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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
My co-editing partner in crime at Albedo One, Robert Neilson, has started up a series of short interviews he calls bloggerviews over at his blog, which will eventually be archived on the Albedo One website. And to kick the series off, he’s only gone and interviewed little ol’ moi. I’ll probably upload the interview to … Continue reading
Bless me father, for I have sinned. It is over one month since I last blogged. Yes, I know. In these fast-paced, plugged-in, networking days of the blogosphere such a thing is unpardonable. But I plead extenuating circumstances: a surfeit of freelance editing work, the mad dash to get the new issue of Albedo One, … Continue reading
There’s a minor character in Albert Camus’ brilliant novel The Plague who spends years and years agonising over the structure and wording of the opening sentence of a novel he plans to write. He’s torn between a multitude of variations of the sentence, convinced that if he can just get that one sentence right the … Continue reading
John Kenny 