Jim Bish

Oh goodness, yes – we are our own worst critics!!

On the cloud, we often talked about ‘failure’ and ‘success’ and how differently people perceived the definitions of them. So I completely understand that you view not being placed as failure – it was one of a whole range of responses we used to get.

Me – I enter very few comps because I hated…[Read more]

Definitely not failure if you’ve tried some comps – you had to write the bloomin’ entry first! And from experience, competitions can be a matter of luck as well as great writing – does the judge like your particular genre? Your style? I know from peer-judging comps on the cloud, my own preference for reading material comes through in the kind of…[Read more]

I suspect there might be a difference between US and UK practice as far as copyright goes. In the UK, copyright is presupposed so you don’t need to do anything to assert it. In the US it may be a bit less clear cut

Indeed it is. Well done John. That’s an amazingly fast turnaround as well, they must have loved it

This is absolutely fantastic. What a brilliant resource

Histfic can definitely have mainstream appeal. Seems as though one of Juliet Mushens’ biggest successes as an agent recently was with The Miniaturist. Though I gather Juliet is interested in history. The blogpost about how that novel was pitched to her is interesting. I think the link was posted somewhere around here. Go for it

🙂

@philippaeast Lovely to see you too! Was Cynthia the one I was chatting to with you? I’m pleased to have inspired her 🙂

@alanr Ha! Thank you very much, kind sir 😀

@squidge Indeed we do!! 😀

Apologies, Richard, I saw that you’d written this blog a few days ago but was busy, and then it slipped my mind. I’m ashamed to say, as a fan of SF, that I’ve never read any Le Guin (or K Le Guin). I’d been wondering where I might start, and now I know. The Dispossessed sounds as though it is brimming with ideas, which is to my mind a hallmar…[Read more]

I removed that sidebar because a glitch in the WP software meant that it was displaying posts from private groups publically, Richard. Apparently this has been an ongoing issue since 2013 and no one has yet found a workable repair to the code. Will have a proper look at it or at an alternative when I’ve got time next week. But that’s why it’s gone…[Read more]