Read my interview with poet and indie publisher Steve Pottinger HERE. It's a great read, I promise!
14/5/2014 Getting ready for book 3!Today, I am sorting our my study and preparing to get started on Book 3, The Right Place. I will probably start on research and planning around mid-June, after I've finished sorting out a few admin issues... I am still thinking about the ways I could fund this release... I cannot wait to get started as it is set in one of my favourite places, Dorset... An excuse to spend more time in that wonderful county!
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get permission to print the lyrics of PJ Harvey's The Wind in the book (nobody answers... probably not interested in a small imprint!) *sigh*. Typesetting work on The Book of Thoth should start in June too... 13/5/2014 Book Talk series, number 1: Jordan ReyneI am absolutely thrilled to present to you the first in my interview series, "Book Talk".
And what a way to get started! an absolutely thrilling interview with the very talented Jordan Reyne, whose first novel, Remembering The Dead, is out now. What began as a "Book talk" became something else altogether. Really, really interesting. Subjectivity in the way we interpret history - very fitting with the current debate surrounding WW1 "celebrations" - as well as philosophy, music, the fluidity of language(s), writing, self-publishing, storytelling, surviving... It's all in there and more. Thank you Jordan for giving us such in-depth answers to my questions! READ JORDAN REYNE: REMEMBERING THE DEAD 12/5/2014 I Am a Muse in V&OAK magazineThere is a review of I Am a Muse in issue 2 of V&OAK magazine, a new glossy independently put together in Colchester by a team of talented and hard-working people. V&OAK stands for "vintage and one of a kind". I am very happy with the review, and it was a surprise to find out that the article took a whole page in the "Culture" section. The review does highlight the main topics in the book. It didn't start well, though, and I have a slight issue with the following sentence: [talking about Constance] "An elite events planner, her story begins along a similar vein to your typical chick-lit narrative of an independent woman stuck in a love triangle with two different yet disposable men." WHAAAAT? "CHICK-LIT"? *Hits head on wall*. Believe me, this is absolutely NOT chick-lit. I most certainly do not write for women but for everyone who loves reading. I do not tackle "women's issues", and at no point in my book do I say that the men are disposable! Constance is a single, working individual in London who has affairs, shares a house when she'd prefer not to, and tries to keep her head above water. Constance is not an "elite events planner", but the manager of an arts and media centre inspired by the iconic Tea Building in Shoreditch where artists and start-ups hire space and units. She also runs a monthly club night inspired by the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. But I "forgive" the reviewer, because the rest of the article is beautifully written and rather spot on (and she corrects herself about the chick-lit tag too in some way!). OK, and seeing my picture rather big on there was a bit of a shock... You can see you're no longer in the fashion section! My partner in crime Matt ArtPix also had a little feature in the magazine about his design work. And both Arcane Publishing and Matt ArtPix advertised in the mag!
I'm very busy these days. Things are moving fast and a lot needs to be done. I am just glad freelance work has dried up this month so I can get on with stuff (Ok, no money in, but we won't panic just yet!). I still need to promote Book 1, I Am a Muse, and my imprint and bookselling venture, Arcane Publishing. More on that later this week I hope, I am waiting for something to come in to share it with you on this blog. I should also be able to tell you more about some forthcoming events and ideas! Watch this space... By the way, talking about I Am a Muse: Steve Pottinger, the poet and publisher who created the independent imprint Ignite Books and who so generously shared publishing tips with me and typeset I Am a Muse last year, is on the BBC news website because of a letter he had written to Caffe Nero about their tax-evasion tactics (someone has done some research about it, see the results HERE). Steve is a very passionate and eloquent speaker who deserves your attention. He will be appearing at quite a few events over the next few months, so try to go and see him! All dates HERE. The manuscript of book number 2, The Book of Thoth, is now finished. Draft 4 was completed yesterday and I am giving it a quick once-over this afternoon. I am quite pleased with it, it is definitively the book I wanted to write. I could probably fiddle with it for another six months or so but time is running out: publication date is December 2014 and I would like to have the freshly printed books piled up in my lounge by the end of September latest. The manuscript is now going to Matt ArtPix who will be designing the cover and typesetting the whole book. No pressure, then! I am now turning my attention once more to The Right Place, which will be book number 3. I wrote the opening chapter during my week-long Culture Lab "On Writing Fiction" at Metal in October 2012 and read an updated version of it at the Shorelines literary festival last November. Now is time to start the next phase of my research: I need to build up the back story, plan the plot, etc. Unfortunately, my Arcane Publishing funds are severely depleted and will be even more so once The Book of Thoth has been printed (it is a big book!). I hope to find a solution to this state of affairs in the forthcoming months and keep the ball rolling! I love using boards. I pin anything I think will help me put the book together: pictures, notes, postcards, maps, ideas, etc. The one I have for The Right Place only has the two pictures above on it; I pinned them this morning. The images come from The Sunday Times Magazine's Spectrum section. They are part of Italian photographer Marina Rosso's project "The Beautiful Gene". Kat Moorhouse, one of the main characters, is a red-haired girl. I'd like to inject a bit of Pre-Raphaelite beauty into the book... Another character in The Right Place will be the Dorset landscape and its relationship with the people who inhabit it. The book might not feature any straightforward supernatural phenomenon like The Book of Thoth, but the mythical and mystical qualities of the countryside there will definitively have a strong influence on the story.
I cannot wait to get started! There is a small review of the Shorelines literary festival written by yours truly in issue 16 of Southend's cultural magazine, Level 4 (my long report from the festival can be found HERE).
This should have been a printed magazine, but unfortunately the editor didn't receive enough advertising revenue to pay for the printing. The magazine is available to read online HERE. There are quite a few interesting articles in there so make sure you go and have a read! 23/4/2014 Book number five ...I know, I know...
I am still working on the editing of Book number two, I have written only one chapter of Book number three and I haven't really done any work at all on Book number four... And then up pops the idea for Book number five! After an animated conversation in the car with Matt ArtPix - those pesky creative couples, always bouncing ideas off each other all the time! - whilst on our way back from Devon, here's what I have come up with: a Hound of The Baskervilles-inspired vintage mystery set on moody Exmoor, with a rural detective named Barton Stacey - it is the name of a parish in Hampshire. When my partner saw it on the map, he decided here and there that it was the perfect name for a detective! I have no idea whatsoever whether I can pull it off or not. I want it to be a bit outrageous, a bit humorous (can I do humour?) and we'll have a cover inspired by vintage classic detective novels... I have my work schedule sorted for the next ten years, I think! 16/4/2014 The Arcane Publishing online shop is up!I have set up an Arcane Publishing online shop - very basic at the moment and only selling copies of I Am a Muse.
I still need to work on it and I hope to upgrade to a better version in a few months' time in order to sell my second-hand and vintage books on there soon. Watch this space! 11/4/2014 Some great new finds!I came back from Devon two days ago with three new books - they will not be for sale via Arcane Publishing as they are for my own private collection, but I am so excited about them that I wanted to share them with you! The first one is "The Mammoth Book of Thrillers, Ghosts and Mysteries" by Odhams Press, 1936 edition. The cover has a lovely embossed bat on it, there are great black and white illustrations and mini author biographies for each featured writer. It's a real treat, featuring people such as Joseph Conrad, Guy de Maupassant, M.R. James, D.H Lawrence, H.G Wells, J.B Priestley and many other very famous and less famous writers. I cannot wait to start reading these stories! Then I got my hands on a wonderful School Girl's Annual from 1930, full of exciting adventures and lovely illustrations of bob-haired girls that I will use to illustrate some blog posts in the future. And now, my favourite find of them all... A very rare copy of a fabulous book called Dorothy and Lillian Gish, written by Lillian Gish herself and published in 1973 (Lillian Gish still had two full decades ahead of her when she wrote the book!), and absolutely packed-full of incredible pictures - family, movies, theatre sets, etc. most of them from the sisters's personal collection. I am a great admirer of Lillian Gish - she inspired my pen name! - she was an incredible person, actress, scholar, cinema expert. She had a fabulously luminous, ethereal beauty, and you can perceive her incredible intelligence in those determined eyes... A real star and captivating individual. The sisters's lives and careers together spanned seven decades! I am absolutely thrilled to bits to own a copy of this amazing book; it is a true treasure! I love it when I find a newspaper cutting in a second-hand or vintage book. This one contained a cutting of Lillian Gish's obituary in The Daily Mail... A few examples of the incredible pages of the book...
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March 2024
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