Yahoo! 360° - Shelagh's Blog

Shelagh's Blog Full Post View | List View

A place to express ideas about nothing in general and writing in particular.

Mr. Planemaker's Flying Machine on Preston FM: Preston FM is about to serialise Mr. Planemaker's Flying Machine for the daily morning programme, Chat City.

The time: 8.20am every morning Monday to Friday

The place: Chat City on Preston FM

The starting date: May 11th 2009

5-8 min daily episodes will be repeated in an omnibus edition at 5pm each Sunday.

Listen live online on www.preston.fm

Tags: radio, programme, childrensfiction, book, novel, serial

Thursday 9 April 2009 - 11:51PM (BST) Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Self-publishing: Not an Easy Option: Many aspiring writers and authors set out to write a novel in the expectation that a publisher out there might be interested in their manuscript. Often, their drive and enthusiasm stems from the enjoyment they receive from writing their stories.

We’ve all been on the receiving end of a request from a friend to listen to a new piece of music in the expectation that we’ll love it as much as our friend does. Often, those who gain a great deal of pleasure from any form of entertainment feel a desire to share that enjoyment with others.
Unfortunately, readers rarely share the same kind of enthusiasm for works of fiction by unknown authors and, although new writers may be engrossed in the process of writing, this doesn’t spill over to readers. Enjoying the whole process of writing a novel is no guarantee that readers would love to read the novel if only the author could get it out to them.

I say unfortunately because many writers start to write the novel they want to write and then try to attract the interest of a publisher, which leads to an endless stream of rejection slips and disappointment.
In order to succeed, new writers must be prepared to research the market thoroughly before they start to type anything into their word processors. Although I know this now, I didn’t know when the first few ideas for a story began to form in my mind, which meant I was no different to thousands of other aspiring writers and, as such, I encountered exactly the same problems as all first-time writers.

Although I failed to do any research about the business of publishing, I did locate the information for the novel that had started to take shape. The location of that information was in the newspaper archives of the Mitchell Library in Glasgow, Scotland – one of the largest reference libraries in Europe. But first, I had to pass my driving test.
Ten years ago, when I began the research for The Power of Persuasion, because I did not have the Internet at my fingertips, all the information I required was stored in the Mitchell library and there was simply no alternative. I booked driving lessons and, four months later, I passed my test. The following day, I drove into Glasgow and circled the library for twenty minutes until I found a parking space. My journey to the library was over but my journey into writing had only just begun.

Two weeks later, after spending my days in the library, I was in a position to make a start. When I finally hit the keys on my computer, I wrote two thousand words every day for six weeks and completed the manuscript in less than two months. I didn’t edit, polish or change the initial draft in any way before I sent out the opening chapters to London-based publishers.

This was absolutely the wrong thing to do. I thought that publishers would read the synopsis and use the opening chapters to see if I had a feel for language and an aptitude for telling a story. To that extent, I did accomplish something. Although every submission came back with a rejection slip, it was clear from my communications with the publishers that they had enjoyed reading the samples I sent. That was the upside. The downside was that they also said they rarely, if ever, accepted unsolicited manuscripts. Without exception, the advice from the publishers was the same: I needed to find an agent. They did tell me it would be as difficult to find an agent as a publisher and they were right. It was.

After a stack of rejections, I stopped searching for agents and publishers and put the manuscript in a drawer and forgot all about it until January 2002 when my brother died of cancer at the age of forty-three and left two young children, then aged five and eight years old. Two months later I began writing again and wrote a children’s novel, Mr. Planemaker’s Flying Machine. The novel was published in 2005 by Publish America.

After the novel was published, I decided to dust off the first manuscript and rewrote The Power of Persuasion. Throughout the rewriting of the novel, I knew I would have to make a decision about whether or not to send the novel to Publish America. I’d plenty time to think about it; I may have written the initial story in six weeks but it took almost twelve months to rewrite. After considering all the options, I decided to contact agents first rather than sending out anything to publishers. Not unexpectedly, the outcome was the same as the first time I contacted the agents. So, I decided to self-publish.
I could have sent the manuscript to Publish America but I had received a very mixed, and sometimes hostile, reaction from readers on the Internet in general, and members of forums in particular. Many of these critics had been published by Publish America themselves but many had not. None of the critics had been published by Publish America and then gone on to self-publish, though many Publish America authors did go on to self-publish but they weren’t the critics. I now understand why.

The whole process of being published – from the first submission, through acceptance, sending of the author’s questionnaire, receiving of proofs, approval of the cover art to the final receiving of two free copies sent to Wales all the way from America – was a joyful experience. Even those published by Publish America, who went on to become their sternest critics, enjoyed the process of seeing their first book published. The stress they felt came after they were published not before.
With self-publishing, for me, it has been completely the opposite. I wanted my self-published book to be of the same standard as my published book and, in order to achieve this, I had to learn a great deal. I did all the editing, which took three months on top of the year I’d spent rewriting. Then I had to decide about layout, headings and page footers, and how to gutter the page text. I also had to learn about pdf files and creating a book cover. This was hard work and stressful.

When Mr. Planemaker’s Flying Machine was finally published by Publish America, I experienced an enormous thrill and surge of happiness. When The Power of Persuasion was published, I was so tired and worn down by the whole process I was simply relieved it was out of the way.
Does any of this reflect on my novel? No. The novel is well-written, humorous, entertaining and a darn good read. I would recommend it to anyone. Just anyone. Even you.

Description: Beth Durban is persuaded to write a letter to the editor's page of a national Sunday newspaper in response to a film critic’s prejudice against adaptations of Jane Austen’s novels. When she receives an unexpected visit from the newspaper's critic, F. William D'Arcy, she’s bemused but, after several sightings of the inquisitive journalist, she’s neither pleased nor amused.
Beth is so distracted by the unwelcome interest from such an arrogant man she fails to see that a close work colleague is falling in love with her. As a scientific researcher in a Scottish University, she has led a varied and interesting life travelling the world, spending time in New Zealand, Canada, Australia, America, Singapore and Israel. With such a full and demanding life, she has had little time to form any serious, romantic attachments that might lead to a permanent relationship.

When she decides to take driving lessons, Beth opens up new opportunities for herself and realises that perhaps she isn’t too old to find love after all.
Shelagh Watkins

Tags: self-publishing, publishing, fiction, childrensfiction, writing, reading, literaryfiction

Monday 6 April 2009 - 11:19AM (BST) Permanent Link | 0 Comments
P & E Readers' Poll Results: The results of the Preditors and Editors Readers' Poll are now up.

Forever Friends was 5th in the Anthology category:

http://www.anotherealm.com/prededitors/voteanthology08.htm

and 2nd in the Book Cover Art category:

http://www.anotherealm.com/prededitors/votebookart08.htm

You can add this to all your websites/blogs:

I was 6th in the Authors category:

http://www.anotherealm.com/prededitors/voteauthor08.htm

and The Power of Persuasion was 6th in the novel category:

http://www.anotherealm.com/prededitors/votenovel08.htm

I was placed 23rd in the book editors category:

http://www.anotherealm.com/prededitors/votebookeditor08.htm

Mandinam Press was placed 22nd in the publishers category:

http://www.anotherealm.com/prededitors/votebookpub08.htm

Thanks for voting!

Tags: readerspoll, readers, books, novels, competition, fiction, anthology, bookcover

Wednesday 4 February 2009 - 04:25PM (GMT) Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Preditors & Editors Readers' Poll: It's Preditors & Editors Readers' Poll time again! Please vote for the anthology, Forever Friends, in the Anthologies category and the Book Cover Art category. I would also appreciate your vote for The Power of Persuasion in the All other category and a vote for me!

Anthologies page – Forever Friends:
http://www.critters.org/predpoll/antho.shtml

Book Cover Art – Forever Friends:
http://www.critters.org/predpoll/bookart.shtml

All other – The Power of Persuasion:
http://www.critters.org/predpoll/novel.shtml
Authors page – Shelagh Watkins
http://www.critters.org/predpoll/author.shtml

Please invite all your online friends to vote (MySpace, Facebook etc.).

Thanks everyone!

Take That are at the top of the UK albums chart. This is me on the front cover of a magazine with one of the band members, Mark Owen:

Forever Friends is currently #2 and #3 in the P & E Readers' Poll. If the anthology can make it to #1 we will both be top of the charts! You can check out the current placings here:

http://www.critters.org/predpoll/tally.html

Tags: anthology, anthologies, awards, competitions, polls, editors, book, books, friends

Sunday 4 January 2009 - 02:31PM (GMT) Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Virtual Book Tour for Forever Friends: I've set up a blog tour for the anthology and I will be showing some of the blog posts here. This is the blog entry for Day Three of the tour:

Thank you for reading this blog entry! This is the third post on the blog tour. If you have just joined the tour, welcome! If you read the first two postings on Chelle Cordero’s and Zada Connaway’s blogs, thank you for following the tour! In the first two posts, I mentioned what a wonderful book Forever Friends is and promised readers that they would not be disappointed if they bought the book for themselves or as gifts for friends and family. I talked about the short stories in the anthology and the breadth and depth covered: from science fiction to mystery and romance. I also mentioned some of the poems in the book, which are just as diverse and equally entertaining. All, whether tear-jerking or raising a smile, will give the reader new insights into human relationships and the different kinds of friendship. Within these poems, there is something for everyone!

When I began setting up the blog tour, I invited the blog hosts to send questions for me to answer. Mary sent a list of interesting questions and these are my answers:
1. What inspired you to publish Forever Friends?

The idea came from a discussion on the publishedauthor.org when one of the members, Pam Robertson, suggested that a group of members on the forum should get together to produce a volume of stories. I had set up Mandinam Press in January this year to publish The Power of Persuasion, so I offered to publish an anthology of short stories and poems written by members of the Published Authors Network and forum.
2. Will there be another Anthology in the near future?

There are no plans at the moment for a second anthology. The book has been entered into a competition for Best Anthology of 2008. If the book placed in the top three, it would certainly inspire me and everyone else to consider at least one more book.
3. Where will the tour start and end for Forever Friends?

The tour began on December 1st on Chelle Cordero’s blog and will end on December 17th on Tiziana Rinaldi Castro’s MySpace blog. If, for any reason, a blog venue could not host a blog posting, that blog will appear on my wordpress blog. I will be posting a duplicate blog to all the ones I send out on Shelagh’s Weblog.
4.What did you enjoy the most from creating Forever Friends?

I enjoyed the challenge of it. The submissions arrived randomly. Sometimes two or three short stories arrived together followed by a poem or two or three poems before another short story arrived. At the beginning it seemed an easy task as I sorted the stories into sections. I left all the poems to be inserted once the sections had been set up and the stories had been inserted into the sections. I concentrated on the editing, which was quite a task in itself. Submissions arrived in the body of emails and as attachments. The word attachments had all kinds of weird and wonderful formatting. Some submissions that must have looked fine on the contributors’ computers had been stitched together from various files and looked like patchwork quilts on my computer. I even had to download some software from the Internet to open one of the attachments.

As the number of stories and poems increased, the task became more and more difficult, until there were thirty three selected short stories (eventually reduced to thirty-one) and twenty-three poems. I had to remember the contents of every story and poem so that I could slot the poems to not only fit into the relevant sections but to lead into the next story or follow on from the previous story. This was quite a challenge and, although I was very pleased with the way everything came together eventually, I made numerous changes throughout the period of compiling the book. I even changed my mind at the very last minute, making an enormous reshuffle of the sections and their contents just days before the anthology went to press.

I also felt pressured to get the book out and available to buy online for the upcoming holiday period and the book has only recently been added to amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com and all the other leading online stores. Maybe if there is to be another anthology, I will take more time to put the book together before it finally goes to press.
5.How long did it take to finish and was it a task getting authors to join in?

The first submission arrived on May 21st and the last submission arrived on September 5th. The book was uploaded onto lulu.com on September 21st, exactly four months after I received the first submission.

It was more difficult to attract contributors than I had initially thought it would be. I do not have an explanation for this. The network had over five hundred members at the time but less than one tenth of those members were willing to take part. I will leave readers to make up their own minds as to why the response was so low.
6.Where can you be reached for book signings?
Book signings will be set up by the individual contributors and you should check their blogs and websites for information about these events.

I would like to thank Mary for inviting me to say more about Forever Friends. I was delighted to include Mary’s poem, Our Friendship, which has a gentle rhythm, soft imagery and words that lilt and flow, conjuring up a world of peaceful reminiscence. Mary is an accomplished writer as well as a poet. One of her books Love Laws has been nominated for a Cyblis award in the Young Adult Fiction category. The Cybils are an international series of book awards selected by a talented panel of children's and young adult book bloggers. The award seeks to find books that strike the balance between literary quality and kid appeal. A panel of experienced children's literature bloggers for each category will be reading the nominated books and selecting a shortlist of 5 to 7 finalists for each category, to be announced on January 1st 2009. After that, a separate judging panel will read the finalists and choose a winner, to be announced on February 14th 2009.

Congratulations Mary! If you missed the first blog posting on Chelle Cordero’s blog. Check it out here: Chelle Cordero

Forever Friends is available now from all major online stores, including amazon.com: Forever Friends and barnesandnoble.com: Forever Friends

Thanks again for reading this and best wishes for the holiday season!

Shelagh Watkins

Please follow the tour to learn more about the book.

Blog Tour

December 1 Chelle Cordero

December 2 Zada Connaway

December 3 Mary Muhammad

Tags: anthology, book, books, fiction, friends, friendships, literaryfiction, literature, non-fiction, poem, poems, poetry, relationships, story, stories, shortstory, writing

Saturday 13 December 2008 - 02:27PM (GMT) Permanent Link | 0 Comments

Add Shelagh's Blog to your My Yahoo! page:

About My Yahoo! & RSS

shelagh

Tag Cloud

MY BLOGROLL

Shelagh's Blog Full Post View | List View