The Golden Hare, Edinburgh's finest purveyors of extraordinary books for adults and children since 2012, is now stocking Comely Bank Publishing's books.

You'll be able to find all three of our current titles in the shop - Four Old Geezers and a Valkyrie by Gordon Lawrie, The Man From Outremer by T.D. Burke and Katie and the Deelans by Emma Baird. 
Located on St. Stephen Street in Stockbridge, Golden Hare Books is an independent bookshop dedicated not just to the love of reading, but also to the book as a beautiful, life-enriching object of desire in its own right.
The shop's hand-picked selection reflects the finest voices in international literary fiction and poetry; the most stimulating and provocative non-fiction of all kinds; the most inventive and original in contemporary art and design; and a children's department that will enchant and enrapture youngsters and adults alike.

​Visit the Golden Hare website here.

This Friday, the Friday Flash Fiction group is calling for submissions on the subject of "Halloween". Remember that all you need to do is to write 100 words (no more) and send it to the submissions page. If you've never written for us before, we'd also love a little mini-biography and a photo – we'll even link to your website or to other work you've done. Basically, it's (virtually) free publicity, but more importantly, a whole load of fun.

Why not?

The US President Barack Obama has revealed he learned the "most important" things about being a citizen through reading novels.

In a two-part interview with Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Marilynne Robinson, published by the New York Review of Books, Obama and Robinson discussed some of the broader cultural forces that shape democracy and ideas.

Obama asked the author if she was worried about people not reading novels thanks to being "overwhelmed by flashier ways to pass the time".

He said for himself: "When I think about how I understand my role as a citizen, setting aside being president, and the most important set of understandings that I bring to that position of citizen, the most important stuff I’ve learned I think I’ve learned from novels.”

Obama added that it had to do with empathy, and being comfortable with the notion that the world is complicated and full of greys.
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Robinson, the Pulitzer Prize 2005 winner for her novel Gilead, said literature at present was “full to bursting”, but that was wonderful was the incredible variety of voices in contemporary writing.  

​Read the full interview here.
 

The Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival takes place on Thursday 22 October, 5.30 – 7pm at St George’s Tron Church, 163 Buchanan Street in Glasgow.

The showcase event as part of the festival will honour submissions from the its international writing competition. Writers were asked to submit to categories including short stories, poems and letters, exploring the theme of passion in innovative and diverse ways.

The event will feature readings from the shortlisted entries and there will be an awards presentations, followed by a drinks reception.
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For more information about the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival, see the website. 

A Belarus bookshop has risked the wrath of the state to publish a Nobel prize winner’s novels.

The Lohvinau House of Literature is dedicated to publishing works by authors who don’t receive recognition frtom the state-run meida houses, including Svetlana Alexievich who won this year’s Nobel prize for literature. Alexievich’s books are hard to find in her home country because she criticises the authoritarian president, Aleksander Lukashenko.

For the past 15 years, Lohvinau has been the only publisher to print Alexievich’s books in Belarusian. (Alexievich writes in Russian).
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The bookshop stocks 500 or so titles – fiction, poetry, art magazines and academic journals. Some of the works have been smuggled in from abroad or printed by sympathetic local printers. The works are distributed through personal networks, passed on to the offices of opposition political parties and private enthusiasts who sell them from home.

Read the full story here.

This week’s New York Times featured an interview with Carl-Johan Forssen Ehrlin, a Swedish self-help author and life coach, who self-published his first children’s book, “The Rabbit Who Wants to Fall Asleep.”

The article called Ehrlin a role model for self-publishing, saying that parents had been unable to resist the book’s tagline, “A new way of getting children to sleep".

Last month, Mr Ehrlin signed a major publishing deal with Penguin Random House which will be reissuing his book (unchanged, although it will use higher quality paper stock).

His book used cognitive tricks that are meant to soothe children to sleep and, following its success in Sweden, Mr Ehrlin had the book translated into English and released via Amazon’s CreateSpace where it eventually became the first self-published book to top Amazon’s best-seller list.

Mr Ehrlin said he was happy to be a role model for self-publishing, and said he hoped his story would inspire others to become authors as well. He said that he thinks of his book as meditation, with words repeated to induce relaxation.

​To read more, see the full story on the New York Times website. 

If you're about to set off writing your first book, or even your first successful book, it might be worth taking a step back and asking yourself what you need to do first. In our experience, too many first-time authors (yes, that included most of us at Comely Bank Publishing) just launch in and start writing without having a clear idea of what they're trying to achieve. So, here are our six top tips for debut authors. You've nothing to lose by reading them. It might even save you a lot of effort...

So there you go, now you can get writing. What are you waiting for?

Locks, the full moon, failed deliveries, re-imaginings of fairy tales and Marguerite Patten - it can only be this week's round-up of Friday flash fiction stories!

Read more Friday Flash fiction here, and if you'd like to submit a story - try out via the submissions page. 

As regular visitors to this website might know, we are big fans of Friday flash fiction – so enthusiastic are we on the subject of short stories, we even set up a sister website, Friday flash fiction.

Thinking up regular short stories is good discipline for a writer. Every writer should know how to edit themselves and writing a 100-word story (or whatever the word count of your flash fiction efforts) will force you to edit. All those unnecessary words need to come out.

We also like the discipline of practising writing short stories on a regular basis (hence the title Friday flash fiction) and that needs regular inspirational ideas. Here is where we get some of our ideas for Friday flash fiction:

1. The news. Of course, there is always some kind of story you can add to. Is there missing information from a news story you think would work as fiction?
2. Memes. Pictures and inspirational quotes that go viral are good sources for a back story.
3. The seven basic plots. These include overcoming the monster, rags to riches, the quest, voyage and return, comedy, tragedy, rebirth, rebellion against ‘the one’ and mystery. If you tend to stick to one plot when writing fiction, why not try out one of the others?
4. Looking around you. Look up from your laptop and select a random object. Now write a story about it.
5. Your own life. Reimagine an encounter, a meeting or an event that has happened to you this week. Writers do this all the time, re-writing events in their life so make themselves look better/ sound wittier/ come out of something with more integrity or they just re-write it for comedy value. Writing is about exercising total control.

Where do you get the inspiration for your short stories? We'd love to know. Contact us via Twitter @comelybankpub or leave us a comment below.
 
 
 
 

Today is #SuperThursday - a marketing concept dreamt up to encourage us to buy more books in the lead-up to Christmas. More than 500 new titles are scheduled for publication today

Of course, Christmas is a time when we'll probably buy more books, so why shouldn't the publishing industry capitalise on this? And of course the big publishers have big budgets to spend on marketing.

If you want to do something different, why not treat yourself to books that haven't been published by the Big 5? 

We've updated our Writers;' Diaries section this week with a piece by CBP founder, Gordon Lawrie.

Tall people, apparently, are at greater risk of developing cancer. Gordon, who's 6ft 5i/2 inches tall, ponders the reasons for this risk in this light-hearted post.

Treat yourself to a rollicking good read this weekend...

Given our aversion to clichés, Comely Bank Publishing can hardly believe it is about to type these words, but here goes… “You CAN judge a book by its cover”. We speak from bitter experience here.

The discerning reader shouldn’t judge, but he or she does. The psychology of why we pick up a particular book, or click on its image is too complex to explain here, but if you’re a new writer your name in bold letters on the cover isn’t going to be part of the attraction so read on to find out our recommendations for covers.

1. The title needs to be big and easy to read. Check out these best-sellers for proof – One Day, Wolf Hall, and The Woman Who Stole My Life. Your book is probably going to be seen a screen first, so that title needs to stand out.
2. Pick the one main theme of your book and use it for your cover image. A love story with an element of magic? A swashbuckling historical adventure? A science fiction story about an astronaut?
3. Use other book covers to guide you. Look at similar books and genres and how they do it. Young adult and chick lit books have a distinctive and recognisable feel to them.
4. Make sure your thumbnail image is readable too. For the same reason as keeping your title big and easy to read – because your book is going to be seen on screen first – applies here too. The cover needs to look clear whatever size it is seen in, and it it’s seen on a mobile device.
5. And make sure it looks good in black and white too. Logo designers know this rule, and it applies to book covers as well.
6. Use a professional. Not just a professional designer, but a professional book cover designer who has lots of experience. Professional book cover designers look at things differently and can tell you what will work and what won’t when it comes to imagery.
7. If you must design your own cover, the following are don’ts – Comic Sans font, your children’s artwork, an image inside a box and clip art.
8. Steer away from decorative fonts – they aren’t easy to read, which takes us back to number one above.
9. Write a great blurb. Books in book shops need a great blurb – the cover attracts initially and then the potential customer turns to the back of the book to see if he or she wants to read it. Tantalise, intrigue and amuse that person.
10. Position appropriately. In the western world, people read left to right and then top to bottom so your elements (main image, title, author, short blurb etc.) should be placed in the appropriate level of importance.