Blackwell's Bookshop will be hosting the launch for Weekender, the debut novel by Edinburgh author Roland Tye.

Set in Edinburgh's recent past, Weekender follows the intertwined lives of a series of the city's residents. As the life of each very different character touches the next, we move through the weekend discovering a city of contrasts: a city of wealth and poverty, drugs and desire, sex and not a little love, despair and redemption.

The event will take place on Wednesday 12th October at 6:30pm. Roland will be reading from the book and answering questions posed by Comely Bank Publishing founder's Gordon Lawrie.

​Tickets are available in person from the desk on the ground floor at Blackwell’s Bookshop, by phoning 0131 622 8222 or emailing [email protected]. Tickets can also be booked on Eventbrite.

For more information or if you would like a signed copy because you can't make it to the event, please contact Ann Landmann on 0131 622 8222 or [email protected]

 

Do you want to know what's going on with Comely Bank Publishing? Do you want to know when the next edition of our best-selling novel, Our Best Attention, will be coming out or when Weekender is due to be officially launched?

if so, why not sign up for our newsletter? We'll send you all our news, as well as a round-up of what's happening in the self-publishing world in general and some tips about writing and reading.

We'll keep the newsletters infrequent (once a fortnight or so) as we know there's nothing worse than signing up for a newsletter and then getting bombarded with information day after day.

As a further incentive - if you sign up for our newsletter here, we'll send you a short story, Gordon Lawrie's The Piano Exam. Just quote The Piano Exam and newsletter in the subject line and email us at [email protected] 

The author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is being sued by his publisher for delivering a manuscript they claim mostly uses public domain work.

Seth Grahame-Smith also wrote Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. He is being taken to court by his publisher Hachette for alleged breach of contract. According to the complaint, which was published online by Publishers Marketplace, Grahame Smith was contracted to write two new works. One, The Last American Vampire, was published in January 2015. The deadline of the second book was extended from June 2013 to April 2016, an extension of 34 months.

Grahame-Smith and Hachette made a deal of $4 million in 2010 for the two new works, and the author was given an initial instalment of $1m. The complaint alleges that the manuscript delivered to Hachette in June of this year:

• “is not original to Smith, but instead is in large part an appropriation of a 120- year-old public-domain work”
• “materially varies from the 80,000-100,000 word limit fixed in the Agreement”
• “is on a subject that was never approved by Hachette in writing
• “is not comparable in style and quality to Smith’s wholly original bestseller Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”

Hachette is suing Grahame-Smith and the company he owns, Baby Gorilla, for at least $500,000.