'If You Should Fail: A Book of Solace' by Joe Moran

I got to see the mock-up for the cover of my new book coming out summer 2021, and the blurb on the back. Can't share it just now but I will as soon as I am allowed. Nice wee illustration that so captures the subject, and the blurb made me want to read the book - so that must be good.

Meanwhile, I am writing loads - completing four biggish projects a year since I retired from teaching. Not all of these projects will catch the eye of a publisher, I know that. 

Just read "If You Should Fail: A Book of Solace" by Joe Moran... pretty amazing book... I want to shout about how good it is and to give copies to all my creative friends and even to my friends who are not creative (though I suspect everyone is in some way creative really). I have written 18 complete novels/novellas and am about to have the third of those 18 go into print. I don't expect the books to bring me fame or wealth or a following. That's not the point of writing... for me at least. Of course I want to be read, but the act of writing and immersing yourself in a subject is itself a wonderful thing. That I am able to do that is what makes me a successful writer no matter what happens to the things I write. It is a cliche I know, but I do write to please me - sometimes I don't quite understand why what I write does not please others to the same degree that it pleases me, but that's a totally separate issue.

So, to all my writer friends - of course I wish you success and I look for your work in print and look forward to finding it on bookshop shelves or in libraries... (I once wrote a story and bound it in card and sneaked it into a library and slipped it between two books on a well stocked shelf!) ...do not be dissuaded from continuing writing... I know it gives you pleasure to be creative and I believe that should be its own thing. It's like 'play' after all and children play for the sheer joy of playing and not for any other reason... adults sometimes forget the joy of playing and if writing is your 'play' and it gives you joy then I think it is ok to just enjoy it and it is even enough.

Success and failure are human constructs... that is something to remember. 

UMBRELLAS of EDINBURGH (2nd Edition)

 A reprint... with a new publisher.

'Umbrellas of Edinburgh', a collection of writings in prose and poetry about the city of Edinburgh, was originally published by Freight Books in 2016 and sold quite well. When Freight Books went into liquidation in 2017 the editors of the book looked for a new publisher. With a newly designed cover and additional pieces of work included in the collection and fresh updated maps, Shoreline of Infinity is that new publisher. It's available now here

NEW BOOK NEXT SUMMER!

After 'Mrs Winchester's Gun Club' was published in August 2019, I sent my agent something else. This new book is maybe a harder sell because it is a little more experimental. My agent is in the process of sending it out there but not much is happening. I am a little impatient and so I decided to send other things out on my own initiative.

In this business you get a lot of rejections - it's part of the business and you just have to take it on the chin and rise up again after every hit. I sent a novella out but it got no bites. I sent short story collections out and they got no bites either.

Then early this year I sent something out to an indie publisher. It was very experimental in structure - even more so than the book currently with my agent - but I had previously sent it to Fitzcarraldo for their novel competition 2019. It did not make the five-long shortlist for Fitzcarraldo but I got an email from them to say that they had liked the submission and that it had been in the running right up to the final decision meeting and they wished me well in finding a home for it. So this indie publisher at the start of the year initially wanted to see only the first 10,000 words. I hoped it was enough to whet their appetite.

The pandemic shut everything down as you know so when three months had passed and I'd heard nothing I wasn't unduly alarmed. I did send them a polite query email. They were so nice and said they were sorry but they were a bit behind - understandably. But then within a month they had written to ask me to send them the full manuscript.

Of course your hopes take wing at that and it is a job just to stop them soaring - in case they come crashing to the ground from that greater height.

Two weeks ago the indie publisher asked if I was available for a phone call.

Flutter, flutter!

Then yesterday I got the contract to sign - which of course I signed quick as lickety split!

And next summer I should have another book out there. Only one small thing to work on in the first part of the book. More details to follow.

But for now I am very pleased with this news.

MOMAYA, A WIN AND ANOTHER NOTE OF INTEREST

I don't enter many writing competitions these days... maybe two or three a year as against the sixty to eighty I used to do. Mostly this is because I am aiming in a different direction... in my writing and in my goals. I have one novel published ('Mrs Winchester's Gun Club') and others out there doing the rounds. If I enter a competition now it is on a whim and just for fun and once I enter I am able to completely forget about it (something I could never do when I was doing it in earnest!!). So, it was nothing short of the most delightful surpise when the lovely ladies at Momaya emailed me this week to say I had won this year's Momaya Short Story Competition. They also chose another of my stories to be included in their annual publication, 'Momaya Review'.

At the same time an independent publisher, having read a sample of a novella I have written and which I submitted to them at the start of the year, emailed me to say they liked it and were intrigued and engaged and so could they see the rest of the manuscript. Of course this does not mean they will like the rest and then want to publish it, but it still feels good that they want to see the rest.

So, bouyed up by these two positives, I put a collection of my stories together and sent it out there - that would be good to have a collection of them to share.

Will keep you informed.

RED DOG and BLOOD MERIDIAN

Another plagiarism issue - this time to do with a Booker nominated book called 'RED DOG' by Willem Anker. The issue of concern is not the reusing of ideas and plotlines but rather the appropriation of words from Cormac McCathy's 'Blood Meridian'... whole chunks copied word for word (or as near as word for word).

Read the Guardian article by George Berridge. (see link below)

Nice line in the article that aligns so precisely with what I think about the matter: "Literature would be left poorer if authors felt stifled to the point that they could not experiment with that which went before them."

Another good line - which apparently comes from the pen of Cormac McCarthy: "Books are made out of books."

So it is ok to reuse ideas, maybe to do something different with them, but it is not ok to lift particular arrangements of words in the way that Willem Anker has done. To take another's words in this way is what constitutes plagiarism.


https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/mar/04/appropriation-or-plagiarism-booker-novel-poses-difficult-question

DEAR AJ IN SUSSEX

Got my first negative Amazon review - one star for 'Mrs Winchester's Gun Club'.  It should sting when that happens but actually I felt a little sorry for AJ in Sussex who apparently had heard a good review of the book on the radio and had bought the book on the strength of that and then was only disappointed when she came to read it. 

It's a rite of passage to get such a review - so I am told. So I embrace it and hope that makes it mine. You have to take the good with the bad and not see it as personal and so AJ in Sussex, thank you for taking the time to read my book and for commenting.

One mystery though: I do not know anything about the review on the radio. What programme and when? If anyone knows I would appreciate it if you could let me know too.