Competitions to Enter Now

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Competitions

The Novella Award 2016 is open for unpublished novellas between 20,000 and 40,000 words. The winner will receive £1,000 and have their novella published by Sandstone Press. The Award is run in partnership between Manchester Metropolitan University and Liverpool John Moore’s University and submissions may be in any genre. Entry fee is £17 and the closing date is 29 April. Full details from: http://thenovellaaward.com

The Bristol Short Story Prize wants unpublished short stories in any style, including verse and graphics, and on any subject. Maximum length is 4,000 words. The entry fee is £8 and the closing date 30 April. Check details on http://www.bristolprize.co.uk

Brentwood Writers’ Circle are celebrating their 75th anniversary with a flash fiction competition for stories of 75 words, on any subject. Entry fee is a modest £2 per story, with prizes of £40, £20 and £15. Deadline is April 30. Details from: http://www.brentwoodwriterscircle.org

Bath Novel Award. 5,000 words and synopsis. Fee: £22. Prize: £2,000 plus trophy. See www,bathnovelaward.co.uk for full details. Deadline April 10 (so, SOON).

Bath Short Story Award. 2,200 words. Fee: £8. Prizes: £1,000, £200, £100. £50 Acorn Award for unpublished writer. Deadline April 25. Details from: bathstoryaward.co.uk.

Bristol Short Story Prize. 4,000 words. Fee: £8. Prizes: £1,000, £700, £400, plus 17x£100. Deadline 30 April. Details from: http://www.bristolprize.co.uk

Momaya Press Short Story Competition. 3,000 words. Fee £8. Prizes: ££110 and £55. Theme: Ambition. Details from http://www.momaya-press.com

Deadlines and details can change, so please double-check the websites before entering anything.

Remember all those New Year Resolutions about writing more…? 

The Brentwood Writers’ Circle competition only needs 75 words – you could dash those off while chomping down your final Easter egg, surely?

 

Just Read It…

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Christopher Fielden, Nick Sweeney, Short story competitions

I’ve just dragged myself from a kitchen heaving with food to check my emails before the family all arrive – and, WOW, there’s a cracking piece arrived from Christopher Fielding’s site entitled:

               My Approach to Short Story Competitions by Author Nick Sweeney.

I’m afraid I don’t have time to fiddle with providing a link, but if you Google Christopher Fielden and get onto his excellent site you will easily find it (and much else besides).

Please put down that chocolate egg and read it as soon as you can!

Self-publishing versus traditional publishing: cross words

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indie authors, Jane Davis, Ros Barber, self-publishing, The Guardian

‘The chance of a self-published author getting their book reviewed in the mainstream press is the same as the chance of my dog not eating a sausage.’

So said Ros Barber in a piece explaining why she thinks ‘self-publishing is a terrible idea for serious novelists’ in The Guardian Monday 21 March, written in reply to the recommendations to abandon traditional publishing which followed her earlier article exposing the myth of the rich writer.

I enjoyed this remark; it made me laugh. I have a sausage-eating dog. But Ros Barber has certainly touched a nerve. I have just spent (wasted?) a couple of hours reading a stream of (mostly angry but also interesting, valid and instructive) comments on her piece.

Time better spent was reading Indie author Jane Davis’ explanation of why she’s cross with Ros. Jane argues the case cogently for self-publishing. No mention of sausages though.  http://jane-davis.co.uk

Life of a 17th-century grandee

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Charles II, Congreve, Louis XIV, Montagu, Pepys, Steven Hicks

The author discovered Ralph Montagu when he read how he wooed his second wife in the guise of the Emperor of China, as the rich (and mad) widow in question had declared that she would only marry royalty. (He needed her money to rebuild his burned down London house, on the site of what is now the British Museum.)

Ralph, First Duke of Montagu (1638-1709) by Steven Hicks is a remarkable biography of this leading nobleman of the 17^th and early 18^th centuries. Subtitled Power and Patronage in Late Stuart England, it’s an account not only of this extraordinary grandee’s life but also of the tortuous and dangerous world of the high politics of the time.

The author has delved deep into contemporary correspondence, so we read the actual words of the actors – Montagu himself, Charles II, and courtiers on various sides, writing with various degrees of sincerity. Montagu rubbed shoulders with the monarchs Louis XIV, Charles II and William III, and also with scientists and thinkers such as Robert Hooke and John Locke. Steven’s selections from Montagu’s letters give us fascinating glimpses of that world – for example, when as English Ambassador to Paris Montagu is negotiating peace and war, or haggling over the secret subsidy Louis XIV is paying Charles II to help him live without having to call a Parliament.   We can read letters from Montagu in which he nakedly asks for a dukedom (eventually granted) and to be made a Knight of the Garter (not granted).   We see him conspiring to bring about the downfall of Charles II’s first minister Danby (whose orders he had previously been taking when ambassador), and actively seeking to exclude James II from the throne.

Pepys writes about Montagu, and Congreve dedicated The Way of the World to him. The author Steven Hicks adds, “He managed to cap his career with the ultimate prize – a ducal coronet. His country house [Boughton, in Northants] still stands, occupied by his descendant and full of the treasures he collected. It also holds his archive (including many bundles of debtors’ bills) that has provided the foundation for this biography.”

The book contains some fascinating illustrations.  It’s published by New Generation Publishing, ISBN 978-1-78507-297-0. To learn more or to buy a copy (£15) contact the author at RalphMontagu@gmail.com.

‘Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders’

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John Mortimer, Penge, Rumpole, The law

LOL!   That was me on the train from Stoke-on-Trent to London Euston on Monday, reading Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders by the late John Mortimer. I don’t know how annoyed or amused my fellow travellers were by my unsuppressed hilarity as I was too busy reading.

Devotees of Rumpole will know that throughout his career at the criminal bar he refers to his early success in the Penge Bungalow Murders case, which he won “alone and without a leader”. It’s a running joke. The details of this are not (as far as I’m aware), spelled out in the earlier books. Then, towards the end of his thirty-year long Rumpole-writing career, in 2004 John Mortimer decided actually to tell us this story.

What makes the novel so delicious is that we also discover the very first occasion that Rumpole gets involved with the Timson family, the irredeemably thieving family from South London, and their eternal feud with the Molloys. They are to feature throughout Rumpole’s career at the criminal bar. We also learn what we must always have wondered (well I have, anyway) – how on earth Rumpole got married to Hilda, She Who Must Be Obeyed. The details of their courtship (hardly the right word) are here laid out for our delectation. Poor Horace Rumpole …

We are in the 1950s. Rumpole is at the very beginning of his career as a criminal barrister (a ‘white wig’). He finds himself in the chambers in Equity Court in the Temple that we are going to get to know so well in his future stories. Two ex-RAF war heroes are found shot dead in the bungalows they inhabit in the same road in Penge, archetypal south London suburbia. All the evidence points to their having been shot by the son of one of them. Rumpole’s Head of Chambers (father of the future She Who Must Be Obeyed) gets the case, but his concern for what he sees as ‘the finest traditions of the bar’ seem likely to doom his client to the rope. How Rumpole’s role in the case increases, and its outcome, are the guts of the story.

For me the best bits of the novel are the court scenes, written with all the experience and skill you would expect from John Mortimer QC. The ways Rumpole cheeks the judges always amuse me. But also the scenes in chambers, with characters we have got to know over the years, also appeal. And it’s not just funny: the hangman looms over the story throughout, and Mortimer’s dissection of the absurdities of the legal system has its serious side.  The principle that someone is presumed innocent until proven guilty is also a key focus.

I do see the actor Leo McKern when I read Rumpole. And the Penguin edition I’ve been reading displays McKern on the front cover. As many of the Rumpole stories were written after the TV series had been such a success perhaps Mortimer too came to see McKern when he wrote Rumpole. I see from Wikipedia that he initally wanted Alastair Sim for the role (“but he was dead”).

Because I’ve been watching and reading Rumpole for so long I can’t really imagine how this novel would work for someone completely new to it. The cosy feel of the familiar characters, the running jokes, all add to my enjoyment – I do think that it is so fluently written, and with Mortimer’s skill and knowledge, that a newcomer would still enjoy it. If that’s you, do give it a try, and post your reaction!

My family gave me this book for Christmas. They got it in the local Oxfam shop. A very little money well spent.

Taking Criticism

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Buzzfeed, Cornerstones, Jane Austen, workshop criticism

Cornerstones, the literary consultancy, recently sent us details of their revised website – and at the same time provided a link to a spoof on Buzzfeed about Jane Austen having some rather pompous workshop feedback on her draft of Pride and Prejudice.

This is essential reading for anyone who has stuck their head above the parapet and sought public criticism of their own work. One can only imagine her subsequent pithy comments to Cassandra about it…

Check it out:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/shannonreed/jane-austen-receives-feedback-from-tim-a-guy-in-her-mfa-work#.qrA936z90

 

!

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exclamation mark, Fowler, P.G. Wodehouse, Times

Exclamation marks have become newsworthy! New official guidance to schools states that 7-year-old children ought to avoid ending sentences with exclamation marks unless the sentences begin with “What” or “How”. The concern presumably is that in texts, tweets and social media generally the young are overusing this punctuation mark, devaluing its currency and, of course, doing what the young always do, which is to bring about a decline in the standard of English as it [used to be][ought to be].

On 7 March the ‘Times’ devoted an editorial to this topic, headed “Cripes!”.   It’s on the internet at  http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/leaders/article4706985.ece, but unless you go behind that paper’s paywall you’ll only be able to read the first paragraph. But it’s a good paragraph, quoting P G Wodehouse:

“Bertie – let me go!” [Madeline Bassett]

“But I haven’t got hold of you.” [Bertie Wooster, whose heart is not in fact breaking]

“Release me!” [Madeline B]

“This poignant scene is unimprovable”, opines the ‘Times’, but would fall foul of the new guidance. The writer calls the new guidance “Dreary bureaucatese “.   We are reminded that the grammar authority Fowler, no less, deplored the use of the exclamation mark by inferior writers – but it can properly be used “with expressions of agreement, challenge, apology and many other exclamatory functions” plus the imperative (see Madeline Bassett above). The use by young people of text messages and the like – and emoticons – is a real development in the English language (whether we older folk like it or not), runs the argument. If increased use of the screamer goes with this, then so be it. It meets a need (though what that need is isn’t specified). Get used to it – “Ministers cannot stop its advance!”

Where do you stand on the exclamation mark?

The Rejection Blues

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Midnight's Children, Nobel Prize, Sir Salman Rushdie

According to his ex-wife, apparently even Sir Salman Rushdie, author of Midnight’s Children, ‘needed consoling every time he failed to win the Nobel Prize’.

Somehow I don’t feel so bad now about being rejected by Woman’s Weekly.

Treasures on the radio

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BBC Radio 4, Charlotte Bronte, Ian McKellen, Seamus Heaney, Virgil

This week on Radio 4 in the mornings you can hear a chunk of Virgil’s Aeneid, translated by no less than Seamus Heaney, read by no less than Sir Ian McKellen. And then, a mere 45 minutes later, you can listen to nothing less than Jane Eyre.

Thanks, BBC.

Discovery Day at Foyles

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Conville & Walsh, Curtis Brown, Discovery Day, Foyles

A free event for aspiring novelists offering an individual six-minute pitch with a literary agent from Curtis Brown or Conville & Walsh, followed by a question and answer session in a small group – this was something not to be missed.

On Saturday 27th February what looked like thousands of hopeful authors poured into Foyles in Charing Cross Road, London – including two members of ninevoices.

What we learned from our six minute pitch would need another post, but here are some of the sometimes surprising replies from the agent leading one of the group sessions.

Q: What makes you as an agent take on an author?

A: An original idea, well delivered. I am looking for a great hook, a really strong hook, that as an agent I can use to promote a manuscript to an editor . 

Q: Does a story need to be ‘perfect’ before I submit it? 

A: No. There are some books that that I will work on for the best part of a year before it is ready to be sent to an editor.

Q: What should I write in my cover letter?

A: The first paragraph should be a short blurb, such as on the back of a book. It should include something intriguing. The second paragraph should describe the type of novel. You might include for example the sort of book it would sit next to in a book shop. In the third paragraph tell me why you have picked me to send it to! And then the last paragraph should tell me something about you.

Q: How long should my manuscript be?

A: 80,000 to 120,000 words.

Q: How long should my synopsis be?

A: Ideally, one page, though it could run to two pages.

Q: Should I tell you the ending  in the synopsis?

A: If you have got a really good ending, a really big twist, then no, I would rather be surprised like any reader.

Q: Should I use an editing school offering manuscript review before I submit it?

A: Only if you feel you’d like it copy edited before sending it, but it’s not necessary.

Q: Does my age matter – I am an older author?

A: No it doesn’t make any difference to my decision.

Q: Are you more interested in authors who use social media? What do you think about Twitter?

A: If the author already has a platform on the internet, then that’s useful, but it is not a deal breaker. If you don’t use social media, it doesn’t mean we won’t consider you. If you like it and it comes naturally to you, then Twitter – but it is difficult to know if using Twitter translates into sales. Traditional promotion remains important, e.g. promoting his/her book at book-related events, talks in local bookshops, etc, and hopefully getting into some of the big book festivals, though that is usually big name authors.

Q: What about the rights to the book? Can an author keep any back? 

A: No.The publisher won’t let you keep any rights.