Writing in 2009

I suppose 2009 has not been a bad year.
I’ve had two Young Adult books come out. Annoyingly, though, they came out within three weeks of each other – one had been delayed for almost two years. I’ve also got a couple of academic papers under my belt. I’m certainly enjoying teaching creative writing at university level. The writing itself is still going quite well and I’ve still plenty of ideas. I just need to make sure I do get enough time to write. And I’m beginning to see what my retirement might look like.
Carrying on with Bridge House has been fun. We’ve got eight book out this year. It’s been a bit hard to keep to deadlines – we were ambitious, life events happened, and sometimes authors were slow to respond to edits or proof-reading – they too had life events and deadlines with other people. But we just about did it and our publications have been a delight. We continue to champion the short story. We begin to be recognised by other publishers and generally by the people in the world of books.
The Red Telephone took off in the summer – that is our imprint for Young Adult books and is in fact now publishing three of mine. We’ll be bringing another one out by another author in June 2010 – hopefully.
There are some exciting projects to look forward to next year – not least of all the animal anthology we’re doing to support Born Free. There’s also plenty planned elsewhere at Bridge House and The Red Telephone. And I have plenty of my own projects and plenty at the university. All good stuff.

Workshop with SCBWI Scotland

This happened in Glasgow on Saturday and was immensely satisfying. It was pleasing for starters to put faces to names I’ve known for some time, not least of all two of our own Bridge House writers.
We had been planning to meet at Borders, but since that has gone into receivership they cancelled our booking. A little short-sighted, I thought, as they could do with footfall through the shop so that as much stock is sold as possible. However, we ended up at the Kog Café project and to me delight this would be a great candidate also for the Creative Café project. It reminded my somewhat of the Nexus Arts Café in Manchester, and I guess the Merchants Quarter Glasgow is similar enough to the Northern Quarter Manchester. It was a good space, if a little cold for the first part of the day, and the food was home made and appetising.
I talked a little about Bridge House and the Red Telephone. I hope we’ll get lots of submissions. There is some distrust of us as a little publisher. Hopefully that will disappear in time. We’ll make good.
I also did sessions on voice, characterisation, plot structure, characteristics of the Young Adult novel, what young adults are like and editing.
SCBWI Scotland members are an advanced bunch. You can always be afraid that you’re talking down to them. I hope I didn’t. They did take plenty of notes. They did ask questions and a couple of them thanked me for what I’d taught them.
And I’ve decided I like Glasgow.

Bridge House - beginning to take off?

I’ve now selected the stories for our two new anthologies – one is going to be called “In the Path of the Red Queen”. Or would “shadow” be better? My friend Debz has done it again. She’s written a story which stands out against the crowd. So, we’ll take the title from that. Not so easy as for “Making Changes”. I’ve now got to create some myth about the Red Queen which will pull them all together.
The “Children’s Suitcase” was a bit more difficult. Some of the stories weren’t so good and there weren’t quite enough of them. I’ve had to ask for more. I may be keeping two of my own in there but I’d really rather only have one. Now they’re all rolling in. It was worrying that there weren’t so many as I’d thought that writing for children was even more competitive than writing for adults.
I’ve commissioned the covers. Now the mass editing starts.

Becoming a Publisher

That’s it, then. I’ve bitten the bullet. I am officially a publisher. I’ve been so pleased with Making Changes that I’m going to go for several more anthologies. The call for submission has gone out to my “Making Changes” authors. Over the next few days, I shall be getting it out to as many places as I can think of. I’m planning two more Christmas ones, making a CD of the first anthology, two summer ones, two autumn ones and two non-seasonal ones. I’m really hoping I can get one of my authors to work full time. This would mean making a profit of over £33,000. But with one book we’re taking about £1,000 per month. If we make several books, are we just spreading ourselves too thinly? Or will one book sell another?

It’s work I’m really glad to do. There is something exciting about producing a book. I could do it forever.

I wonder whether we’ll ever get round to publishing full length novels?