Sophie Jonas-Hill

@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]

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]

Hi, Hel. Glad you joined!

I totally agree, Daeds, about the persistence thing. My personality is to be like a dog with a bone, and I think that accounts for a lot!

I do believe that the other thing is about continually learning CRAFT. I have been listening to a series of podcasts (https://storygrid.simplecast.fm) over the last 6 months or so and boy, have I learnt a lot.…[Read more]

@Kate – Really sorry to hear you haven’t had any successes with your submission yet. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you. I love your writing so I know there are no issues there.

I admit that’s why I tend to submit short stories and flash. You tend to get an answer quicker, and editors often take the time to give some feedback or e…[Read more]