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Bluemoose Author Stars At Film Festival

An award-winning film, co-written by Bluemoose author, Socrates Adams, is due to be screened at the Belfast Film Festival in April.

Shot on a budget of £400, Wizard’s Way concerns Julian ‘Windows’ Andrews, the world’s most celebrated player of an old, dated computer game. But when Compusoft delete the game, life for ‘Windows’ and his sidekick Barry Tubbulb will be changed for ever. It is also a detailed, absorbing look at the correct beef-to-bread ratio in hamburgers.

Director, Metal Man, said: ‘We hope Wizard’s Way demonstrates that if you have a good idea, some likeable characters and a lot of spare time at the weekends, you can make a feature film without any external support or funding.’

With good fortune, but unbeknown to the writers and directors as to how, they secured the services of Sadie Frost in a cameo role.

Wizard’s Way won Best Comedy Feature at the 2012 London Independent Film Festival, and is the 2013 winner of the Discovery Award at the London Comedy Film Festival.

The film screens at the Belfast Film Festival on April 14^th. http://belfastfilmfestival.ticketsolve.com/shows/873491879/events

Socrates Adams has also written a novel for Bluemoose Books, a humorous punch at today’s celebrity culture. A Modern Family features TV’s most popular car show presenter, who has the perfect job, but not the perfect family, which he watches disintegrate around him, unable to control anything that is not scripted.

Kevin Duffy, of Bluemoose Books, said: ‘A Modern Family looks at how obsessed we are as viewers and readers of celebrity culture, its all-consuming take on who and what we are becoming, and the catastrophic effects it has when we realise all is not well in the orange coloured world of celebrity.’

A Modern Family will be published on 25^th July.

It isn't just everyone at BLUEMOOSE BOOKS that thinks NOD by Adrian Barnes is Brilliant, the people at The Guardian think so too. 

NOD  by Adrian Barnes is 'BRILLIANT' and 'OUSTANDING'  THE GUARDIAN  MARCH 9th

There is a brilliant review in The Guardian today, March 9th of NOD by Adrian Barnes, a Canadian author we published last November. Eric Brown, the reviewer, amongst other things says of NOD, that it is 'BRILLIANT' and OUSTANDING. That'll do me. Anyway here's the review. Very pleased. Hopefully the rest of the universe will now pick up Adrian's book and read what I and the Guardian fella think is a cracking read and one, I've bet my house on this one, that WILL become a classic.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/mar/08/science-fiction-roundup-reviews?INTCMP=SRCH

In the main newspaper there is also a picture of the great jacket, the image is courtesy of Italian artist, Alessandro Bavari.

 Off to email the world and his brother and sister and tweet like a rabid Blackbird.

Cheers

Kevin.

Coming Soon - A Modern Family

One of the great things about publishing books is finding great new talent and in Socrates Adams, I’m convinced we’ve found it. We are publishing A MODERN FAMILY by Socrates in July. His novel looks at how a celebrity TV pundit from a number one ranking show about cars, speed and swarfega, deals with fame and how he lives his life according to the rules of celebrity, or what he deems those rule are whilst his family disintegrates around him. It is very funny, acerbic, poignant and illustrative of what is happening in our celebrity fuelled society. Socrates has also written, along with fellow authors, Joe Stretch and Chris Killen, a film called WIZARD’S WAY, which has just won The LOCO’s, THE LONDON COMEDY AWARD, for best new film. Socrates also stars in it too. They had the premier at the end of January at The BFI in London. It goes on general release in APRIL.

And so, back to A MODERN FAMILY. A very important aspect of publishing any book is getting the jacket cover spot on. The jacket has to ask a dramatic question and convey to the reader what the book is about. THE BOOKSELLER’S ASSOCIATION did a survey a few years back which stated that a book cover has a fifth of a second, 0.2 of a second, to catch the eye of the casual book browser. So, it has to do its job in such a short space of time and stand out amongst all the other hundreds of books on display, it has to be striking. We spend a lot of time with our designers, authors and editors getting what we think are the best possible jacket treatments for our books and we hope we’ve done it again with A MODERN FAMILY. We also like to think our books pass the ‘Strokeability test.’  Our books are never shiny, always matt, and feel good to hold. A book is for life, not just for a Kindle.  Once the browser has one of our books in their hands and strokes it, we hope they’ll read the blurb on the back, then turn to page one and……BUY IT.

Socrates is making a film for the launch, which you’ll be able to see nearer publication. It will be funny because Socrates has been called, ‘ A 21st Century Alan Partridge but with a beard.’ And well, he is just a funny man. With a beard.

The designer of the jacket, Stuart Brill, used to design for PENGUIN and so he has a legacy of brilliant designs behind him and here for A MODERN FAMILY, he’s come up trumps again with a jacket that I hope you will like.

And you can see the jacket here:

A MODERN FAMILY by Socrates Adams published by Bluemoose Books on July 25 th 2013.

...also in the Guardian

You know what it's like, you get very little newspaper publicity for what feels like an eternity, then two articles come along almost at the same time.

Late last year we had something in the Yorkshire Post, basically a round up of what we got up to in 2012.  It was a great article and we were very pleased to be featured.  That article explained our attempts to muscle in on the "50 Shades of Grey" action by announcing our plans for a biography of Christian Grey.  This was picked up by the national press and before you know it we were in The Guardian and the story was re-tweeted several times with international interest.  

Publicity like this is really important to a small indie like us.  We haven't got big budgets to promote our books and authors, in fact, let me re-phrase that, we haven't even got small budgets to promote our books, so free publicity like newspaper articles and our loyal readers talking about us on Twitter and Facebook is vital.  Thank you to everyone who follows us and talks about us - you are our marketing department!

Here's The Guardian article if you're interested:

The Fifty Shades of Grey biography that wasn't

 

A bumper year for the Moose

A version of this post first appeared in the Yorkshire Post on 28/12/12

2012 was a year in which whips and handcuffs played a major role, not merely in trying to secure an overdraft from my bank manager.  It was the year of EL James and ‘Fifty Shades of Grey,’ and the role Bluemoose Books played in this worldwide phenomenon. 

Publishing is fickle and when the royally related contours of one’s buttocks can secure a £400,000 advance for Pippa Middleton, I decided it wasn’t enough just to publish great stories from here in Hebden Bridge but to jump onto the bandwagon that was ‘erotica.’  So I sent off a press release to The Bookseller magazine and told them Bluemoose Books had secured the worldwide rights to the unauthorised biography of Christian Grey.  They published the story and also put it up onto their website. Within an hour I had 19 European publishers asking to buy rights, a literary agent from Warner Bros and Simon and Schuster, one of the biggest publishers in the world wanted to acquire North American rights.  The world had gone mad.  One problem, we didn’t have a book. In fact nobody at Moose Towers had read Fifty Shades.  Hetha bought it and read it on the train going down to London whilst texting the outline of the story to one of our authors who fired off the first three chapters in an afternoon.  The publishers and Hollywood were delighted.  Now given the global interest, the print run would be in the 100’000’s.  We didn’t have the cash; neither did the bank manager who was still trussed up after a previous visit.  I contacted a major publisher.  Fifteen minutes later I got a phone call from the publisher stating that corporate lawyers from EL James’s publishers Random House in New York plus her agent were sharpening their quills, donning their horse hair wigs, ready to fire off letters to Bluemoose Books ordering me to desist immediately.  The litigious vultures were circling. Apparently it was ‘passing off,’ i.e. copyright infringement.  My dream of untold wealth had been scuppered and I didn’t even have a royally related backside to fall back on.

However, the reason I re-mortgaged the house in the first place was to publish great stories.  This year we have sold rights to three of our books to Russia, Hungary and Bulgaria.  FALLING THROUGH CLOUDS by Anna Chilvers came out in Russia this October, and KING CROW by Bradford writer Michael Stewart is published in Russia and Bulgaria next year followed by Hungary in 2014.  GABRIEL’S ANGEL by Mark Radcliffe is published in Russia next year too.  We had a national review in one of the broadsheets, The Guardian for PIG IRON by Benjamin Myers, a brilliant young writer whose book is being read by Hollywood as I type.  It is a truly remarkable story of a traveller who hasn’t travelled; a young man fighting for his surname and his very survival.  We are also in negotiations with one of the world’s biggest TV/Film producers regarding STOP DON’T READ THIS by Leonora Rustamova and Stephen Clayton’s debut novel THE ART OF BEING DEAD is now a set text on the Leeds Metropolitan University MA English Literature course.  All of our titles are now available on KINDLE and the ebook is transforming the industry.  Our authors continue to attend book clubs, library events and festivals and although the world didn't end on 21st December, Bluemoose published a dystopian novel called NOD by Adrian Barnes, a Canadian author being compared to the great John Wyndham.

Books are transformative and here at Bluemoose we’re publishing stories that are travelling across the border into Lancashire, down to London and around the world.  We’ve proved you don’t have to be in London to succeed.  Dr. Johnson was wrong; I tired of London and found the landscape of Yorkshire far more conducive to publish terrific stories and post deluvian life in Hebden is wonderful.

Big Issue in the North bonanza

We've been really lucky this month with coverage of our books and authors in The Big Issue in the North.  

In their Shelf Space section they asked some leading authors to recommend their favourite reads.  Amongst the authors are two of our very own, Benjamin Myers and Michael Stewart.  Both Pig Iron and NOD get a mention in this article.  It's also available to read online here:

Big Issue Shelf Space

In the magazine itself there is a Q&A with our Canadian author Adrian Barnes.  Why not make a vendor's day and buy a copy?

My latest rant

Even if you visit this blog irregularly, you will know that I am not one to mince my words when it comes to my thoughts on publishing.  I'm also not shy and don't confine my thoughts to these pages.  

Recently, Galley Beggar Press, a new and upcoming independent publisher from Norfolk asked me to write a few words about Bluemoose Books - it turned into a bit of a rant.  Read it here: 

Galley Beggar guest post

New author performs magic on film

In July next year we will be publishing a book called A MODERN FAMILY by writer Socrates Adams Florou.  We are excited about working with Socrates and started the editing process this week.  I'm sure you'll hear lots more from us about him and his book in the coming months.

Today Socrates had some amazing news about a film he has co-written with writers Joe Stretch and Chris Killen.  He also has a starring role.  The film called WIZARD'S WAY follows two friends who play a wizard simulator game.  The great news is that the film has just won the LOCO London Discovery Award, an annual prize for a British comedy feature film that does not yet have distribution.

You can see a trailer at http://www.savewizardsway.com/ or follow the action on twitter either @socratesadams or @savewizardsway

Well done to all involved!

Bookshop tour with Adrian Barnes

Sorry It's taken a while to get round to this...

A few weeks ago we packed our bags and embarked on a whirlwind tour of the bookshops of Yorkshire and Lancashire with our author Adrian Barnes to help get his debut novel NOD off to a flying start.  Here are some photos to whet your appetite for a more complete write up of the tour.

Adrian reading at The Book Case, Hebden Bridge

Adrian signing books at Waterstones, Blackpool 

Adrian & Kevin taking a break!

A fan so desperate for a signature
in his book, he ran down the high street
in Blackpool to catch up with Adrian

Adrian Barnes speaks to Stephen May

Adrian Barnes recently spoke to author Stephen May about his book NOD and writing in general.  You can read their conversation here. 

Tour of Vancouver

To promote NOD by Adrian Barnes we've put together a little film of Adrian walking through the areas of Vancouver that feature in the book.

Check it out here:

NOD - Adrian Barnes Book Shop Events

We are getting very close to publication date for our new book NOD by Adrian Barnes.  Adrian is coming to the UK to promote the book shortly after it hits the shelves.  Here's where you can catch him:

• Wednesday 7th November Waterstones Bradford 11am - 1pm
• Wednesday 7th November The Bookcase Hebden Bridge 7.30pm - 9pm
• Thursday 8th November Waterstones Blackpool 10.30am - 11.30am WORDPOOL literature Festival
• Thursday 8th November Blackpool & Fylde College 1.30pm - 3.30pm
• Friday 9th November University of Huddersfield Two lectures.
• Saturday 10th November Waterstones Leeds 11am -1pm 

Contact stores for further details

Independent's Day

Finally the metropolitan press have realised that the best literary fiction titles being published emanate from small, independent presses as seen by the inclusion on The Man Booker list of three independents. SALT based in Norfolk, MYRMIDON in Newcastle and AOS in High Wycombe, nearly in London but far enough away not to be labelled a London publishing house.  For years now, the significant weight of the big six corporate publishers seems to have been directed towards celebrity, generic and formulaic publishing.  You see, they need to fill the coffers to generate double digit growth for their shareholders and if this means all you have to do is replicate what is successful, then Scandawegian cookery books with a vampiric twist, is what you will get.  All of us readers who just want to read great stories, well written, can whistle.  That’s not to say that the big six don’t publish some great fiction, they do, but the literary publishing pie is getting smaller and smaller as the sleberiture advances get bigger and bigger.  This is great for independents.  Our concern is for the story, storytelling and getting the best possible book in to the hands of readers. 

Here at Bluemoose, we start local.  Get the local bookshops and libraries interested and soon enough the book will travel across the border into Todmorden, then Manchester and Leeds and before you know it New York and Hollywood are excited.  London is, and has been, somewhat blinkered to what is happening outside of its glitzy box.  Just because we don’t have seven Lucindas an Aphrodite and a Cassandra in the PR department, it doesn’t mean our books are not worthy.  They are, and the rest of the world is now reading Bluemoose books.  If you can read Russian and Bulgarian then in the next couple of weeks you’ll be able to read Gabriel’s Angel by Mark Radcliffe, King Crow by Michael Stewart and Falling through Clouds by Anna Chilvers.  I won’t do a Colin Welland and say "the Moose is coming", but watch out for NOD by Canadian author Adrian Barnes.  Hollywood really is coming.

Here's an article published by The Guardian on the rise of independents. Check out our Kevin's quotes near the end.  http://gu.com/p/3b344 

Not the Booker - time to vote!

It's got to that time when we need all our loyal followers and readers to pull out all the stops and vote for PIG IRON by Benjamin Myers to win the Guardian's Not the Booker Prize.  The man needs a new mug, so come on guys, fingertips at the ready...full instructions here http://gu.com/p/3aqn5
Winner announced on 15th October.

Bluemoose goes international!

We thought we'd let you know the exciting news about some of our books travelling to foreign fields over the coming months.  

Our first book in translation will come out this month as Anna Chilver's FALLING TRHOUGH CLOUDS is published by Russian publisher Centrepolygraphic.  

Later this Autumn KING CROW by Michael Stewart will be published in Russia by Azbooka-Atticus and in Bulgaria by Artline.  

GABRIEL'S ANGEL by Mark A Radcliffe follows swiftly behind with a Spring 2013 publication date in Russia also by Azbooka-Atticus

We have ordered several phrase books and are applying for a passport for the Moose

Read Regional Events

As we mentioned in a previous post, Michael Stewart will be showcasing his book KING CROW as part of New Writing North's Read Regional campaign.  There are a few event coming up between now and Spring next year where you can meet and hear him talk about KING CROW and his experiences of getting it published.  Here's where he will be:

• 28th October 2pm at Durham Town Hall as part of Durham Book Festival 
• 21st November (Time TBC) Gosforth Library
• 12th December 6.30pm Central Library, Leeds
• 7th February 1pm York Explore Library
• 20th February 6pm Goole Library
• 7th March 4.30pm Wakefield One Library and Museum
• 21st March 7pm Wallsend Library
• 4th May 2pm Hull Central Library

Contact local libraries for more information or check out the Read Regional blog.

When the World Spins Backwards

In the run up to publication date of our new book NOD by Adrian Barnes (31st October, did we mention that..?), Michael Stewart, author of KING CROW talked to Adrian about his influences and what drove him to write NOD.  Here it is in full, or you can pop over to Michael's blog to read it there: When the World Spins Backwards

We are all going to die. Quite soon. We all know this to be true and yet we fill our lives with trivia, petty trifles and stamp collections. Perhaps this is why we do: the truth is too, well, true. NOD is the latest Bluemoose novel. It is set in an alternative present, where a plague of insomnia sweeps the globe. Within days, society has collapsed. The isolated few who continue to sleep are vilified and hunted down. A madman becomes the leader of the ‘awakened’. It is not a story that shirks from the ugly truth of our mortality. In advance of the novel’s publication, I interviewed Canadian writer Adrian Barnes.

It has often been said that science fiction and speculative fiction, while describing another world, are always addressing the concerns of our own world. Do you agree with this and if so, in what way does NOD do this do you think?

In writing Nod, I was directly inspired by Harlan Ellison, an early hero of mine, who once said in an interview that 'speculative fiction' was the only real modern fiction because things change so quickly that novels attempting to capture the present end up as nostalgia by the time they're published. It's only by trying to peer a few seconds into the future that we can even hope to understand today. I think Nod addresses a feeling in the air that there is no rest to be had in the 21st century and that what we call order is both temporary and--at heart--insane. All of the indicating curves are exponential; something has to give and it's probably going to be us.
That’s a very interesting answer Adrian. I haven’t heard of Harlan Ellison. I’d like to read more now though, where’s a good place to start? On the subject of the 21^st century, the movement away from order, towards chaos, are you talking about the Western financial institutions, or do you include global politics? JG Ballard said something about society collapsing in a week without basic services such as water, which is very similar to how events transpire in your book. Would you cite Ballard as an influence too?

I haven't read Ellison in two decades, to be honest, but his black passion and rage at the proverbial machine was a formative influence on me when I was a teenager and I'd get on the bus, head downtown, and troll the used bookstores of Vancouver for his (even then) out-of-print story collections. Check out Paingod and Other Delusions or The Glass Teat (a book of television criticism). He's still alive and visible on YouTube as a righteously cranky old guy!

As for our collective drive toward chaos, I don't blame the powerful. Thanatos is embedded in the heart of our entire culture--business people are merely those who are good at doing the sorts of things almost all of us would do if given the chance. We're collectively willing chaos. Even our religion, Christianity, is apocalyptic. Our most highly-held metaphor is probably that of the open road, but we live in a limited world. The terrible irony is that, as a society, we've never even seriously tried to reconcile metaphor and reality. That's madness--or idiocy.

Interesting that you cite Ballard. I read him during my sci-fi youth, but would have to place him in the same category as Ellison: formative, but in a very deeply-buried way. I can't really remember his stories or his style. Writing Nod, though, I was aware of all these influences, and of comic books and science fiction films, as ways to fumble past the unreality of 'reality' toward something larger and more true than the pervading fictions of malls and media.

I like the sound of The Glass Teat. We are talking about Thanatos, and the propensity towards disorder, another term we could use would be entropy. It’s a very attractive notion I think because it mirrors our own mortal existence, our own goal towards decay and then death. A journey from lightness to darkness. If we look at homo sapiens as a species though, the journey has been the opposite one: out of the caves, into modern cities: a journey from darkness to lightness. We are talking about two forces then, the generative one, and its obverse, destruction. There have always been the doom meisters,  the preachers of perdition, who shout ‘the end is nigh’, what stops your book from being part of that tradition?

Maybe nothing! Actually, quite a lot, I hope. I'm an optimist by nature, but I try to be an optimist with wide open eyes. You make a great point that the ant-like march toward darkness is nothing new, and I agree that it's a mirror of the body's journey through life toward death. But on a parallel track there's also the spiritual road or the road of knowledge which tends to go in the exact opposite direction--as you say, from ignorance to wisdom and from darkness to light. 
The sun is a huge metaphor in NOD and hope is represented by the mysterious children who live in the park. They've made some enormous leap away from the set path. The same goes for Paul, the narrator. He's been drawn away from the trek toward doom even though he doesn't know why or how. Who does?

Although I’m a fan of Ballard’s imagination, I find his characters merely sock-puppets for his message. This is perhaps true of lots of writers who are interested primarily in ideas. What strikes me about NOD is the complexity of your characterisation, particularly the protagonist Paul and his girlfriend Tanya, who feel flesh and blood. I like their inconsistencies and their idiosyncrasies, although Paul is a self-confessed misanthrope. He’s not, on the surface a ‘likeable’ character. There has been a lot of discussion recently amongst the literati about how important it is to have sympathetic characters driving a story. How do you feel about that?

I'd make a distinction between 'like' and 'find sympathetic'.  When we like people it's generally because we find them unproblematic--or because their particular shortcomings sync with our own in some way. In fact, I find 'like' a pretty milky word. On the other hand, we sometimes sympathize with difficult people when we can see the integrity they bring to their struggle. Who really 'likes' Hamlet or Raskolnikov or would want to go to dinner at their place (well, more than once)? But, equally, who can't relate? I see Paul as someone who's trying his best in a completely impossible, overwhelming situation--the end of the world! I don't expect the reader to cosy up to him, but I do hope they take him to task and even wrestle alongside him as he tries to cope. What's not to sympathize with?

If you ask me, there's far too much emphasis on niceness and happiness and fun in our brave new world. And it hasn't ended up being a particularly nice, happy or fun place despite our best Disney-fied, Facebook-ized efforts. I prefer to hash things out--or have my characters do it for me!

To what extent is Paul you?

Given my previous, somewhat Spock-like answer, I'm not surprised you're asking! I do share many of Paul's concerns about the species and--like him--I do tend to step back and analyze things fairly dispassionately, but I'm glad to report that I'm also an engaged, friendly, and befriended mammal! The more I realize what we're all up against, the more I'm amazed by how the vast majority of us maintain our humanity in the face of corporate and state onslaught.

I was reading in the paper yesterday about the mania surrounding the release of the new iPhone. One man in the queue said, and I quote, ‘Apple is my church. This is my Sunday worship.’ Is it these types of experiences that inspired you to conceive, ironically, of the ‘awakened’?

Let's hope your man in the queue was being at least a little ironic! But, yes--religion based around technology, religion based around money, religion based around sex, religion based around imaginary old men in the sky. What I find less than inspiring about the species is our propensity toward looking elsewhere for salvation. It draws us away from reality, which is really what Nod is about: the choice we all must make between what's actually here in front of us and various seductive forms of fantasy. 
I suppose the choice for me is between 'religion' and 'spirituality', as they say. Religion pretends to offer you answers while spirituality helps you explore questions. At least that's how I break it down. Some religions have spiritual aspects, of course--and some spiritual quests harden into religious dogma.

In the book, those ‘awakened’ – the vast majority of the population who are unable to sleep at all – go mad after six days and die after twenty-eight. To what extent is this based on scientific evidence?

I did research this subject and the longest a person has ever been kept awake--totally awake--in a controlled scientific environment, has been six days. By that time the test subject is indeed suffering from 'sleep deprivation psychosis' which reverses quickly once they are allowed a nap. The idea of death at twenty-eight days has been posited but is speculative. However it's well known that, without adequate restorative sleep, people's health declines very quickly. It's also worth noting that 'totally awake' means something very specific. All insomniacs actually doze a little every night, even if they don't remember afterwards.

It has been fascinating to chat with you Adrian. The book is brilliant on both the micro-level:  each carefully crafted sentence, the care you have taken in your choice of language; and the macro-level: the overall design of the book, the characters and structure. It’s also a book that isn’t afraid to explore lofty themes. I’m deeply impressed. I know you did an MA in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University (as I did). How do you feel about the teaching of Creative Writing?

Thanks so much for your interest and kind words, Michael. I've just begun teaching Creative Writing this fall, actually, so it's a little soon to say as I'm just getting into it now. I come from more of a composition/rhetoric/journalism background. Certainly my Creative Writing students are an inspiration. People who are willing to take time and spend money to learn to do something as 'useless' as learning to express themselves are individuals we should all treasure. And I do.

You are coming over to England in November to promote the novel. How do you think Canada differs from England? Is there anything you’d like to say as a final word?

In terms of Canada versus the UK, what I've found is that the British are a little more open to edgy ideas and dark humour than Canadians. There's more of an emphasis on politeness over here, certainly in the publishing world. It's not a bad or a good thing, just different. Working on Nod with Brits has felt natural and has been extremely rewarding. A sort of coming home, in a funny way.

I always enjoy my visits to the UK and am greatly looking forward  to launching Nod in the town where I was born...Blackpool!

Read Regional 2012

We've had a brilliant week here at Bluemoose Towers, rounded off today with some more excellent news. We are really chuffed to tell you about our involvement with New Writing North's Read Regional 2012 campaign.

This annual campaign connects local authors to local readers and includes writers and poets across the North-East, Yorkshire and Humberside. Our very own Michael Stewart will be getting involved and showcasing his book King Crow.

As part of the campaign, Michael will be visiting various libraries in the region as well as taking park in the Durham Book Festival from 13th - 30th October. www.durhambookfestival.com

The campaign to promote new books by northern writers runs from October 2012 until spring 2013 and will involve libraries, bookshops and festivals in the region, so come back here to find out what Michael will be up to over the coming months.

So as not to miss out on all the action you can follow us on twitter @ofmooseandmen or New Writing North @NewWritingNorth or check out #ReadRegional

Read Regional is run by New Writing North, in partnership with 23 library authorities across the north of England. It is funded by Arts Council England. For more information, please see www.newwritingnorth.com and www.readregional.com.

Stephen May meets Benjamin Myers for a cuppa

Stephen May, writer of Life! Death! Prizes! popped up his road and had a cuppa with our author Benjamin Myers.  The result of their chat was a little interview about life and writing which Stephen has posted on his blog.  Here's a little excerpt:

He's good company. Serious and thoughtful about his work and committed. He writes, he walks, he thinks. Reads, listens to music, watches films. That's pretty much it. Doesn't drink or smoke, commits himself to refining his vision and expressing it. He's impressively dedicated and the work is muscular, powerful and original.

Read the whole thing here: The Second Best Time