As you probably know I've been rather excited about Shaindel Beers' poetry collection, A Brief History of Time, so just imagine how excited I am about having her here on my blog. Yes. Very.

Welcome to the blog, Shaindel. It’s a true pleasure to have you here. So, who are you? What do you do?

Thanks, Nik! Lovely to be here. That’s certainly a broad question. Let’s see. I’m a writer and full-time college writing instructor in Pendleton, Oregon. I spend most of my time teaching, reading, and writing, at least, I hope. I’m afraid if we timed my life, I might spend the most time grading, followed by laundry, dishes, and cooking, but let’s not think that way. And then I work part-time jobs on weekends—Saturdays as a fitness instructor at Curves and Sundays doing yard work for a couple in a nearby town. I’m always busy, it seems. Oh, I also teach poetry writing online at AllWriters.org, if any of your readers would be interested in looking into online writing courses with me or with other great writers in the States.



The poems in A Brief History of Time are varied in theme, form and subject matter; is there one place they all started from?

That’s really interesting to think about because I guess that one place would be my consciousness, unless everything starts in the subconscious?

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First out, cheers to Roderic for giving me his slot this month. He met Sheila, my missus, on one of those writing courses down the local pub, and he drops in for a cuppa every now and then to talk about the stuff they write. You should hear them, spending hours looking at one sentence and trying to decide if it should be “dandled the baby in her arms” or “dandled the baby in her hands”. Bollocks in my opinion, but there you are. Course, if he dandles Sheila anywhere, I’ll rip his eyes out. If you really want my opinion, she should be spending more time with the actual baby; I can hear it starting to cry in the back room.


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When I was first doing the submissions/rejections thing, I had an idealistic vision of post-publication life.

That is, I thought it would be pretty much the same as before.

I would have a book with my name on it, but other than that I'd still be sitting in the same chair, writing another novel at the same computer. The only differences would be that I'd have a valid excuse for doing it, and if I was very lucky, I'd get the occasional PLR payment enabling me to treat myself to a Wispa...

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A writer friend, whom I called Marguerite before, is grappling with feedback on her novel from her agent: the writing's wonderful, the world is fully realised, but although the main character bears much the largest part of the burden of what sounds like a very fascinating novel, he's a bit baffling, and we don't really get to know him. The problem is, says Marguerite, that he is solitary, reclusive, super-defended, perhaps slightly mad, and the reason, and the mainspring of the story, is a mystery in his past.

'In other words, you've given yourself a built-in problem,' I said, as the second instalment of coffee arrived. 'It's something inherent in what you're trying to do: the thing's worth doing, but it's hard to make work. I often find myself pointing that out in editorial reports.'

'Yes,' said Marguerite. 'The thing is, he isn't just not letting the other characters in, or the readers, he's not letting me in. That's why he's come out like that.'

It's the kind of statement which either annoys or fascinates non-writers, and often annoys the more down-to-earth of our brethren too. This character isn't human, after all, it's Margeurite's concoction of scraps from her experience. A puppet, a symbol, a function in a plot, a representation of a human in a medium which itself has no physical existence at all: a story transmitted by black symbols on the page, to be recreated by readers in accordance with a set of rules and customs, as they assemble 'him' from their own scraps of experience.

And yet both writers and readers talk quite casually as if such creatures (in the true sense of 'created beings') are people.

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Today's the day, today! I believe it I really do, I've had a good morning so far I've found a few competitions to enter, I'm about to trawl through what I've currently written in a novel I'm attempting to write, maybe even work on a script. Because today is the day!

The day the holiday stops for me, the day I finish being a Uni student inbetween years, the summer isn't a place for laying around and turning myself into some sort of tanning experiment although the nickname Caramel Delight seems appealing, the summer isn't about sitting in the garden drinking endlessly, it can be, I can write that somehow is somehow one word? somehow - some how? To top it all off it's raining.

Here's the thing right, I've spent 5 weeks wasting time, dodging work becasue of my lack of planning, and my knowing of going back to Uni in September, but the problem is there will be a time when I don't go back to Uni in September and the longer I sit around the worse it will get. I even wrote stand up today, although I have no idea how that would work, it's about 3 minutes long and unless an audience is entertained by incest, rent boys, and the down fall of toys 'r' us I don't think it will go down to well.

TODAY IS THE DAY.

The day I write everyday again, the day I get back into the routine, the day I discover the writewords blog that has been in the corner of my page for nearly a year, the day I have a plan, the day I decide I will make money from this somehow, not so much this blog, but maybe who knows? The day I write, from 9 til5, although today I started at 10 because I had to go and buy bacon, and sausages, and fill up my tummywum. The day Keith Hodges, becomes DYLAN MCTHOMASLEGS, I won't really become him though. It seemed like a charasmatic name all the while I was writing this and I wanted to put it in.

The problem I have is I'm writing this now, but my heads going right Keith I heard this book needs writing, or a story, set in a carnival where a woman gives you 4 darts for £2, you have to get a certain score, but this woman right Keith, KEITH you listening? Stop typing Keith and listen. The woman right, is actually Jeremy Beadle, it's a show, it's a comeback show, a comeback for the dead show.

In those famous last-ish words - This is it.

Five authors from the Snowbooks stable are on tour, answering questions from various blogs – and Strictly Writing is proud to announce that today their stop-off is here!

So, please give a warm welcome to…

Andrew Sanger, author of The J-Word.

Alastair Sim, author of The Unbelievers.

Thomas Emson, author of Skarlet.

Paula Brackston, author of The Book of Shadows.

Fiona Robyn, author of The Blue Handbag.

- Tell us about how you first got published?

Andrew: My very first published book was the first edition of the Rough Guide to France, which I was commissioned to co-author. The first solo title was my own idea, The Vegetarian Traveller. Then came my first non-travel book, a memoir of the hippy years, called Love. I published it myself on the website, Lulu.com. Then last year I completed my first piece of real fiction writing, The J-Word. I was all set to self-publish again, but decided to send it to just one publisher. After a bit of research, I chose Snowbooks. I struck lucky – they really liked The J-Word.

Alastair: A short story 'Aurora Borealis' in 'Chapman', Scotland's main literary magazine in 1989 when I was still a student. Bizarrely, it was about a middle aged person facing up to Love, God and Death, so I suppose I've matured into that literary voice.

Thomas: I'd written a rough first draft of "Maneater" in 1999. Then I left it for years. I gave up full-time work in 2006 to concentrate on my writing. I went back to the novel, re-wrote the first few thousand words. I didn't know who published horror, but then saw one of David Wellington's zombie novels at WH Smith - the publisher was Snowbooks. I sent them the first 10,000 words of "Maneater". Emma Barnes emailed back within hours to say they loved it and wanted to see the rest. A few months later, after I'd re-written the rest, they came back to say they were going to publish - a fantastic day, a dream come true.

Paula: I spent several years having my non-fiction published, including a travel book, and selling my short stories to magazines, but it was Snowbooks who published my first piece of full-length fiction, Book of Shadows. Bless them for their open submissions policy! It is really hard for new authors to get their work looked at by publishers. And agents are not always the answer – I had one for two years. She was lovely, and we had some delicious lunches, but she never placed a novel for me.

Fiona: I submitted my first novel 'Thaw' directly to Snowbooks, and then a couple of months later thought I might as well send in my other two. Anna got back to me and said 'Thaw' had been sitting in her 'to be read more carefully' folder, and that the further submissions had prompted her to look at it more closely.





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But what's this? Yesterday I get an alert about a site that's charging £31.50! True, I have to convert it from Australian Dollars but there it is - what can't speak can't lie, as my Camberwell mother-in-law used to say.

If I thought £31.50 was excessive, Amazon is even better. My book's becoming a collectable!




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How nice it is - well, it's only happened once, so I can't generalize - but how lovely to wake up today to an email saying that my first published poem is in the latest issue of Contrary Magazine. It's called Baby in A Jar (thanks to Nik for the inspiration!). It is a great boost, especially on the morning after the day when I couldn't get down to doing any writing, when I went a little stir crazy, especially by evening (thanks to my Twitter friends who came up with helpful suggestions for what I could be doing instead!) ....

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I will be signing Kill-Grief at Waterstone’s in Chesham, Bucks, this Saturday from 11am until 2pm, so if you are in the area and would like to pop in and say hello, I will be delighted to see you. For a map and further details, click here or contact me via my website.

I have been doing some publicity for this over the past couple of weeks and it has occurred to me how useful a signing can be to help raise a book’s profile in general...


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Well, did you?

Sorry. You’ve caught me on a bad day. I feel like picking a fight.

The picture I present to the world is of a fairly mild mannered mother of two, but at the moment I am a seething mass of irritation. I am a veritable cauldron of misanthropy. The man in a van [isn't it always] who cut me up at the roundabout earlier? The stroppy teenage shop assistant who ignored me because she was too busy texting? The dog owner who failed to pick up after his mutt?
Toast, all of them. At least in my mind.

The reason for all this bile is that I’m what you might call between projects. If I was an actor I could say I was resting. Basically, I have no writing work in progress. And because of this, I am B-O-R-E-D.


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