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For many years, Jim Rockhill has been a staunch advocate for the work of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, most probably Ireland’s premier writer of supernatural tales and the uncanny. Between 2002 and 2005, Rockhill edited a major three-volume collection of Le Fanu’s supernatural fiction for Ash-Tree Press, writing a highly informative introduction for each volume. … Continue reading
I had the good fortune to interview Victor Rees recently about his and Iain Sinclair’s assembling of a tribute to the late great Brian Catling: A Mystery of Remnant. The book gathers a number of short stories, an essay, a play and a poem, all of which admirably serve to give readers a flavour of … Continue reading
In 2020 Swan River Press published Ghosts of the Chit-Chat, a collection of short stories edited by Robert Lloyd Parry and featuring the work of a number of writers who had, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, been members of the Chit-Chat Club, a gathering of undergraduates and staff of Cambridge University that … Continue reading
You’ve written your masterpiece, your short story, poem, or novel; you’ve sweated blood crafting the work, redrafting and redrafting. It’s time to unleash it on an unsuspecting public. There’s only one thing standing between you and fame: the editor and/or first/slush reader of the publication or publisher. It can be frustrating to have your work … Continue reading
Many writers will agree that writing synopses is something they have difficulty doing. There is quite a bit of confusion as to what exactly a synopsis is. Why is it required? How do you go about writing one? It’s common knowledge that a synopsis is a summary of the story a writer has written and … Continue reading
Cover letters are a curious creature. Editors generally pay scarce attention to them, certainly if they accompany a short story submission to a magazine, anthology or webzine. And yet they are nearly always a submission requirement. A sure way to put an editor’s nose out of joint is to post or email a submission with … Continue reading
On foot of my review of Peter Bell’s new collection of supernatural tales, Strange Epiphanies, due out soon from Swan River Press, I’ve interviewed him about landscape as character, the genesis of the stories and the process of writing in general. I’ll post the full interview on this site soon, but in the meantime, check … Continue reading
I thought long and hard before including the word ‘F*****g’ in the title of this second part of my occasional series on submitting work to publishers; reason being I didn’t want to be seen as potentially disparaging towards the vast majority of writers who do go the trouble of checking out the guidelines to a … Continue reading
It’s a commonly accepted concept that writers starting out begin by submitting stories to lesser known publications and, as they build a profile for themselves, work their way up over time to more prestigious venues for fiction, the idea being that all the while they are honing their craft and becoming better writers. And on … Continue reading
Anyone with a genuine interest in writing, with a view to not only getting published but also making a career of it, if you might call it that, invariably reads one or more books on writing. There are many books on writing out there, many of them good, several of which I’ve read. But I … Continue reading
John Kenny 