The Making of a Book
Sutton Literary Festival, Part One
Top Doll author Karen McCarthy Woolfe, interviewed by Shani Akilah
Born in London to an English mother and a Jamaican father, Karen McCarthy Woolf is a poet, teaches on the MA on Creative Writing at Goldsmiths and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her ground-breaking debut collection, An Aviary of Small Birds, was shortlisted for both the Forward Best First Collection Prize and the…
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Today I’m delighted to welcome Christine Webber back to Virtual Book Club, my author interview series in which authors have the opportunity to pitch their book to your book club. Christine was a guest on my blog in July 2021, when she was talking about her novel, So Many Ways of Loving, which was subsequently…
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Small Eden: Cover Reveal
The story behind the cover
I felt very strongly that the cover for Small Eden should have a strong local anchor. The inspiration for my tenth novel was the cottage I have called home for the past twenty-one years, built (as far as we’ve been able to ascertain) as the ticket office for pleasure gardens which opened at the turn…
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It’s been a long time coming. Two years, 3 months and 6 days to be precise. But launch day is finally here. I want to start with a very big thank you to my advance readers, who have already been sending me feedback and asking about the best place to post reviews. I always suggest…
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It’s been a long time coming, but my *ninth novel will be released in eBook format on 13 July. To be among the first to have it delivered to you, you can pre-order now at the special price of £1.99/$1.99. (The cost will be £4.99 on release). The universal link is https://books2read.com/u/brWppZ. When you use the link, just select…
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I’m delighted to welcome Anita Belli to Virtual Book Club, my interview series that gives authors the opportunity to pitch their novels to your book club. This month I’m showcasing my fellow nominees for The Selfies Award 2019 – a chance to check out the competition! Anita describes herself as a ‘compulsive writer’ and creative tutor, who…
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Smash all the Windows: the typesetting
The Making of a Book
We’re nearing the finish line. Now we turn to the book’s interior. What is it going to look like? And how will that add to (or detract from) the way that the reader experiences the book? From Wiki: Typesetting is the composition of text by means of arranging physical types or the digital equivalents. Stored…
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Smash all the Windows: the proofread
The Making of a Book
This week we come to the final edits and the proofread. And for this I used Perry Iles. He describes his job as ‘look after the small stuff’, but attention to grammar, spelling and consistency (is it proofread, proof read or proof-read?) is vital at this stage, when the temptation might be think you’re on…
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Smash all the Windows: how I use beta readers
The Making of a Book
Beta readers are an essential part of my editorial process. I couldn’t do without them. What is a beta reader, and how does this differ from an advance reader? Confusingly, authors use different terms to describe the same role, or sometimes one term is employed to describe different roles. When I use the term ‘beta…
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Smash all the Windows: the structural edit
The Making of a Book
In this week’s blog, I focus on the structural edit. It includes a contribution from my structural editor, Dan Holloway, the person Stephen Fry might have had in mind when he said, “We are not nouns, we are verbs.” “I am not a thing – an actor, a writer – I am a person who…
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