Elle

@bellam, perhaps you can help me. I remember as a child hearing about a pirate radio ship that had been caught in a storm and had to put into Harwich, when it was impounded. I was there with my Mum and she pointed it out to me. I just remember a small, red ship. This was in the mid 1980s. I can’t find any references to it. I know we still had…[Read more]

Lovely, elegiac blog, Richard. I don’t think I realised how hard it could be to access pop music, especially anything out of the mainstream, until the late 60s.

As you know, Fairport is one of my favourite bands as well. I’d never heard the live version of Percy’s Song but just listened to it, and I know what you mean – both versions have…[Read more]

Interesting to see this pop up again – thanks for those podcasts Libby, looks interesting – and it has sort of kicked a thought into the foreground.

As a writer, my books *are* me (when it comes to fiction, that is). They are fragments of my being that I have extracted and slapped down on paper. I find it impossible to conceive of someone who…[Read more]

Publishers vary a lot in terms of the extent they will consult and take account of author suggestions. Mine have ranged from asking me for examples of covers I like and making changes to the design at my behest, to not even showing me the cover until the book is published. In the middle was making some changes to a first iteration, showing a…[Read more]

With crime fiction, it seems that the ‘THIS IS WHAT THIS IS signifier is a silhouetted man walking down a tunnel or over a bridge or along a lonely road BUT IT IS ALWAYS THE SAME BLINKING MAN!!! and I wonder authors don’t put their foot down. Even more so when I see what can be done by a small company with ‘This is our undoing’

It’s a great cover because it hints at characters and themes and atmosphere enough to give a sense of the book, without doing so too overtly

@Daedalus, that’s so unutterably awful it’s tipped all the way over into wonderful!

@libby, @athelstone, thank you. I’m delighted with my foxy. 🙂

I think you’re right in that figures are often used as a massive ‘THIS IS WHAT THIS BOOK IS’ flag, like for bodice rippers or YA urban romantic fantasy, or twee historical rags-to-riches stories.…[Read more]

So. Many. Ways. That’s horrifying.

It is, isn’t it?

I suppose that once a book and an author become so well known that the text will survive whatever the publisher throws at it, things are different. The various covers for Mrs Dalloway were what I thought of straight away. They are almost always a portrait of a woman, often Woolf herself, but there are few that would positively prevent a purchase.…[Read more]

Our local indie bookshop – https://www.drakethebookshop.co.uk/ – is doing a brilliant job of keeping us stocked up with books – and says he has deliveries of stock arriving daily for click and collect. I’ve already spent £100 with him this year – and my ‘need’ list grows ever longer.

Catalyst

Despite the haste of his extreme, and unavoidably, late arrival – ‘Sorry, sorry, bastards took my phone so no way to warn. I’ll be fine, just need to wash the blood off … nose, yeah. Not broken. No, it’s fine, Alix paid my cab off at the door. And yeah, the police took witness statements.’ – he’d caught a glimpse of her as he hurri…[Read more]

It is an excellent fox. Foxes are cool.

I think I understand really well why you wouldn’t want a human face on the cover. A huge part of the pleasure of reading a novel, is the way the characters reveal themselves to us as the story progresses. A picture of somebody, fully-formed, denies the reader that pleasure. But you can understand why…[Read more]

Now our winter comp is over – may I remind all of you wonderful story tellers that the monthly ones are still running, March already half-way through.
At present no contenders.

Stunning, Raine.