Jim Bish

Fascinating stuff Richard. Not an author I recall coming across, though the title quotation is familar. It soulds as though he had throughly subverted many of the common tropes of fantasy before that genre really got going.

Yes. It’s one of the little snarls to be untangled – that sticky topics show in a sub forum even though they are located in a separate forum.

I see the lifeboat FAQ and the house rules thread as well as this topic and the creitique FAQ

Yes. Excellent point, Squidge. When monkeying around with someone else’s work, it’s important to always remember that your ideas and the author’s ideas may not mesh. Any rewriting should be done sparingly, strictly as an example (unless the author requests otherwise) and the power should always be returned to the author when you’ve finished.

My agent experience is sh!te, so I can’t help much except to say that, so long as you don’t utterly muck up the cover letter, it shouldn’t matter hugely. I honestly believe that any agent who likes your work will like it regardless of the cover letter, and any agent who dislikes you because of your cover letter regardless of the quality of the…[Read more]

Can I add something extra to this list, Jules?

By all means, give examples of how differently something could be written when you give feedback – sometimes seeing the work written differently helps you as the author to understand what difference that kind of change could make to your story. But don’t be tempted to completely rewrite the whole…[Read more]

My agent experience is somewhat limited, but I’d add that it’s not the end of the world if you don’t get one.

Although I worked with an agent for two/three years, when she decided not to work with me any further (bearing in mind that nothing was signed between us in all that time) it gave me the freedom to strike out on my own. Course, I…[Read more]

Thank you for this, Richard. I enjoyed reading about Cabell, who I’d never heard of. You convey a great flavour of the man and his writing. He doesn’t sound like my cup of tea tbh. I hope you’re going to post some more literary byways and also more of your railway and suchlike stories…

There’s this topic and a sticky FAQ page which is closed to comments, Barny. Otherwise it looks fine in my browser.

Hi Laure. please forgive me if I sound silly aking this question, but should I know you from the Word Cloud?

I feel like ýou’re talking from personal experience here, Ath 😁

Hahahaha! I got that, don’t worry 😀