Blogs

There's been a great variety of things posted on ABC Tales this week, and my two Picks couldn't be more different from each other. Story of the Week goes to Simon Barget's 'A Day In The Life'. It's very difficult to get it right with a story 'told' by an animal, but this one captures Essence of Cat and is also very, very funny. You don't need to be a cat lover to appreciate it. In fact, if you don't like cats, this will confirm all your...

So went a conversation I had with Kenneth (not their real name) during the course of pitching my novel through 2020. In the unforgiving world of commercial publishing, this question is often asked - who is saying what to whom, and is their internal world caught up in the jump cuts of talking heads ? A roving POV can lead to confusion which begs the question most authors face - are you making a movie, or telling a story? I suspect that any author...

We were sent this information recently, and I thought some of you might be interested. It's free and available to anyone - not just UK-based: I was hoping to invite you and your members to our free online Gresham lectures on literature; Professor John Mullan is giving an amazing series on the Powers of the Novel, (next one is Crime in Fiction on 24 Feb); and Professor Sarah Hart, who is a Maths Professor, is talking about Maths in fiction (next...

'South Africa - Centurion'

Some may have seen me mention Tales from the Shadow Booth in the past. These were anthologies of speculative fiction (very good ones too), but are no longer taking submissions and haven't been for a while. However, Dan Coxon was the man behind them and, as he says over on twitter, he has had an idea for a new anthology. I suggest any spec fic types on here keep an eye out for what he comes up with.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000rgnx/all-the-presidents-men This is an old film, with impossibly young actors. But the same old story of corruption and cover-up, we’re more familiar with now. The 45 th Un-United States President could say with some justification that he could ‘stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and not lose any votes’. He was partly right, and always wrong. Let’s leave the twice impeached President...

Very pleased to announce the publication of No Good Deed by ABCtales’ very own Ewan Lawrie. With no preview copy, he kept us on tenterhooks to the last, so those of us who pre-ordered are mostly where Tony Cook is: ‘Ewan Lawrie's new book 'No Good Deed' arrived through my letter box yesterday. It's the follow up to the excellent Gibbous House, a Gothic romp of mind blowing proportions. I can't wait to get stuck into it to find out what Moffat...

No, they haven't been locked up (yet!) My two hapless Undertakers have their latest collection of stories, Grave Expectations, available FREE for one day only (Thursday, 21st January, 2021) and, as many people on ABCtales have been kind enough to read their stories and comment on them, I thought you might appreciate a 'heads up' as our transatlantic cousins insist on saying :-) Even when it's not free, it's just the ridiculous price of 99p but,...

"Publishing is a business, not a charity." went Kenneth (not his real name) on a phone call recently. Through lockdown 2020, I completed my latest novel. And I decided after six years of independent publishing to try my hand at pitching it via the conventional route. Carefully selecting the agents who handle this genre (crime), I began to follow the submissions process and track each submission on a spreadsheet. The first thing that became...