Sandra

@RichardB

Hey Twitter, I would love, love, love to find both a fantastic historical fiction novel and a ghost story. So get sending / spreading the word please and make my summer great!

— Sarah Manning (@SarahManning123) July 4, 2018

Sarah Manning requested subs of ghost stories in July

Congratulations!

Richard, you should definitely go for it. I’ve seen a few agents mentioning ghost story in their wishlist.

BTW Kate, I love magical realism, and given that the latest trend in publishing is towards ghost stories (Silent Companions etc.), maybe it won’t be long before that’s the hot genre?

I know what you mean, Daeds, about the ‘oh crap’ moment where you see where you’ve been going wrong. But it feels so good once you grasp it!

Richard – FWIW, you also have us. One of the things I’d like the Den to be, as the Cloud has been at its best, is a place for mutual assistance, advice, support and so on. You may not have a presence on social media, but a lot of us do, and social media is as much about building a network as anything else. We can help you if you want to go down…[Read more]

This has been a really encouraging thread for someone whose still battering at the agents’ doors. I am definitely one for bloody minded perseverance, so I’ve got that one ticked, and am always striving to improve my craft. I’ll take a look at those podcasts Philippa, they sound excellent.
I’ve just finished Mark Forsythe’s Elements of Eloquence…[Read more]

Excellent point about craft, Philippa. I’ve always been rather, um…informal about how I approach structure etc but the more I learn, the more criticial I find it to be. I think you tend to improve naturally just by writing (and reading) more, but actively learning is essential. The problem I have with throwing myself into addressing matters of c…[Read more]