Today is publication day for my new book, Some Of Us Glow More Than Others, that rather handsome looking devil above, published by the excellent Unthank Books! There are more details about the book here - including links to some of the stories and where you can get your hands on one (or electronic hands). Thanks so much to my wonderful agent, Kate Johnson, without whom this would not be happening. I am dazed and grateful!

I also wanted to thank the amazing, tireless literary magazine editors and small presses who first published many of these stories - they are the lifeblood of the short story community and they give writers both joy and, vitally, the permission to keep on doing this thing we do. So, thank you: Ambit magazine, Bare Fiction, The Binnacle, Butcher's Dog, Catapult, Commonwealth Broadcasting Association, Edgeways anthology (Spread the Word), The Fiction Desk, Five Dials, kill author, Comma Press, The Lonely Crowd, Metazen, National Flash Fiction Day,  Nature Futures, New Flash Fiction Review, New Scientist, Out of Place (Spineless Wonders), Prose Poem Project, Red Room anthology (Unthank), r.kv.r.y., ROOM magazine, Salt Book of New Writing, Schemers Anthology, Synaesthesia magazine, STILL anthology (Negative Press), the Stinging Fly, Stories for Homes anthology, Timber journal, Wales Arts Review, Words with Jam, and World Literature Today.

Over on Twitter, I did a thread with #TenThingsAboutMyBook, and I thought I'd post it here too, in case you're curious:

#TenThingsAboutMyBook 1. The cover's glowing jellyfish refer to the discovery of green fluorescent protein which revolutionised mol biology!

#TenThingsAboutMyBook 2. 'God Glows' was written at Hawthornden Castle - my nun sits looking out over the valley near Rossyln Chapel.

#TenThingsAboutMyBook 3. 'Octopus's Garden' was inspired by a @FT profile of a woman who works as a diver for the Paris city council.

#TenThingsAboutMyBook 4. 'War Games' was begun during an Arvon workshop run by my co-tutor, @adammarek, on plotting (which I never do!)

#TenThingsAboutMyBook 5. 'And What If All Your Blood Ran Cold' was inspired by a @newscientist article about a brand new medical procedure.

#TenThingsAboutMyBook 6.'A Shower of Curates' - first published in Red Room - has the first lines from all of the Brontes' novels in it.

#TenThingsAboutMyBook 7. 'Empty But For Darwin' was inspired by a @BBCRadio4 programme about a person whose job is to paint chess pieces.

#TenThingsAboutMyBook 8. 'Experimentation' was the 1st story I wrote while I was writer-in-res in a @BristolUni biochem lab. It's FICTION :)

#TenThingsAboutMyBook' 9. The Plan' was inspired by a @newscientist article about the pitfalls of Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory.

#TenThingsAboutMyBook and finally, 10: I never thought I'd get an agent & I NEVER dreamed I'd have a THIRD short story collection. #DeepJoy

What if no-one sees short story collections?

This was going to be another mini-rant in the style of last year's complaint about some literary agents who have a "no response means no" policy, but then I started thinking. Over the past 8 years or so I've been in touch with maybe 20 literary agents, in the UK, US and Canada, and heard about many, many more from writer friends, and the refrain is always the same:

[I really like your writing but] I can't sell a short story collection (or novella), publishers don't want them; come back when you've got a novel. 

This week I had a slight variation on that theme in a reply from an agent (to whom I am very grateful that she replied and so quickly!):

Come back when you have a full length novel. 

While I'm not exactly sure what the requirements are for a full-length novel, this is not what I wanted to discuss. The thought suddenly struck me that if agents are blocking us at the first hurdle, publishers never get offered short story collections (or novellas). They never even see them. So how are they supposed to know whether they want to publish them or not?

Of course, it may be that the publishers are sending instructions to the agents along the lines of: Don't bring us short stories, poetry, novellas, science fiction, paranormal detective fiction, novels under 150 pages etc..etc.. etc.. and the agents are just acting as their gatekeepers. But with such gatekeepers, who aren't prepared to even try and fight for something that's slightly off-message, what are we to do, and, more importantly, what does it say about the state of mainstream publishing?

Once again, I give thanks for the many amazing small independent presses - Salt and Tangent Books in particular, on a personal level - who publish whatever they like, whatever they love, with not much thought of breaking even let alone profit. But is this the situation the major publishers want to be in? Do they not want to be persuaded - and in turn attempt, using their marketing wizards, to persuade a public that does, it seem still remain hungry for some novelty - by something different, something that isn't a novel?

I would love to hear from literary agents and publishers here - please pass on this blog post and see if anyone will comment. Am I not thinking commercially enough? Where is my thinking going wrong here? Be honest with me, am I being clouded by my own failure to find representation?

The hopeless hopeful silence

I'm recovering from a packed ten days, first at the Cork International Short Story Festival and then this past weekend at the Small Wonder short story festival. Both were wonderful, but the reason I decided to treat myself and go to both is rather less wonderful. I've been feeling depressed about the short story. Not about the short story itself, good heavens no! How could I, when reading short stories brings such joy into my life and writing them might even have saved my life.

No, I've been depressed about the "business" of short stories, and more specifically short story collections. It's only so much we short story writers and lovers can take of being told the same thing again and again and again... No-one reads short stories...No-one buys short story collections...No-one wants your work.. Oh, I don't like short stories... Then came the BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Reading cuts, which I found out about on my birthday. Charming. Sign the protest petition here. At least the comments by signatories are really heartening.

Then a few days ago someone in the audience at Small Wonder even asked one of the speakers why they write short stories since short story writers are "in the graveyard of writing", or something to that effect. You can imagine how I was feeling hearing that. We're in the graveyard of writing? We're dead? Who's dead? We write for the dead?

My first reaction is, No we're bloody well not, there are thousands of people worldwide who love reading short stories. Maybe even more than that. It was heartening in Cork to meet a wonderful Canadian writer, Deborah Willis, whose first collection was bought by Penguin Canada without an agent and was nominated for the Governer General's Award - and for her to tell me she is under no pressure to write a novel. Of course, in Canada you just say the words "Alice Munro" like a magic password if someone dares to suggest that you "graduate" from the little short story to the mightly novel.

Now, my rant here is not against novels - that would be utterly ridiculous. Some of my best friends are writing novels :) No, my rant here is that writers aren't being allowed to write whatever they want - and, more than that, what they are good at.

Second rant, and this relates to the title of this post and is more personal. I've been thinking it's about time I looked for an agent. I had a few meetings in 2009 when my book was commended for the Orange Award for New Writers, and everyone was very kind but I didn't have anything for them to sell. That made sense. Well, now I am 3/4 of the way through a new collection, biology-inspired fictions, funded by an Arts Council England grant, and so I thought this might be a good time.

I want to state categorically here that I fully expected the "I'm so sorry but we just can't sell short story collections at all right now". I figured there was a 0.0001% chance an agent would buck that trend. What I didn't bargain for was this: silence. Total and utter silence, from three agents. I wrote what I thought was a well-constructed query email, and I had a personal recommendation to each agent through writer friends and another agent. But... I was also completely honest about only wanting to write short stories.

No response. Nothing. And it's been 6 weeks or more...

And then last week I read about the new "no response means no" policy apparently being adopted by a number of literary agents. This equates to: if we don't write back, we don't want you. I am very thankful that I am not alone in find this quite shocking. You don't have a minute to even paste in a form reply saying "no"? Apparently, one agent said she employs the "no response" tactic because she doesn't like dealing with the "negativity" of having to reject people. Oh my.

I'd like to put my Short Review editor's hat on here. We receive a lot of queries asking if we might review a newly published short story collection, many more than we can, in fact, review (which is good news for short story collections). I have a form reply in which the first thing I do is congratulate the author or publisher - because, especially in this climate, I believe every short story collection published is a cause for celebration! I then explain how I will try and find a reviewer but it might not happen. It makes me sad, the number of collections we won't be able to review since we "only" review 10 a month. But I would never dream of ignoring an email. Never.

As editor last year of Southword, I had to pick 6 short stories for the issue. This meant rejecting hundreds of stories - a number of which were submitted by friends of mine. How did I feel? Sick. Because I knew exactly how it would feel to get that email, however kindly I worded it.

But to leave someone hanging, not knowing if the non-response is a sign that there is hope or not, is, frankly, cruel. I think it is deeply uncivilized. And if that agent thinks she is avoiding negative karma by not sending an actual rejection, she is mistaken. She should congratulate and applaud every single person who gets up the guts to write to her. Don't we all know how hard it is to move from "I'm trying to write" to "I am a writer", to take that leap into sending out your work to a publication, to then even contemplate the next step, the possibility of an agent taking you on?

Thankfully, there are a number of agents who have reacted to this "no reply means no" and said that they simply don't agree with this. I think we should vote with our feet - if an agent has a "no reply means no" policy, perhaps we should send them silence first, before they can send it back. And let's give ourselves a round of applause, for just putting ourselves out there.

It's not easy. I am trying to stop worrying so much about the "business" side of all this and get back into the writing. Thank goodness for all the amazing small presses out there who are publishing the books - not just story collections - that are the sorts of things that no-one thinks will sell. They are to be applauded too. As a very wise friend of mine said, mainstream publishing is a bit like Marks & Spencers  - they aren't going to agree to sell a limited edition of your hand-painted belts unless it's a very special occasion. And if what you're creating doesn't even really look like a belt... well then. 

 In the mean time, I'm getting down to some writing. I'm going to stop caring if I'm making the right kind of belts. I'm going to let it all hang out.


ADDENDUM
I forgot to mention that this also comes after hearing many many stories from fellow writers of non-responses, not just to initial queries like mine, which didn't include an MS, but after agents have requested an MS to be rushed overnight to them, they are so excited about it! And then.... silence. Is this a good way to do business?

ADDENDUM 2

I am being told that 12 weeks is about standard for a response time, so it seems I was jumping the gun here. But this isn't just about me, this is about a principle which I do hope isn't becoming the norm. I've just had a response from an agent's assistant apologizing for the delay - it seems it's a complete coincidence that it came today, and I have thanked her profusely for just ending the silence. I don't mind waiting and waiting... not at all, I understand how large the slush piles are. I just needed to know that I hadn't sent my queries into a void! An autoreply, as mentioned in the comments here, would have helped immensely.

Lit mags in the UK & ireland

For those who are new to this blog, I just wanted to let you know that I have just updated my Ever-Growing List of Uk & Ireland Literary Magazines that published short stories... we're up to 117 now, although a few have shut down since I began keeping the list. If you go to the blog post, you can download a PDF of the updated list too. And see the Addendum - good news, the Best of British Short Stories has been resurrected by my publisher, Salt, and Nicholas Royle is at the moment compiling the stories, the book will be published in April!

Menage a Trois: Part 1

It's wonderful having friends who are writers, sharing experiences, celebrating the good things and commiserating about the hard times. So first, some celebration: I am delighted that my great friend Vanessa Gebbie's first novel, The Coward's Tale, will be published by that venerable publishing house Bloomsbury, in the UK and the US, with hardback coming out in Nov 2011! Thrilling news and inspiring for all of us, it is a beautiful, poetic book, it's fantastic that a major publisher sees its potential for capturing a great readership. Congratulations!

Now, what is the title of this blog all about? Not just there to catch your eye... I have two writer friends, Sue Guiney - whose most recent novel, Clash of Innocents, was published in November - and Lauri Kubuitsile - Botswana-based author of 13 books - who are very prolific, writing all sorts of things, and a few months ago I thought I'd ask them how they did it. The 3-way conversation was fascinating, it went on and on... So we thought we'd split it in three parts and host a third each on our blogs, all on the same day - and also as part of Sue's virtual book tour. Hence: menage-a-trois. Right? Before I launch into my first third, here are their bios:

Sue Guiney: I'm a writer of fiction, poetry, plays. I'm a teacher of fiction, poetry, plays. Born and raised in New York, I've made my life in London with my husband and two sons.

Lauri Kubuitsile: I have 13 published books, including three books from my Kate Gomolemo Detective series. My children's book Mmele and the Magic Bones (Pentagon 2008) was shortlisted for the African Writers Prize (UK) and has since been chosen as a set book for all primary schools in Botswana.My short stories have won numerous prizes.In 2005, I was among three writers shortlisted for our national, biannual prize for creative writing the Orange/Botswerere Prize. In 2007, I took first position for the same prize.

And here's what we talked about. There'll be a link to Part 2, on Lauri's blog, at the bottom:

Tania: Hi Sue and Lauri. Tell us everything - everything - that you write!

Sue:

Thanks so much for asking me to take part in this, Tania. So to begin, some may say my writing is all over the place:
Poetry
Novels
Short stories
Plays
Magazine articles
My blog (of course)
Endless emails

Lauri

Good morning Ladies,
Oh my- this might be a bit of an embarrassment showing explicitly what a writing whore I am but here goes:

Adult short stories
Short stories for kids
Detective novellas
Romance novellas
Adult novels
Children’s books
Magazine articles
Newspaper articles-primarily science and health
Newspaper column on writing books and publishing (this is new)
Radio educational programmes (science, maths and English for primary)
TV scripts- drama series for private production company and HIV/AIDS NGO
Science textbooks for primary and junior secondary school
English textbooks junior secondary
Blog

I think that’s it.

Tania: Wow! I had no idea that you were both so amazingly prolific. Ok next question, feel free to take your time with this:

2) How do you know what you're going to write before you start? Is it a conscious decision or not? Is it for some forms and not others?

Lauri: 

Hi Guys. This is fun. I think I may be different from Sue as I must make a living from my writing, I must have a monthly income of a certain amount from writing. My husband is a government school headmaster (translated as low paying) and we have two kids. I need to work. I don’t want to take a day job. I want to earn my share from my writing. I know it is politically incorrect to say that I write to earn a living, but that’s it. Keeping it real- as it is.

I have two adult novels I wrote with no market in mind- I just wrote them- they sit unpublished and will likely remain there unless I break out and then conveniently die. From that experience, I know I don’t like writing that doesn’t get published. I view it as a failure (normally) or as a lesson when I’m being kind hearted.

So having said that, I always know where I’m going when I start. I don’t always know which publisher I will send to, or contest, or magazine but I know if I am writing a romance or an adult novel or a children’s book; I know if it will be genre or literary. I am an anal Capricorn – I plan most everything in my life, and after those first two ‘organic’ novels I decided I was going against my innate nature to do otherwise with my writing. Occasionally I will tweak something afterward to have it more streamlined for a particular mag or publisher that I eventually choose. I usually start with an idea that stews in my mind until it gets the right amount of ‘tension’ behind it, but when I get to work at the computer,  I know already what I am writing.

Sue:

Hi Guys.  I’m back!
First, I want to say that I  think Lauri is amazing to be able to reliably have a monthly income from her writing.  That is something I have only dreamed of...I don’t think it is “politically incorrect” at all to say that you write for a living.  It is what I aspire to.  I am very lucky in that my family does not rely on me for income.  To be honest, if that was the case I’m not sure what sort of writing I’d be doing at all.


But as far as knowing what genre a new piece will be, like Lauri, I know at the start.  An idea will come to me, and the form it will take will come along with it.  With poetry, I do tend to sit down with my “poet’s head” on and think, “ok, it’s time to write a poem. What will it be?”  But with other genres, the piece itself will dictate the form.  For example, plays will grow out of a very visual kind of imagining.  Although all my writing, including poems, seems to originate with character, in a play I imagine that character in a specific space like a restaurant or a sitting room, whereas fiction places the character first and foremost in time.  When I write a story, the time is compressed, as in a day or a few hours.  In a novel, time expands to cover a series of months or a year.  Certainly, there have been great novels that take place in just one day (ie Joyce’s Ulysses). And there have been many short stories that cover an entire lifetime.  But for me, so far at least, fiction examines how a character evolves over time and the breadth of that time period helps to dictate the form.    But to be honest, I have recently found that the more pieces I have written and the more pieces I am trying to find a home for, the more I need to think about how much time I myself have.  Do I have the time or energy to begin to write something that I know can’t possibly take me less than a year or two to finish, like a novel, or should I wait before taking on another task of that magnitude and use my time to work on shorter pieces?  For the first time in my writing life I find myself in precisely that position right now.  I presently have a novel, 2 plays, a short story and a poetry collection “out there.”  I know all of them will eventually need revising and reworking.  So I’m holding off beginning the new novel I have in mind until most of what is already out there is really finished.  So I suppose I’m saying that the more writing becomes a business for me, the more I put brakes on myself and steer myself towards one genre or another, depending on outside unrelated factors.


Yes, this is fun.  Lob us another one, Tania!

Tania: This is fun! And very interesting. Is there anything you'd like to ask each other while I am formulating my thoughts?
 .... 
...carry on reading over at Thoughts from Botswana>>>>

Short story news roundup

I'm not yet ready to blog about what it's like to have moved countries, that kind of thing, I am still musing, so I thought I'd bring some exciting news from Short Story World. First, Electric Literature, the new lit zine that is available in print, as an eBook, or for your Kindle of iPhone, and pays its contributors a wonderful $1000 per story (!) has taken an exciting step into the world of animation and asked animators to create a very short film based on one line from each of the pieces they published in Issue 1. Here, for example, is Jonathon Ashley's take on a sentence from Michael Cunningham's novel excerpt:




There is one more animation on the Electric Literature YouTube page as well as a trailer for Jim Shepherd's Your Fate Hurtles Down at You. I love the idea of animating short stories... see what you think.

Another very welcome newcomer is Madras press, based in the US. This is what they are all about - and they are publishing the wondrous Aimee Bender as one of their first authors, which is always a great thing!

"Madras Press publishes individually bound short stories and novellas and distributes the proceeds to a growing list of charitable organizations chosen by our authors.

The format of our books provides readers with the opportunity to experience a story on its own, with no advertisements or unrelated articles surrounding it; it also provides a home for stories that are often arbitrarily ignored by commercial publishing outfits, whether because they’re too long for magazines but not trade-book length, or because they don’t resemble certain other stories. These are clumsy, ill-fitting stories made perfect when read in the simplest possible way.

Published in regular series of four, our books also serve as fundraising efforts for a number of charitable causes and organizations. Each of our authors has selected a beneficiary to which all net proceeds generated from the sales of his or her book will be donated; these include organizations dedicated to environmental protection, community development, human services, and much more.

On October 1, our online bookstore will open, at which time you'll be able to order from our first series of titles:The Third Elevator, by Aimee Bender
Proceeds to benefit InsideOUT Writers

Bobcat, by Rebecca Lee
Proceeds to benefit Riverkeeper

Sweet Tomb, by Trinie Dalton
Proceeds to benefit the Theodore Payne Foundation

A Mere Pittance, by Sumanth Prabhaker
Proceeds to benefit Helping Hands: Monkey Helpers for the Disabled

Each book will cost about as much as a greeting card, and will come with your name (or a name of your choice) transcribed in an ex-libris panel on the inside front cover."

A lovely idea, not only boosting the short story, but raising money for worthy causes at the same time. Founding editor Sumanth Prabhaker told me they will be accepting submissions from oct 1st and "We operate on a purely volunteer basis, so that the only cost subtracted from the sticker price of online purchases is for manufacturing. Acquisitions, editing, design, production, and marketing are all done at no cost. Taking inspiration from the Concord Free Press, we are foregoing commercial distribution and working directly with bookstores and consumers." Good luck to them!

Thirdly, going head to head with the BBC National Short Story Award, but with a bigger cheque, the brand new Sunday Times Short Story Prize will award £25,000 (no, you haven't read that wrong) "for a single short story in Britain and Ireland. " Says the announcement:

"The prize, backed by EFG Private Bank, is the latest sign that the genre is once again thriving after many years of falling popularity. The contest is open to authors who have already had work published in Britain and Ireland, and is intended to attract well-established writers as well as relative unknowns."

Now, this is welcome news indeed, as is anything that intends to get more people reading short stories (falling popularity? You're just looking in the wrong places).

However, as with the BBC award, this is not judged anonymously, which bothers me. It always bothers me. Is it about the writing or about the name above the writing? An interesting discussion on Facebook ensued, with Nicola making the excellent point that since this is open to published stories, it can't be anonymous since some of the (six) judges may have read some of the stories submitted and know who they were written by. Very good point. So: just accept unpublished stories. That solves that one.

What do you think? We all know that it is hard enough to read something without simultaneously looking up the author's bio, let alone reading something by a "big name". You just can't really read it in a vacuum. But you can at least attempt that. If it is going to be "award for best previously-published story" then that is something else.

I'm not complaining, not really. Just thinking out loud. £25,000 will mean an enormous amount to any writer unless they are Dan Brown, I highly doubt any writer of literary fiction (if this is what the prize is aiming at) makes that from their books. Yes, the best short story should win. But I say that anything that might stand in the way of that goal should, if at all possible, be removed.

Thoughts??

In these Faster Times...

A new website launched today, and I know some of those involved so I thought I would give The Faster Times a plug here.

The Faster Times is a collective of great journalists who have come together to try something new. As we launch this July, we will have more than a hundred correspondents in over 20 countries. We have someone on the ground in Kenya and someone else reporting from Lebanon. Our arts section will cover not just film and books, but also theater and dance and photography. We will launch with seven writers on books alone. These writers are not “citizen journalists” but among the most accomplished and recognized names in their respective fields.

The website seems to be a sort of Huffington Post-ish let's-write-about-everything type of site, covering World, Politics, Business, Science, Food, Arts, Books, Parents, Sports, Travel and Advice on their top menu bar above the logo... and Health, Tech, Nonsense, Love and Death, Design, Insider and Surprise Me on the menu bar just under the logo.

Intrigued as I am by "Nonsense"(!), I am obviously most interested in the "seven writers on books alone" part! So I wander to the Books page, and here I find that one of the main sections is Indie Books. And here is an article by the Indie Books editor, Rozalia Jovanovic, on why she loves small presses:

When I began to articulate why I am endeared to small presses, the output of which I’ll be concerned with in this column, I was hard-pressed to find a hole-less rationale. But I am clear that the work that most challenges me as a reader, the writing which I find most satisfying, is often enough the product of a Dalkey Archive, Serpent’s Tail or Verse Press. This has something to do with my empathy for the sound assertion of individuality.

She goes on to say that she is "wary of group rhapsody. Whether religious, political, or social, the self-effacement required of collective euphorias makes me cagey....Indie publishers have long been known for their struggles against group rhapsody. ..." Read the rest of her article here.

This, alongside links to articles with titles like "Talented Writers Dropped by Large Publishers are a Boon for Small Presses", and, on the main Books page, a link to Kevin Brockmeir's 50 Favourite Short Stories ( The Twenty-seventh Man" by Nathan Englander is the only story I've read) makes me think I am going to be reading the Faster Times fairly often.

Ah hang on... I just found that they have a Science+Art section! Ok, now I'm hooked: The Return of the Odor Artist ("The life of an odor artist is, more often than not, an unfulfilled one. "), a link to New Scientist article An Astronaut Confronts Gustav Holst's 'The Planets'. Mmm. Lots and lots of reading to do. How will I find time to write?

Good luck, Faster Times, in these days of swiftly-changing loyalties, I hope you thrive.

Addendum: Just seen that they have linked to The Short Review's "wonderful" interview with Matt Bell from their Publishing page. How lovely!

Save Salt - buy a book, or three

Sadly, my wonderful publishers, Salt, run by the astonishing and energetic Jen and Chris Hamilton-Emery, are struggling to keep afloat in these difficult times. Chris sent a message out on Facebook yesterday and so I am passing it on, trying to do my part:

As many of you will know, Jen and I have been struggling to keep Salt moving since June last year when the economic downturn began to affect our press. Our three year funding ends this year: we've £4,000 due from Arts Council England in a final payment, but cannot apply through Grants for the Arts for further funding for Salt's operations. Spring sales were down nearly 80% on the previous year, and despite April's much improved trading, the past twelve months has left us with a budget deficit of over £55,000. It's proving to be a very big hole and we're having to take some drastic measures to save our business.

Here's how you can help us to save Salt and all our work with hundreds of authors around the world.

JUST ONE BOOK

1. Please buy just one book, right now. We don't mind from where, you can buy it from us or from Amazon, your local shop or megastore, online or offline. If you buy just one book now, you'll help to save Salt. Timing is absolutely everything here. We need cash now to stay afloat. If you love literature, help keep it alive. All it takes is just one book sale. Go to our online store and help us keep going.

2. Share this. Tell your friends. If we can spread the word about our cash crisis, we can hopefully find more sales and save our literary publishing. Remember it's just one book, that's all it takes to save us. Please do it now.

With my best wishes to everyone
Chris
Director
Salt Publishing

If you are in the book-buying mood, now's the time! Here are just a few of the wonderful Salt titles that are available. Click on each cover for more information:



And these are just some of the short story collections, there is a wealth of wonderful poetry too. Now is the time - buy a book! You don't have to do it through Salt or Amazon. The Book Depository has free shipping worldwide. Current and future Salt authors thank you!

AND - don't forget you still have 6 days to enter to win a free signed copy of The White Road and Other Stories! See my guest post on How Publishing Really Works.