CLARENDON HOUSE PUBLICATIONS

Each individual author probably needs a particular kind of beta reader, or more than one.   In broad terms, you probably need at least one beta who is familiar with your genre, and at least one who isn’t. The first will be able to point out genre-specific things (like your misuse of cannonballs in an Anglo-Saxon tale, for example) while the second may be able to indicate your overuse of adverbs, for example.   Here are some other characteristics to look for in beta readers. N

So you’ve written a book and you want to get it published.   Chances are, if you are like 90% of writers, no one has read your finished draft at all - except perhaps a close relative or friend. So the leap from that quiet and private world of the writer to the world of the agent or publisher is quite a large one, over an almighty abyss: how on earth do you judge whether or not your book is in any sense ‘ready to publish’? And how do you summon up the courage to launch it into

Here’s a paradox: I have a reputation for being a fabulous public speaker - but I loathe speaking in public.   If any circumstance arises where it looks as though I will be required to speak in front of even a small group, or if I am invited or obliged to address a larger group, I immediately break out in a cold sweat: my heart begins to beat faster, I feel slightly nauseous, and (most prominently in all of these symptoms) the palms of my hands begin to perspire profusely. (T

All of the things discussed in this series - incompleteness, the Zeigarnik Effect, blurbs, pitches, cover designs and all the rest - why should you have to bother with them?   Aren’t they the province of publishers?   Don’t writers just write and then hand everything over to someone else to get it to readers?   That’s the way it used to be, and still is to some extent. Traditional publishing is still alive. Publishers are still in the business of creating books and selling th

True story: there I was, trapped under a five foot thick concrete beam, breathing in poisonous chlorine fumes, and receiving an electric shock…   Probably the worst physically hazardous situation I’ve ever been in, though the build-up to it is a little more prosaic.   In the 1980s, I was part of a volunteer organisation which operated out of an old six story building in downtown Sydney, Australia. For many years, they had had a rat problem: thousands upon thousands of these r

I once found myself within a foot or so of the famous ‘Discworld’ author, Terry Pratchett. Through a series of extraordinary events, I found myself trapped in a hotel during a Discworld convention: the entire building was swarming with people in wizard and witch costumes, chatting incomprehensibly with each other, behaving in that rather odd and distinctly uncomfortable way that people behave at such events, a kind of half-in, half-out of character 'performance', loud and sli

I was once fortunate enough to speak with Monty Roberts at one of his shows in the 1990s. Roberts is an American horse trainer who promotes his techniques of natural horsemanship through his Join-Up International organisation, believing that horses use a non-verbal language, which he terms ‘Equus’. Roberts' original best-seller, The Man Who Listens to Horses , (prompted, it is claimed by Queen Elizabeth after she had seen his horse training methods) marked the beginning of in

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird  is a good example of how a narrative can be structured so that the reader can be both drawn into the story by a vulnerable character and yet guided through it by a narrator. Lee paints Scout as a naive and innocent young girl who at the beginning of the novel is just beginning school. Scout’s encounter with racism and brutality is told to us through the older and wiser Scout, the narrating voice who can interject at times to point the way o

After the blurb comes the pitch.   The ‘pitch’ is a fuller synopsis of your story. You’ll need this to talk to agents or publishers. You’ll need it to talk to yourself when you lose track of what you’re doing.   The pitch isn’t aimed at readers, particularly.   To put together a good pitch you need to understand at least some of the elements of the craft of writing. There are plenty of guides out there about how to write a pitch, and several of them use the terminology common