CLARENDON HOUSE PUBLICATIONS

In celebration of the life of one of the world's greatest authors, who died recently, I re-present this updated blog item last posted in February 2018:   Ursula K. Le Guin, born in 1929, who died in 2018, published twenty-two novels, eleven volumes of short stories, four collections of essays, twelve books for children, six volumes of poetry and four of translation. She received the Hugo and Nebula Awards, National Book Award, and many others. From the treatment of gender ( T

Let’s wade into the minefield of discussion about the differences between science fiction and fantasy. Just for amusement.   Firstly, a kind of confession: many years ago, I designed the Storm  anthology and its guidelines around the idea of ‘eucatastrophe’. Tolkien defined ‘eucatastophe’ as the sudden turn of events at the end of a story which ensures that the protagonist does not  meet some terrible, impending, and very plausible and probable doom. It might sound a little e

If there was one idea which I could get rid of in the minds of writers trying to market their work on social media, it would probably be the notion that dropping a link on a massive number of sites and then moving on is the right thing to do.   I call it ‘drop and run’. It’s based on an ancient idea that probably stems from when human beings first learned about agriculture: the idea that you scatter volumes of seeds around and only some of them grow into a crop of wheat or wh

If you have been anywhere near Facebook or Google advertising, or indeed anywhere near the internet, you’ll probably be familiar with the term ‘algorithm’, defined by the dictionary as ‘a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations, especially by a computer’ and familiar to us as the complex programming behind the way social media and search engines work.   Writers interested in selling their published works often engage with Goo

What do writers want?   The first thing that might occur to anyone attempting to answer this question is ‘help in writing stories’. But many writers feel that this is the last  thing they need help with. ‘Being a writer’ to them is a very personal and very private activity, a zone in which something almost mystically creative takes place and some kind of ‘inner self’ puts words together on a page or screen. This is a secret sanctum for those writers, into which no one is admi

I recently posted something on Facebook about television and its power to absorb attention and human endeavour. It was a humorous snippet, but some serious thoughts lay behind it. One comment in response was that one might as well replace ‘television’ with ‘Facebook’ - but there is a crucial difference.   People sometimes ask me how I fit everything in. I run a publishing company with several anthologies and text books on the go, plus writing my own books (7 in progress at th

Thirty-five years ago - a length of time which is shocking to me, stated bluntly like that - I was working hard to save up the money to return to England from a prior quarter of a century in Australia. In order to do this, I was labouring at several jobs and trying to make maximum use of every hour in the day.   One of these jobs was as an office cleaner, and one of the premises I ended up cleaning was a place called the Writers’ Association in Adelaide, South Australia. The

Writers want to make money from what they do. We all want to make money from what we do.   Why?   That might sound like a silly question, but here’s a train of thought which you might find interesting in relation to the topic of money.   In the days before money, when human beings lived in small agricultural communities, individuals worked with their families and other members of the group to serve each others’ needs. Some hunted for food, some grew food, some were in charge