Author | Academic
My latest short story, Dear Versailles, has been published in Issue 3 of Hark Magazine. You can read it right here on page nineteen!
There will also be a launch night on the 28th November, at the Washington Pub in Hampstead Heath. I won’t be reading this time (though I may be in the future – watch this space!) but my fangirls and I will be there, so should you!
Here’s a small excerpt to whet your appetites:
Continue reading “Hark Magazine Issue 3 is Live – ‘Dear Versailles’ inside!”
A moment of great excitement has fallen upon me: I have a regular column! Every other Monday, I will be posting over on the Bookmachine blog about publishing, social media, and the future of media industries. Pretty gnarly, huh?
Here’s an excerpt of my first article, to read more head over to the Bookmachine blog.
At the FutureBook Conference 2014, Orna Ross presented a Big Idea to publishing: the new Ethical Author code from the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi). A week later, it was the theme of #FutureChat, where it became apparent that some of the biggest ethical quandaries for authors concern review practices.
What is the ethical author code?
Reviews are a crucial part of any publicity campaign, and sourced in ethical ways, they’re great tools to market your content with. A positive book review can help persuade someone your content is good enough to purchase. Multiple complimentary reviews in different places or from different sources assist in making a product memorable. Quotes from reviews make good content on social media and repeated mentions of your title can help make it a trending subject online.
Conversely, bad reviews can undo your other marketing and publicity efforts. But surely even a bad review is not an excuse for an author to stalk or commit acts of physical violence against the offending reviewer, right? Wrong. [READ MORE]
I’m delighted to announce that my latest short story, Dear Versailles, has been accepted for publication in Issue 3 of Hark Magazine, due out later this month.
Hark is a fantastic new publication, full of liminal literarture, short stories and poems, and I’m absolutely thrilled to be working with them. They have a great blog too, and have just posted a set of interviews with all the Issue 3 authors, which can be found here.
There will be a launch event on the 28th November at the Washington Pub in Hampstead, which you are all very welcome to attend. I’m personally really excited that this story in particular has been selected, as it’s very close to my heart and has been a while in the mulling pot, so I really do mean it when I say I hope to see you there.
Last night, there was an excellent and most wine-fuelled literary shindig: the Kilburn Literary Festival Flash Fiction Competition reading and public vote.
What a night. So many wonderful and entertaining stories, lots of talented writers in one room. I am very proud that I got to be one of them and, not only that, but also to have won the 3rd Prize for my entry, Until Then, Sister. Thank you so much to Toni Green read my flash fiction piece out so beautifully and congratulations to fellow-wordsmith Jade Summer on 1st Prize!
Don’t forget the Kilburn Literary Festival is still on for a few more days, so if you’re a lit bunny, do go and check out their upcoming events.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am thrilled to announce that I have been selected as a finalist for the inaugural Kilburn Literary Festival Flash Fiction Competition!
My entry, Until Then, Sister, has been selected as one of twelve finalists, each one coming to no more than five hundred words. There will be an event on 30th October for anyone who wants to come and hear the stories, which will be read out by professional actors. What’s more, the audience then gets to vote on the winner. That’s right – gulp! – it is that most feared of all things: a public vote!
So come along, hear some stories, vote some votes, and have a gosh-darn literary evening.
For more information, visit the Kilburn Literary Festival website right here.
Yesterday saw a landmark event for any author: my first public reading. I read out the first few pages of The Yellow Moth, which was recently published on the cover of OpenPen Magazine, Issue 11.
Almost everything about the event went wrong: my mother was late, her partner went for a wander and got lost, the roof fell in on the venue an hour before the shindig began, nobody could get through to anyone else about it. But, by a mix of serendipity and enthusiasm, we all managed to find seats in the trendy cellar of a really cute pancake house. My mother’s partner resurfaced, a spot was found to park the car, people figured out where we were and I discovered the best gluten-free pancakes in North-East London!
Very exciting news, everybody: for the first time ever, one of my short stories is going to be published in a proper, grown-up literary journal! Even better, it’s been selected as the Cover Story!
The Yellow Moth, which is about a small girl having her first existential crisis, will be published in Open Pen Magazine, Issue 11, and will be available in all the best kind of independent bookshops in print. There will be an event to celebrate the Issue 11 launch and words in general on April 10th from 7pm, where I will be doing a reading with great amounts of nervousness.
A small sneak-peek of The Yellow Moth is available here on the Open Pen website, but if you want more, I’ve posted a few paragraphs below as well.
Continue reading “Open Pen Magazine Publication | ‘The Yellow Moth’ & Excerpt”