We all know Nik Perring. He’s a good friend and an even better writer, and I’m thrilled to be able to hand my blog over to him for today. First off, I’ll apologise in advance if this is either boring or unhelpful or both. But my route to publication was, compared with the routes of…
Tag Archive: short stories
On Selling Books To Readers
Here’s an interesting blog post from writer and bookseller, Sara Crowley, in which she discusses bookselling, short stories, jacket designs and what makes books get chosen. She’s promised a follow-up post soon, and I’m looking forward to it. The rest of her blog is worth reading, too.
How I Got Published: Tom Vowler
Tom Vowler is a writer of extraordinary talent and perception. His first book, The Method: and Other Stories is published by Salt today. I was a late developer. Middle set of English at school. No love of children’s classics, no shelves in the family home bursting with literary delights. Until my mid-twenties books, like mortgages…
How I Got Published: Tania Hershman
Or, How Tania Hershman Achieved Her Dream and Got A Book Deal 1. The girl reads everything. She reads books through every meal. She finishes the entire section in the library for 8 year olds and moves on. One day, she thinks, she will hold a book with her name on it. 2. The girl…
Short Story Tutorial Continues
I blogged about Sally Zigmond’s brilliant short story course. It’s continuing, and is fabulous and if you’re interested in writing fiction of any kind, I strongly recommend you read it and take part. You can find the first installment, How Do I Get Started?, here; the second, More About Character, here; and the third, called…
How To Write Short Stories
My dear friend Sally Zigmond has begun a short story writing course on her blog, The Elephant In The Writing Room, and even if the short story is a form you’ve never even considered, I urge you to take part. Sally is a fabulous short story writer; she has won and been placed in numerous…
Calling Brenda Carter!
A short-story writer called Brenda Carter has written a story called Past, Present and Future and sent it off into the big wide world all alone. And I mean all alone. Brenda’s contact details have become separated from her story, which is a shame: because an editor wants to buy the story, but can’t find…
Guest Review: Twelve Short Stories And Their Making
My thanks to Paul Lamb for bringing this lovely little book to my attention, and for letting me reproduce his review of it, which originally appeared on his blog last year. I’ll confess at the start of this post that I don’t have a high respect for most how-to writing guides. I’m not sure that…
Trios: The White Road and Other Stories, by Tania Hershman: The Bookseller’s View
Sara Crowley has had fiction published by Pulp.Net, 3:AM, elimae, flashquake, Litro, Cella’s Round Trip, Dogmatika, Red Peter, Better Non Sequitur, and a variety of other lovely places. “Salted”, her novel in progress, was shortlisted for the 2007 Faber/Book Tokens Not Yet Published Award. She is, among many other things, a bookseller at Waterstones and…
Trios: The White Road and Other Stories, by Tania Hershman: The Publisher’s View
Salt Publishing is a tiny independent press which specialises in publishing strong literary fiction and poetry. As is so often the case for independent presses, Salt has struggled to remain in business: but, thanks to the determination of its proprietors and their incredible ability to find exceptional authors, Salt Publishing now has an established and…
Trios: The White Road and Other Stories, by Tania Hershman: Self-Promotion
Tania Hershman is a former science journalist who has recently been commended by the judges of the 2009 Orange Award for New Writers. Her first short story collection, The White Road and Other Stories, is published by Salt Modern Fiction (and has been very favourably reviewed by Sally Zigmond, who comments here regularly). Her short…
Short Story Competition
The literary magazine The Yellow Room has today published a plea for more entries to its forthcoming short story competition, which closes on 20 March. The Yellow Room is Jo Derrick’s latest project: she also founded the literary magazines QWF and Cadenza. I was lucky enough to be awarded prizes by both of those titles…
What Makes A Good Short Story?
I came upon an interesting blog post today which followed on from last year’s Willesden Herald short story competition. For those of you not familiar with the story (she said pompously, as if she had known about it all along), the Willesden Herald runs a short story competition each year but in 2007 no prizes…