This blog is running a little late due to illness, my apologies. And just a warning that there won’t be a blog next week due to my attendance at [p2p type=”slug” value=”swancon-2014-panels”]SwanCon[/p2p].

Keep within the genre

I’m not sure why a writer would submit a manuscript ‘outside of genre’ to a publisher, but they do. This is despite our website saying we publish speculative fiction, with a focus on Science Fiction and Fantasy. Case in point – knowing this, and in fact already having had a manuscript rejected by us, why would someone email us a detective story? Even going so far as to say in their covering email – “I know this isn’t Science Fiction but Detective stories are similar.” Actually they’re not, particularly for readers of either genre.

My advice, check a publishers website, read a couple of their books, or at least read the samples provided, and try and find someone who is going to be interested in your work before they open it for that important first read.

Hague Central

In a nod to Jerry Pournell’s Chaos Manor articles which he used to write monthly for BYTE (starting in 1979 which is when I must have started reading) I’ve decided to try and give a more personal view at the end of each blog on what we’ve been doing during the week. I suspect it may take a couple of weeks before I get into my swing – but here goes…

I’ve finished the penultimate edit on the sequel to Ruth Fox’s sequel to The City of Silver Light. The cover has also been finalised so hopefully we’ll be in a position to announce a release date for Across the Bridges in the near future. It just needs one more quick read through and then its off to Coreynn, who’s our copy editor, to do the final check on grammar, spelling, and consistency. Its been a long haul, but I still like The City of Silver Light and I think readers of the series will like how Ruth has taken the opportunity to develop some of the character is this sequel.

Still waiting on a response from Overdrive as to whether they will distribute us. I’ve just send a second query off to Overdrive as to how their QA on the five eBooks I sent them is proceeding. So far its taken two months without any sort of update.

Andrew