LITERARY REJECTIONS ON DISPLAY and THE REJECTER

In line with my 'Ya win some ya lose some' philosophy, I always suggest writers keep up to date with what is REALLY going on in the world of writing and subbing.

The blog Literary Rejects on Display is great. Linked on the right, it is seriously useful place to go for a reality check.

Listen to loads of writers out there, and you find the writing world is peopled by beings who worked as plumbers, brain surgeons, chicken-sexers, architects, dustmen, and woke up one morning to a scatter of oofle dust from an open window...
and

paf!

they were a writer! Wheeeeeeeeeeee. None of those awful learning processes for them... just sat down, scribbled a bit, met an agent in the street doing up his shoelace, bumped into a commissioning editor for Pan Macmillan by the bread rolls in Tescos.

Multi million advance and ten book deal by tea time.

Easy!

(The real scene is on display at LWOD, some fascinating discussions. And the occasional bit of 'here's a book, and here's how I got it out there despite the rejects. I'm on today.)

-------------------------

And, in the interests of balance in all things (without which the world might spin off its axis) I have also found a blog called The Rejecter.

THE REJECTER BLOG

This has some incredibly interesting posts, again, very straight. Written by an assistant literary agent in a New York Lit agency.

I can't say I agree with all she/he says about small presses though. Obviously agents don't like them; they don't earn ££/moolah/widgets from small presses, as typically no advances are paid. But she/he states that no small presses have any distribution clout.

And my lovely Salt Publishing has books out there in Borders, Waterstones, Blackwells... all over. They nominate their writers for prizes. They get invited to take part in festivals, panels. Those invitations sometimes filter to the writers.

Great stuff.

But do check out both blogs... a little balance in all things.

Cadenza Shortlist

Phew.

Finalamente... the team of several thousand editors have reached a decision on the shortlist. Actually, Zoe and I agreed again... amazing synergy here.

One story I'd wobbled on, Zoe didn't think ought to be in, so out it goes. And she's putting the list up herself on the blog. When she has, I'll copy it here.

Edit:

Here you go chaps: Many congratulations for getting this far to the writers of the following eleven stories. And now the really hard part. Aaagh.

This is Zoe's post:

Whittling down the longlist into a shortlist has taken longer than I expected - there's some decidedly strong contenders this time, but there's no question, stories really reveal themselves after second/third/fourth reads. But, we're there now (thanks V!), and the following stories have been shortlisted.

(In no particular order...)


The Keeper

Over the Bridge

The Sisters Grimm

Bear Country

Waiting in the Scriptorium

Leaves

Piggy on the Railway

We are here now

Big Head

End of the World

Rapture in Apple Custard

FUN WITH REJECTIONS

I was blessed by an editor as he rejected a story this week.

Dear Vanessa

Thanks for the submission, we've decided to pass on its publication. This is no reflection on your talent as a writer. It just doesn't fit our current publication needs.

Blessings and thanks,

I thought that was rather pleasant. I felt blessed and things. Then looked up the sub to cross it out, and lo...t'was sent in August 2007. Ten months? Isn't that a wee bit long for a short story submission? Unpaying too...

Then I went and read one of my favourite blogs, Literary Rejections on Display. (Although ironically, even he rejected me... having asked for answers to some questions, that was the end of that, they never appeared on the blog, and no reply to a query...... but it's still a good honest blog. Only no one says who they are. Well, apart from a few idiots, like me!)

Anyway. I read about a sumbmission to somewhere called Salamander... sent in November 2006 and rejected recently, with the standard line does not fit our requirements at this time. The writer wrote back to ask whether the time referred to was 2006 or 2008!

Love that.
LITERARY REJECTIONS ON DISPLAY HERE

NATTERING ABOUT FLASH...

Elaine Chiew puts a short interview with yours truly on her blog ELAINE'S BLOG HERE, in which we talk about flash fiction, and a few tips on approaching flash as a writer...

SMALL SQUEAK

The thing like a novel just topped 50,000 words.

Only a small squeak, but it feels like a milestone. As opposed to a millstone.

TALES OF THE DECONGESTED

Friday night, last Friday of the month, it's Tales of the Decongested short story readings at the Gallery space, Foyles, Charing Cross Road.

I travelled up with Workhouser Jo Horsman (who has been sort of working with me for about 18 months, and who has her own style, magic stuff. I don't think she has subbed work that hasn't been accepted somewhere, yet...). Jo was reading for the second time.

Also reading was writing friend Steve Finbow. Steve brought along his writing friend Toby Litt, so that was nice, meeting Toby.

Lovely to meet and have a drink later with another reader, Justine Mann, who came second in this year's Fish International Short Story Comp. Congrats!!

A Book

Coal, An Anthology of Mining (Seren, 1997, Ed.Tony Curtis)


You know you have those books you put subconsciously at one end of the shelf, closest to the door, so if there's a fire, you think twice about leaving them behind?

Wilfred Owen. Richard Llewellyn. D H Lawrence. Dennis Potter. Dannie Abse (had tea with him once, at 16. Talked about how do you know when to throw work away, and when to keep it, in case...) George Orwell. Jack Jones. Philip Larkin. ach, too many to list.

Foreword by Tony Benn:

...this book.. may tell us more about the country in which we live than the boring gossip about 'people at the top' who hover about but contribute nothing to the development of national life.

Amazon say they havent got it, but the book is
Book available from the publisher. HERE

From their website:

Coal has been one of the dominant forces in British society. Its presence has resulted in the building of villages, towns and docks, roads, railways and canals. It fuelled the Industrial Revolution, powered the navies, Merchant and Royal, of the British Empire, and made the fortunes of the colliery owners and their investors. Coal also provided jobs; at its height the industry employed three quarters of a million colliers alone.

These men and their leaders were at the forefront of trade unionism, often as a result of oppression and adversity. Their communities, unified by coal, were marked by their solidarity and radicalism. For the first time the literature of mining has been gathered together in a book which celebrates the industry while it still exists.

Contributors include miners themselves and writers moved or inspired by the industry. The writing reflects the good times and the bad, the working conditions, living conditions, and aspirations of a people with an indomitable spirit. It charts also a changing, and ultimately, declining industry.

KELPIES PRIZE 2008

Warmest congrats to the Workhouse inmate whose submission is on the shortlisted of three for the Kelpies Prize 2008. £2000 and publication dangling tantalisingly close!

The Kelpies Prize is an annual competition for 'Scottish' novels for children aged between 8 and 12. It is run by Floris Books. Details HERE.

Isn't it funny... this is a prizewinning short story writer par excellence...and he wrote a children's novel for his own kids. And they loved it. And when they grew up, he put it in a drawer. (!!)

Loads of good luck to D.

NICHOLAS HOGG and CHARLES LAMBERT

Nicholas Hogg's debut novel Show Me The Sky (Canongate, June 2008) is fabulous. I know, because I was one of the final readers at 'last tweak' stage, and it was a very hard job to do.

Why? because I keep getting caught up in the book, and forgetting I was reading for a purpose. And yes, it is that good.

I met Nicholas in London a while back at the Willesden Herald prize anthology launch New Short Stories 1....

The novel is a serious tour de force. Which is only to be expected as Nick was the first winner of the New Writing Ventures Prize. Part thriller/whodunnit, part historical novel, structurally it is a complex beast... four sections interwoven... different times, voices, settings.



Show Me The Sky is reviewed by Compulsive Reader and he is interviewed. Both make good reading...
COMPULSIVE READER REVIEW HERE
NICK'S INTERVIEW HERE

HIS WEBSITE HERE


AND



Charles Lambert, a writer I have never met - lucky thing lives and works in Italy - but hope to... when his collection of prizewinning short stories The Scent of Cinnamon comes out later this year, through the indomitable and wonderful (naturally!) SALT Publishing.

Charles Lambert's debut novel Little Monsters came out earlier this year from Picador, and is waiting on a shelf to my left as I type this...But I am familiar with his short stories. He is a writer who should have been out there on the shelves years ago.... and it makes me cross, I must admit, to see work like his waiting for recognition when there is so much tat out there.


The title story of his Salt collection, The Scent of Cinnamon, was selected as one of the O. Henry Prize Stories 2007.

CHARLES LAMBERT'S WEB PAGE AT SALT PUBLISHING HERE

And his blog, linked on the right, is also HERE

Charles blogs about Little Monsters HERE



Reviews for Little Monsters include:

'Beautifully written and crafted, and more compelling than many thrillers.' Daily Mail
and
‘When I was thirteen, my father killed my mother' is an opening line that could go one of two ways. Thankfully, it pans out into a haunting novel, not a turgid misery. This is the story of a young girl ripped apart by grief, shunted off to an uncaring relative and, finally, finding the stability she craves in her Uncle Joey. But the chance to upset the equilibrium of human relationships is only ever a breath away.’ Good Housekeeping

Dodie's Gift in Litro in Time Out

Thanks to Sara Crowley for letting me know...Dodie's Gift appears in the current issue of Litro, Literature for the Underground, together with Porn Mallow, one of Sara's own stories.

Great fun, as S and I work together on Fiction Workhouse.

And this issue of Litro is distributed with every issue of Time Out....

Fab!

Reading at Frank O'Connor Festival

Lovely news. Doing a reading at The Frank O'Connor Festival in Cork, in September. Together with fellow Salt writer, Carys Davies. Three days, all found. Smashing!

Flash Fiction Series ... fascinating reading

Writing colleague Elaine Chiew is running a series of investigations into the flash form on her blog.

The latest HERE, Elaine reproduces a flash piece, Ice, by Joe Young, and discusses it.

THE EMPEROR'S CLOTHES? WRITERS DISSING WRITERS...

A salutary lesson for anyone writing novels about the times in which we live...stop now!!!

I had a lovely time on Sunday last curled up with the Sunday Times, poring over an article entitled Burning is Too Good for Them...
Those books we are told on publication are classics of their time... do they last? Rod Liddle and his team know they don't.
Viz:

“What, really – I mean, really – is the point of A Dance to the Music of Time?” asked Matthew d’Ancona, editor of The Spectator, adding that he found it “stunningly tedious”.

and:

Herman Hesse, meanwhile, was nominated by a good few, including the controller of Radio 4, Mark Damazer, and the broadcaster Andrew Marr (who, incidentally, nominated Don Quixote as the worst novel ever written).

There is a long list of books destined for the bonfire, apparently, including Gabriel Garcia Marquez and all proponents of magical realism... (Does no one believe in fairies any more?) but W G Sebald is spared the pyre, as his work is 'weighty'.

It's interesting to look at why these writers have selected what they have, in the main. What renders the works they choose so dreadful after the passage of a little time?
They are outgrown. They only reflect a particular time/milieu.
Look, this:

they seem to be books that fitted in far too comfortably with the sensibilities of a certain chattering-class elite when they were published. Remove a work of fiction from the milieu in which it was written and you remove some of its purpose and point, of course; however, with Hesse, Powell and Fowles, as with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, you seem to lose all the purpose and point. Everything simply evaporates.

I have to say that perhaps some of the comments were from writers/critics who had loved a work when they were young and free. Maybe, just maybe some of the bonfire is lit by the weightiness of age, and too long in the establishment? (I have to think that. Mervyn Peake, Tolkien, Marquez... come on! They are writing off a whole raft of work that has inspired generations and continues to do so!)


Make your own mind up. BURNING IS TOO GOOD FOR THEM -HERE

LEWES GARDEN ROOM WRITERS

Brilliant time, this morning! The indefatigable Cynthia Parrott of The Garden Room Cafe and Gallery (Station St, Lewes) opened up, fired up the coffee machine, set out the cakes... provided glasses for the wine.

And an impromptu writers' get-together, organised within the last ten days, took place. Writers had been alerted, by a chain of emails, to the event: a Midsummer Celebration of writing.

I can't remember how many we were, in the end. 20 or so? Mainly from Lewes they came, bearing smiles, and with poems ready to read, or snips of prose. Or, as in one case, a complete short story.

There were novelists, poets, short fiction writers. A great group.

Cynthia's coffee machine approached meltdown. Her cakes were hammered. Her glasses were brought out for the wine at almost-half-time. Writing is a thirsty business. or at least, reading is.

There was enough time for everyone to read... those who wanted to. And I have to say, so much of it was mind-bogglingly good.

What sticks in the mind? Irving Weinman's young US girl hitch hiker, from one of his novels. Offering to pay her fare with a blow job.

Clare Best's poem about shopping for false nipples.

Janet Sutherland's hard-hitting poem inspired by an article on female circumcision: Cicatrice

Catherine Smith's poem about sex in the day time, at a hotel, on holiday... worried that the hotel manager would investigate the noise.

Oh but they were all great. And I'm sorry I wasn't taking notes.. I ought to be able to match all names with their readings.

There was such a buzz, such a swell of energy. And a few of us stayed back to talk about whether we might try to organise regular performance evenings in Lewes.

Made you glad to be alive, it did!

Sour Grapes?

I was saddened today, researching poetry magazines, to find one that emblazons complaints about how one of the biggest and most respected poetry competitions is run, on their home page.

Their complaint seems to be that the competition organisers do not list the names of every single reader.

OK... they may not agree, and may decide to do things differently themselves. But I wonder if the slightly nasty post was prompted at all by sour grapes?

MINING A SEAM

Writing is apparently like mining. You search about for something that will keep you supplied with ideas for a while, and dig out those ideas until they run out.

I've not found that seam... at least, I've never had that sense of 'here we go, this will be great... where's the spade?' Maybe that's because I've been writing short stories for too long! maybe I've just been mining small patches of coal in buckets, not seams?

I know what I'm writing for this 'thing that might be a novel' but each part is discrete so far, so I can't say I have a sense that it's a seam to be mined.

But. I think I've just stumbled on a bit of a drift mine possibility... and it's not stories, or novel... but poetry.

I've been writing poetry seriously (ha! one a month, when I feel something needs that shape) since January. My output is slow, and as much gets scrapped as started, almost.

Aside...Is there something embarrassing about poetry? Something my head still won't let me do without wanting to shut the study door?!

But suddenly, over the last few days, I've been finding images rising up from my childhood, all based on the town of Merthyr in south Wales. The 'novel' is loosely based here, and I wonder if the subconscious suddenly tips out memories for you, like an old suitcase flies open in the attic, and you spend a few days sorting through things you'd forgotten for years...

And far from 'trying' to write 'nice lines'... the voice has taken over, and I'm just having fun following the memories.

It'll be a different story when I run out... but in the last day or two, its been fun!

Here's the opening few lines of Her on the Corner, (Yeah, I know, dreadful poetry... but you should have seen her!)



Her on the Corner

There’s a chest she had!
‘Breasts’ they were, and they
swelled up from her belt
like a shelf.

On her head was a beehive,
yellow as Nan's scrambled egg
or the 'canary' square
in my Rowney box.

And at night, smoking
sweet cigarettes in my bed,
I heard her walking out.
To meet men, Mrs Pym said...



.

THE FIELD GUIDE TO WRITING FLASH FICTION

Over the last week, I have been writing and polishing my essay for the forthcoming Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction, ready to send to Tara Masih, the editor ... somewhere over the other side of the Atlantic.

I feel very privileged to be asked to contribute to this guide, and must be one of the only Brits on the list - if not the only Brit on the list.

here's the gen:


The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction: Tips from Editors, Teachers, and Writers in the Field
Edited by Tara L. Masih
SPRING/SUMMER 2009

and from the Rose Metal Press website:


Rose Metal Press, Inc. is an independent, not-for-profit publisher of hybrid genres specializing in the publication of short short, flash, and micro-fiction; prose poetry; novels-in-verse or book-length linked narrative poems; and other literary works that move beyond the traditional genres of poetry, fiction, and essay to find new forms of expression.

In observing the literary community, we have seen that many writers are doing fruitful and exciting work in these hybrid genres, but they have limited opportunities to publish that work because few commercial publishers accept such submissions due to concerns with classification and marketability. Our mission is to focus on supporting these transgressive and unusual works, thereby helping to expand the field of publishing, as well as the range of opportunities open to authors.

Founded in January 2006 by Abigail Beckel and Kathleen Rooney, Rose Metal Press plans to put out three beautifully produced titles per year.


I have been mulling what to say for some months, ever since I agreed to contribute. Tara L Masih's job is to ensure that her team do not all come up with too-similar themes for their essays, and I decided early on to focus on the importance of opening flash fiction well, how to hook your reader quickly without strangling them. (!)

I also talk about the process of flash writing as opposed to flash fiction the product... to give readers who haven't met it a fabulous tool for the toolkit.

Such fun! First draft goes off this morning.

Workhouse workings

First the good news from the last ten days:


A, lucky thing, landed a top London agent this week for her novel.

B, C and D have work in Southword , edited by Nuala Ni Chonchuir.

E has been asked by a new press to turn a series of published shorts into a chapbook for the press.

F has a story in the Tales of the Decongested Anthology II, due out later this year.

G is a finalist with a novella in the International Long Short Story Competition

H has a couple of prose poems accepted at Shadowtrain

I is one of the winners of the Decibel/Penguin competition, and wins a place in the Anthology, out from Penguin later this year.

J has a story accepted for the Route Born in the 1980s Anthology

K has a poem forthcoming at GUD

L has a flash accepted at Microhorror

M has two pieces accepted at Ranfurly Review

N a piece accepted at Prick Of The Spindle

O wins student choice award at Whidbey Writers Workshop.



Now the bad news:

The Workhouse has lost its wonderful Techie Guy, Rob, who has done fantastic stuff for the last eighteen months. Looking for techie support fast!

READING AT NEEDLEMAKERS, LEWES

What a brilliant occasion. Yesterday evening's readings in The Needlemakers' Cafe, Lewes (Janet Sutherland, Catherine Smith and me) performed to a sell out audience.

The cafe is a wonderful space, high brick ceiling, heavy wooden pillars. A massive curved back wall that we stood against to read.

Janet went first, reading her work with quiet authority. She read many poems from her recent collection Burning The Heartwood, and others from magazines previously published. There was gentleness, humour, poignancy, all woven into words I wanted to catch hold of and read myself. So I will!

Catherine came next. Her collection, Lip was the source of her readings - funny, witty and thought-provoking in equal measure. Another one to read later as well!

We then had a break, with drinks and tapas served by the cafe. And I read after the break, choosing the title story from Words From A Glass Bubble. It seemed to go down fine, people were very generous with their commments and natter afterwards. Lovely to see so many writers in the audience, and lovely to talk to writers before and after. Like the cafe was feeding us on all different levels!

Thanks to Matt at Skylark for organising this, for compering so well.

KATHERINE HOWARD, QUEEN'S HOUSE, TOWER OF LONDON

The evening before her execution, Queen Katherine Howard requested that the block should be brought to her at her lodgings in the Tower. She was held at what is now called The Queen's House, and was aged somewhere between 17 and 21 depending on which histories you read.

And in the hallway of the house, she and her retinue practiced the ceremony. Why? Some accounts say she didn't want to look foolish. Others say she wanted to approach the block gracefully.

One could also assume that familiarity might lessen the fear.

But, standing in that hallway yesterday, even though it's been given new door and windows in Georgian renovations...it was a poignant moment.

CELL OF SIR THOMAS MORE, TOWER OF LONDON

Not on the tourist circuit, and not in the Bell Tower. The room to the left is where Sir Thomas More lived out his last year or so, and it is a cold place. Even yesterday, a warm, sunny day, with laughter and shouts from parties of schoolchildren on visits to the Tower of London echoing across the grass outside, it felt dank.

The cell has not been touched by the renovations that over centuries have made The Tower of London largely pastiche (the words of the governor, General Sir Roger Wheeler).

The floor is uneven now, the lower walls deeply pitted and weathered by the passage of time. When he was first here, there would have been rugs, hangings, furniture, candles, quills, ink, paper, books, more books, his servant in attendance. Frequent family visits, good food, wine. After all the idea was for him to change his mind and allow Henry VIII to divorce and remarry. How better to do this than treat him well.

But over time, the privileges were removed. Until at the end he had very little save the clothes on his back. And a man who had once been the most influential man in England was publicly executed. Not for him the privacy of a 'within the walls' beheading such as those reserved for royalty and a few others.

The ceiling is extraordinary. Ribbed, the stone sharp-cornered and fresh, it has never been touched. "Those stones looked down on Sir Thomas More for fifteen months," said the Governor of the Tower, looking up.

And for a moment the military bearing the detachment the 'position' all fell away, and there was just a man, wondering.

-----------------------------

(Visit to The Tower of London organised by an association of Sappers and Surveyors, accompanying my father, aged 93. The Governor is an ex-Sapper, hence the special visit.)

GOOD GRIEF...FORGOT THIS ONE!

A few years ago, I edited, designed, transformed... a wonderful child's diary... and it was privately published. Or printed, rather.. I knew nothing about publishing!

The child was Cherry Shann, mother of my late friend Jan to whom Words From A Glass Bubble is dedicated.

The original diary was written in a school exercise book and illustrated with photos taken on a box brownie camera won in a competition. It described, with the directness of a child (12 years old at the start, 16 at the last entry) the annual family holiday at Coverack on the Lizard, Cornwall, from 1925 on.

Each year, the family (Dad was a London doctor) decamped en masse, and stayed at a guest house on the harbour road. They took the uniformed nanny, naturally. The days were spent walking to beaches sometimes twelve miles away, swimming, playing, catching baby rabbits on the headlands, fishing.

What gave it an 'edge' was the way the writer observes the behaviour of the grown ups, including her parents. Eg: The usual journey down from London was by train and 'charabanc'... but the year Cherry was fifteen, she, her brothers and mother had a leisurely trip down on a ship. Mummy had a shipboard romance with a rather unpreposessing gentleman called Uncle Chambers... caught on the box brownie, of course. Uncle Chambers was later seen off by Daddy, once they arrived in Coverack!

There are accounts an pictures of the children's visit to the Ellectra, Marconi's yacht, moored in the bay.

Jan funded the printing. We both did the diary for love.

I just found it on Amazon, being sold privately... at almost twice what the suggested price was.

(all 6000 copies were given to Coverack school, for them to sell to raise funds. We tried to give them to the Lifeboat, but they weren't interested. Not big enough, I guess. Mind you, 6,000 copies, free, sold at £5.00 each... that's better than a slap in the face with an old cod...)


MY CHILD'S DIARY HERE

The diary is A4, colour.

FOR AMAZON JUNKIES...

I am indebted to Brent Sampson, President & CEO of Outskirts Press, for the following article found on the net, extraordinarily detailed and full of disclaimers, but mighty interesting for all that... on how the Amazon rankings work.

It is quite addictive, checking in to see whether the book has sold a copy... and picking other books to see where they rank in comparison. Quite a timewaster!

So if you have a book on Amazon, check out what the rankings data means HERE

I also found a helpful graph, GRAPH HERE which shows weekly average sales against rankings.

On this basis, Bubble is selling between two and ten copies a week from Amazon. I am not thinking of retiring on the proceeds!

DINNER WITH EMMELINE PANKHURST, SIMON PETER, SALMAN RUSHDIE

V is profiled on the illustrious Normblog


PROFILE HERE

An interesting exercise. One is sent 50 questions, and can select and respond to 30. Very interesting now to go back and see what other 'profilees' choose not to answer...

SALT'S STORY BANK

A great initiative from Salt Publishing, great fiction, great value, and supporting the short story!

This from their website:


JOIN THE STORY BANK NOW

Support the short story now by subscribing to the best writing in our groundbreaking series of gorgeous books.

Each Story Bank cased edition is beautifully typeset for you in Gerard Unger’s Swift, and comes with a matt-laminated jacket designed by leading design agency The Cover Factory. Every copy is foil blocked with coloured endpapers and is printed in Britain on Vancouver Cream Bookwove paper.

Subscribe to Salt’s Story Bank for the best in new writing from the UK’s biggest champion of the short story.



Subscribing to Salt’s Story Bank is an excellent way of supporting short story writers, as well as supporting Salt’s efforts to keep the genre thriving.

From just £40 you can subscribe to Salt’s Story Bank for one year and receive the following benefits:

* Four luxury, first edition, hardback books, selected for you by our own Editor, delivered to you post-free
* 30% discount on ALL Salt books, including our full range of short stories, poetry and critical books
* A FREE copy of the highly-acclaimed Sawn-off Tales by David Gaffney as a welcome present to new subscribers



* Special offers and subscriber-only benefits

A subscription makes the perfect gift — just tell us the name and address of the recipient in the shipping information part of the order form, and tell us that it’s a gift in the comments box.

Share in our passion for the short story by subscribing today.


FULL DETAILS ON THE SALT WEBSITE HERE

CADENZA LONGIST ANNOUNCED

Zoe King has announced the longlist for the Cadenza short story competition. It is ANNOUNCED HERE on the Cadenza Blog, together with a few observations about the frequent craft slip-ups we found in many entries this time.

RITES OF PASSAGE, TRAVELLING SALESMEN, GENETICS

Reading my friend Sue Guiney's blog this morning, I came upon a great post. Sue is one of those writers who is talking about things as they are, not (like many) dressing up the writing world in pink ribbons, only talking about the nice bits...

She had a book signing organised in Waterstones, and sat there surrounded by her books, for a couple of hours...and she talks about the experience on her blog:
SUE GUINEY'S RITE OF PASSAGE...... including having to turn up with a bag of books as the store had not ordered any.

One thing hit home. Sue wryly compares the experience with a normal occurrence for a travelling salesman. And her grandfather was just that.

I discovered a while back that my natural father was also a travelling salesman. Only he peddled a little more than samples, encyclopaedias or whatever, in my case...

So selling is in the genes. My son is a brilliant salesman. And now you can see where we get it from... my foot in the door tactics just need a little sharpening.

CADENZA MAGAZINE HAS A BLOG!!

Well, as Zoe King, Editor of Cadenza says, we are dragging ourselves kicking and screaming into the blogosphere.

Why? Isn't running a small press lit mag , reading and judging a twice yearly comp, reading submissions, co-ordinating short fiction, liaising with the poetry editor... sorting out printing, distribution... the headache of finances... isn't all that enough?

Apparently not.

We thought we'd do this because because... how many mags do you know that natter about what happens behind the scenes? And we thought it would be a good idea, interesting, as well as providing us with a platform for articles, thoughts and links between issues of our lovely little magazine.

HERE IT IS... CADENZA's BLOG!!!

INTERVIEWED ON ERIC FORBES ' BOOK ADDICT'S GUIDE TO GOOD BOOKS

Eric Forbes is a book editor who lives in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He is in love with reading good books...and with the redeeming nature of literature... he's putting a lot of effort into tracking down and interviewing all the authors on the Frnk O'Connor longlist.

INTERVIEW HERE