Publication Day Thoughts by Allison Symes

Image Credits:-  

Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos. One photo from The Writers’ Summer School was taken by me, Allison Symes. Another two were kindly taken by Penny Blackburn at two Open Prose Mic Nights at Swanwick and used with permission. Book cover image is from Bridge House Publishing. AI images avoided.

When this post goes live on 18th June 2026, my third flash fiction collection, Seeing The Other Side, should have been published by Bridge House Publishing via their imprint, Chapeltown Books. The book has been a long time in coming and it is a joy to see it out there. 

I’ve long thought what a pity it is you can’t bottle the feeling you have when your book comes out to draw on for encouragement and inspiration during the tougher times of the writing life.

I’m busy preparing for launches. The book will have a physical launch, so to speak, at The Writers’ Summer School, Swanwick in Derbyshire in August. It has been a recent development for the school to allow delegates with new books out to launch there. 

Bridge House are great at holding Zoom launches and I am looking forward to having one of those too. My second book, Tripping The Flash Fantastic, came out in 2020, that awful year, when online launches were the only option. Having said that, I love both kinds of launch and feel the online ones still have much to offer. It’s often easier for people to get to those.

Like anyone with a book out, I hope Seeing The Other Side does well. This book is my largest flash collection. I’ve taken the opportunity to include linked flash fiction, acrostics, as well as varying the word count of the stories up to flash fiction’s maximum of 1000 words. I've also taken the chance to update my author photo and bio on the back. 

Do I enjoy the marketing side of the writing life? I would always rather be writing more stories but I enjoy engaging with potential readers so that makes marketing easier to come to terms with and do.

One advantage to flash is I often do read some pieces when I’m at events. It doesn’t take long. It shows what flash is and can be. It often leads to sales. I think people enjoy being read to and, as adults, unless you go to and/or take part in Open Prose Mic Nights, this may not happen often. 

I don’t count audio books here because while I love them, I don’t think it can be quite the same as having an author read their work to you directly.

Mind you, one aspect of marketing I will enjoy doing again after a six year gap is getting to grips with good old Vistaprint for pens etc with my new cover on. I’ve found these go down well at events and I’m still using the ones I had produced in 2020. I also think it is an apt marketing “gimmick” for a writer to offer too. And the pens have proved to be good “writers”. I appreciate that.

So what’s next? Obviously marketing the third book will take up a lot of my time in the near future but I am busy writing the fourth one. My ultimate goal? To try and make each of my books entertaining and to build on what has gone before. I don’t think that’s a bad aim.