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Community Publishing for the community

Weather Poetry

23/2/2017

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Fed up with Britain's changing weather? Why not celebrate it instead?

Our sponsored flash fiction website, Friday Flash Fiction, also has a poetry section. One regular contributor, Guy Fletcher, has begun a project of short poems about different types of weather. Here's one:
Gale over Penarth Beach

​All morning clouds have been darkening
as rain slashes in from the Atlantic
and the tuneless wind whistles furiously.
Wild waves explode against the sea wall,
spray cascading over half-term children
as other weather tourists stand further back,
Poseidon's mood is decidedly black


and I imagine his vast frame
appearing in the turbulent Channel
as seagulls screech, blown back by the gale.
The pier peers on with indifference
and from the warmth of the Pavilion Cafe
people watch Nature's power on display
as I'm refreshed by the angry sea's spray.
Guy Fletcher
​

Guy has more weather poetry, for instance about fog and snow, at the website.
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Assured Attention, by Jane Tulloch

17/2/2017

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Readers may be interested to hear that Assured Attention, Jane Tulloch's long-awaited sequel to Our Best Attention, is now heading towards publication later this year.

As yet we're not certain when the exact publication date will be, but it now looks likely that the official launch will take place just after the Edinburgh Festival ends.

Something to look forward to!

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EDITING IS IMPORTANT – BUT IT DOESN'T COME FREE

15/2/2017

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Aspiring authors would do well to have a wee look through this article from Kendra Olson. Kendra covers the various stages of editing – sometimes mis-described as "proofreading" and often completely misunderstood generally.

Editors do two things. Developmental editors read a novel holistically, checking that the plot hangs together, assessing the role and place of the characters in the story, considering whether the setting is properly described and whether any historical, scientific or geographic details ring true. It's possible that a further specialist edit might be necessary, for instance to check police procedure in a crime novel.

The other type of editor is someone we usually call a line editor. This person goes through the book checking the grammar, spelling, writing style and all the other things you'd expect to be of the highest possible standard in any book. By the way, a proofreader simply checks over the finished product for typos and so on – although nowadays that might perhaps mean checking a pdf file before it heads for the printers.

Going back to Kendra Olson's article, the thing to watch for is what she charges. These are standard costs, she's giving a lot of her time. If you can get someone to do the job instead for free, they're saving you an awful lot of money.
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Happy Valentine's Day!

14/2/2017

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(Image: Superior Wallpaper)
Happy Valentine's day to all of our readers. It's been a glorious day here at Comely Bank Publishing, a cold but clear blue sky day that definitely heralds the coming of spring.

​Meanwhile, why not share your love of reading with one of our lovely books? (Ours are the ones on the right, by the way.)
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A Competition Not To Enter

8/2/2017

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Well, here's an opportunity... a competition for independent publishers such as ourselves. All we'd have to do is send a copy of each book we're entering to an address in the USA. There are two which would qualify – Jane Tulloch's Our Best Attention, and Roland Tye's Weekender.

Just for a moment, forget that we have to send the books abroad – there are UK equivalents. Will winning the prize actually bring us any fame and fortune? Have you heard of these people? And we have to pay $95 per book to enter...

We're sure they're highly respectable – and we mean that – but these people are not in it as a charity, they're trying to turn a profit. And they'll have expenses of their own – judges' fees and so on. (There had better be, or else the books will simply will end up in the bin.)
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In the meantime, sending $95 to an unknown operation just seems crazy to us. We think you'd actually be better off buying 95 lottery tickets.
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SOMETIMES MORE IS LESS

7/2/2017

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Yesterday I found myself in a local Edinburgh bookstore and overheard a conversation between two fellow shoppers. The younger man was clearly an aspiring writer, and the older woman was giving him encouragement and advice. So far so good.

Once the young man had managed to extract himself, I casually asked the woman to tell me about her book. I was trying to be as nice to her as she had been to the young lad, and I really was looking for a potential birthday present for someone. BIG MISTAKE.

I think I only managed four more words in the entire conversation. It emerged that the woman had written some sort of fantasy book – not what I was looking for anyway. She confused me straight away by saying it was a Young Adult book aimed at 18+ readers (no, I don't know what that means either); then she confused me further and wasting a few minutes of my increasingly-valuable time by telling what the book wasn't rather than what it actually was.

She pulled her book off the shelves and thrust it into my hands. I turned to the back and immediately uttered two of my allocated four words: "Austin" and MacAuley".

Now I've written about Austin MacAuley before, but I was interested to hear her experience – in particular what she'd been charged. I never quite found out, because by now my ears were being battered so much that I'm afraid my other two words just slipped out... "vanity publisher".

Well, she then launched into a diatribe about snobbery in the publishing world – she's right there, of course, but I never got another word in to be able to tell her. She'd obviously paid something to have her book published, probably quite a bit. By the way, I don't actually have a problem with that: my problem is with the vanity publishers who really aren't firm enough with authors to insist they get their book into better shape. They just take the authors' money.

The sad thing is that I ended up like the young man, trying to edge away and escape her. I'd spotted that she'd written something else (also published by Austin MacAuley) that I might have bought, but she herself had driven me away. Sometimes less is more.

By the way: bear in mind that vanity publishers own your copyright. You sell your soul, but you pay money to do so. Self-publishers always own the rights to their books, which means they can always sell them to anyone else whenever they want.

Gordon Lawrie
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