What I'm Working On
I’ve been asked recently whether Clarendon House is still going to produce anthologies. The short answer is ‘Yes’. But to give you an idea why there are none open for submissions at the moment, I thought I’d give you an overview of what I’m working on.
By the way, there are two anthologies currently open for submissions connected to Clarendon House: Linden Books is asking for Christian tales, articles, testimonies, true stories and the like for their upcoming deluxe hardback volume Alpha One, deadline April 30th; and Outlook Books is asking for raunchy romances for their book, Dark Secrets, the deadline for which is coming up in a few days, March 31st. I am mentoring both these imprints and you can get more details on their pages on the Clarendon House website.
The Inner Circle Writers’ Magazine is also always open for submissions: stories, articles, artwork, news and so on. Plus the Great Clarendon House Writing Challenge is currently calling for pieces of flash fiction, with a 500 word limit — the details can be found in the latest issue of the magazine here. Email me your work: grant@clarendonhousebooks.com.
Meanwhile, here at Clarendon House headquarters on the edge of the Yorkshire Moors, I am concentrating on several key projects which will be released over the next few months, some of which I have hinted at, but some of which you will not yet have heard of.
My first priority is to deliver on my promise to publish collections of stories for those authors who have won a book contract from me. They did this by gaining the most votes from readers for various tales which have appeared in earlier Clarendon House anthologies. Thus my laptop is currently processing the following authors’ works:
Emily Fluckiger, whose story 'What Happened to Asher’ won the contest for Rapture: The Inner Circle Writers' Group Romance Anthology 2018
Gabriella Balcom whose story 'Mouses and Rats Cot Reel Cheep’ won the contest for Miracle: The Inner Circle Writers' Group Christian Stories Anthology 2018
and
Patt O'Neil whose story ‘Her Sister's Keeper’ which was a joint winner for Enigma: The Inner Circle Writers' Group Crime/Mystery/Thriller Anthology 2018.
Each of these collections is special in its own way, and I am painstakingly making my way through each so that you, the reader, can expect to receive your treats from these authors over the next few weeks.
Further to those collections, I am compiling an encyclopaedic work entitled The Big Book of Writing Prompts. I’ve mentioned this briefly before and since then it has come along quite a way. This isn’t what you might expect — in other words, it’s not just a long list of story prompts, which present you the writer with an image or idea and then leave you to figure out the rest. No, this is something unique — I can promise you that you won’t find anything like it anywhere in the world.
It starts off with images and ideas, for sure — but then it uses the unique methodology of story construction described in my book How Stories Really Work to provide dozens of different pathways for each prompt, utilising Themes, the Four Basic Genres (and the sub-genres they contain), the Seven Character Archetypes (with the hundreds of character arcs and combinations that they encompass) and then a variety of settings or periods, plus more. This means that you will be able to journey through many, many different options for each prompt. Furthermore, you will be able to take the requirements of a publication asking for submissions and work out your theme, plot, character interaction and everything else using the guides in the book. You’ll never be stuck as a writer again!
The book will come with diagrams, explanations and examples so that you can make best use of its vast resources.
On top of that, I’m also revising, embellishing and compiling the recent series of blog articles I wrote, forming them into a comprehensive guide which will be called How to Write Your Author Prospectus. This will be a book designed to assist you with the ‘behind-the-scenes’ steps, theoretical and practical, which you need to tackle if you want to have a viable career as writer. The idea is that, with this book, you will be able to confront and deal with all those invisible obstacles which stand between you and success — obstacles which right now could be hindering your ability to write at your best, and which certainly get in the way of you successfully marketing your own work. So please watch out for that, coming soon.
There are other things in the pipeline too, including the Clarendon Master Author Programme. Have you ever felt like you needed to go to some kind of ‘writing school’ in order to learn the secrets of the master authors? Even if you’ve been successful in the past, have you wanted to expand upon your success, to really grasp what it is that you’re doing and to be able to magnify and consolidate it? All that, and much more, is contained within the Clarendon House Master Programme, an online writers’ school with tailor-made curricula designed with you in mind. Stand by for further details.
There are other things coming too.
So I haven’t been idle — but you can probably understand why there aren’t any anthologies open at the moment, other than the ones mentioned above for Linden Books and Outlook Books. I’m sure that, later in the year, once these and other projects are out there in the world of readers, room will open up for more anthology opportunities for you. Please stay in touch — and feel free to email me with any questions!
grant@clarendonhousebooks.com