Authors Electric

I’m in a delicate place. My new novel is finished, professionally edited, proofread and ready to be published. Yet, I’m undecided which route to go in terms of publishing (self or hybrid) so I’m in a season of waiting.  I don’t like this place so much, I don’t do well in silence. I’m not a very patient person when it comes to achieving my goals. It feels like I’m staring at a new baby that I want to bathe, dress up in cute outfits and show the world how beautiful she is, but I’m not allowed to touch her, she's not quite ready yet - It’s frustrating. Can anyone relate? I hear it can take many weeks and sometimes months to hear back from an agent or a publishing house and beyond that, several months or even years before the book is actually published. The thought makes me break out in a sweat. Literally! I’ve self published all the books, devotionals and journals I’ve written to date. I find the process exciting and over the years some what easy that I have started to help other new ...

I’ve just spent half an hour browsing through university and further education college creative writing courses across the UK. They made interesting reading, mainly because – with all the benefit of 20/20 hindsight – I can see one glaring omission in the middle of all the exciting promises that students will explore and develop their literary intentions, examine their creative practice, experiment with form and - just occasionally - ‘become employable.’ You can spend up to £9000 a year in fees and that’s without all the other expenses involved for three or four years in order to ‘improve your critical awareness' of how you can get your work published or produced.           I can dimly remember a time when – as a young arts graduate, struggling to make a career as a playwright, and then as a novelist – I might have welcomed the opportunity to study creative writing at postgraduate level. I can still see the attraction. No such courses wer...

A Himalayan, not a hybrid rose: my Paul's Himalayan Musk.  Hybrid is, apparently, the new buzz term. 'You're going to be hearing about hybrid writers a lot soon,' remarked a colleague gleefully. Actually, the term was first invented (I believe) by the excellent Bob Mayer , some time ago but my colleague was absolutely right, and I already had been reading about it here, there and everywhere. I noticed it because I rather like the idea. It's one I'm comfortable with for various reasons and not just because I love roses, hybrid or not! Now I know that a percentage of new authors self publish in the hope of being noticed by traditional publishing, big or small. Nothing wrong with that either if that's what you've decided you want. The slush pile has all but disappeared, having an agent no longer guarantees publication - nor has it for some time - and stories of traditional publishers trawling Amazon for successful novels are legion. Although if you...