big book swap (bring one of your other titles and take something
else home – hopefully all will be reviewed. If you bring a non-writing friend
they can just bring a book they love)
Scribblers Celebration Event
YOU DON'T NEED TO
BE AVAILBALE ON 23 DECEMBER TO JOIN IN.
This is for all
those people who cannot attend the event on 1 December; perhaps you live too
far away or you have something else on. You can attend outside of those times
but it will be live then.
This gives you
some idea about how this all works.
In addition, I ask
that everybody who attends offers a secret Santa. This could be a physical gift
that you send to one other attendee. One of your books, a notebook with your book
cover or coffee mug. Or you could offer
a one-off service such as a critique of a short story. Or you may offer a file that I'll put into a
dropbox and you could expect multiple downloads. This could be a mobi or PDF of
one of your books, an audio file, an excerpt, or a tip sheet.
Would you like to
make a short video of you reading?
Opportunities
Remember I keep a
full list of vetted opportunities on my writing
blog. See them here. New
ones are added several times a day. Roughly once a month I go through it and
take out all of the out of date ones. At that point I send it out to a list. If
you would like to be on that list, sign up here.
Current reading recommendation
As I said, I did a lot of reading whilst I was away -
popular fiction, literary criticism, literary fiction but the book that stood
out was Daily Rituals by Mason
Currey. Its sub-title is: How Great Minds Make Time, Find Inspiration, and Get to Work
It is all about the routines of
writers and other creative practitioners. So, so much of it was familiar and I found
it very reassuring: my particular routines are similar enough to those of other
writers. I also found that many creative practitioners suffer from insomnia. I have
this problem a lot less now that I'm "retired" (ha ha) but still occasionally
I wake at night and can't get back to sleep.
I thought it might be fun to post
some of our routines. Here's mine:
I write for up to four hours in the
morning, up to 3000 words, Monday to Friday and not on bank holidays. However,
I use up bank holidays, weekends and holidays to catch up on that target. After lunch, I deal with emails and anything that
needs doing for CaféLit. Then it's either working on my own submissions and
promotions or on my editing and publishing duties.
I punctuate my work with a little
dabble on social media, a coffee while I read a magazine, U3A and NWR meetings,
occasional work at the university and visits to the gym.
I read every morning before I get
up for about 45 minutes, a little longer at weekends, and before I go to sleep.
I switch off the computer at about 9.00 p.m. and watch some good drama on TV.
Evenings I occasionally go to the
theatre or a book launch, choir practice or choir performance.
Care to send me something along those
lines?
Calling all
writers
I'm running an occasional series of interviews on my blog.
If you would like to be on my blog just answer the questions
below and send them with appropriate images to gill dot james at btinternet dot
com.
Please feel free to pick and choose which of these to
answer.
1.
What do you write? Why this in particular?
2.
What got you started on writing in the first place?
3.
Do you have a particular routine?
4.
Do you have a dedicated working space?
5.
When did you decide you could call yourself a writer?
Do you do that in fact?
6.
How supportive are your friends and family? Do they
understand what you're doing?
7.
What are you most proud of in your writing?
8.
How do you get on with editing and research?
9.
Do you have any goals for the future?
10. Which
writers have inspired you?
Please write as much or as little as you like for each
section and supply as many pictures as you like. Also let me know your latest
publication and supply me with a link if it's not on Amazon.
I 'm also happy to offer you a post whenever you have a new
book come out, even if I'm not your publisher. In this case answer the
following questions:
- Tell me about your book.
- Tell us about your
research for this book.
- What inspired you to write
this?
- What's next?
- How can we get a copy of
the book?
- Do you have any events
planned?
Again write as much or as little as you please. Alter and
add to the questions if you wish. Provide as many pictures as you wish.
Send to: gill dot james at btinternet dot com
Giveaway
This month I'm
giving away Fibbin' Archie. This is a
bit of a writing experiment and there is a pun in the title. Can you guess what
the experiment's about? You could also class it as young adult romance. Anyway,
it's there for grabs and of course reviews would be welcome.
·
An
extract from Clara’s Story
·
Some
seminars for schools about The House on
Schellberg Street
·
Some fiction
writing exercises
·
The
opening chapters from my manual for writing the young adult novel
Note, that normally my books and the books supplied by the imprints I
manage, sell for anything form £0.99 to £10.99, with most on Kindle being about
£2.99 and the average price for paperback being £7.00. We have to allow our
writers to make a living. But we’re offering these free samples so that you can
try before you buy.
Naturally we welcome reviews.
Happy reading and
writing.