When were you happiest? This is one of those questions that pop up in celebrity questionnaires in weekend colour supplements. The answers are fairly predictable or, at least, the variation in the replies is quite limited. (An alternative question – when were you unhappiest? – would elicit, I reckon, a far greater range of responses. But who would dare ask it?)
We can all look back and pinpoint our happiest times. In Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, Clarissa could identify ‘the most exquisite moment of her whole life.’ And that moment was fleeting.
Women’s Prize for Fiction Longlist
Kate Atkinson plies her craft in Life After Life, to show how lives can swing between misery and happiness almost on a whim, on a chance event, on a minor decision, say, to set our earlier, rather than later, to meet someone at a train station. Her story is forever retracing itself as her characters ‘revisit’ the same events, responding differently each time and thus precipitating vastly different outcomes. It’s no surprise that the novel is on the longlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Read more
https://annecharnock.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Screen-Shot-2015-08-01-at-10.46.39.png226218annehttp://annecharnock.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/AC-name-banner2.jpganne2013-04-08 10:34:272015-08-02 19:48:44Kate Atkinson – Life After Life
Still two weeks to go before the shortlist is announced for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2013 (formerly the Orange Prize for Fiction) and I’ve just finished Honour by Elif Shafak, in contention as one of 20 longlisted novels. I’m rather ambitiously planning to read the shortlisted novels as part of Anne’s April Reading Challenge – a challenge that also encompasses a bunch of books vying for the Arthur C Clarke Prize.
‘Honour’ by Elif Shafak
This is the first novel I’ve read by Elif Shafak, who writes in both English and Turkish. Her novel The Bastard of Istanbul was longlisted for The Orange Prize and she is also well known for The Forty Rules of Love. Shafak has written eight novels to date. Read more
https://annecharnock.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Elif-Shafak.jpg317283annehttp://annecharnock.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/AC-name-banner2.jpganne2013-04-03 08:58:072015-08-01 10:48:47Women’s Prize for Fiction Contender: Elif Shafak
Any graph of my reading habits over the past 10 years would reveal vertiginous spikes in April and May. These are the months of my self-imposed, manic preparations for Hay Festival. This 10-day literature event (23 May to 2 June) is a high point in my calendar despite the obligation to camp on a sloping, […]
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As soon as I released my Kindle eBook last November, I began formatting a paperback. Here’s a lengthy post with a few tips on self-publishing a paperback based on my experience with CreateSpace – a print-on-demand (POD) service operated by Amazon. The whole process was less fraught than I expected. In fact, I really enjoyed it.
Making a paperback is a fundamentally different process to creating an eBook. In the case of my Kindle eBook, I uploaded a Microsoft Word document – I explained the process in an earlier blogpost. In essence, this Word document was a long, single scroll of text. When readers download eBooks from the Amazon Kindle store, they can control the font and font size; those decisions are out of the author’s control.
However, for the paperback, I had total control and at the end of the formatting process I uploaded a PDF to CreateSpace – so I knew exactly how the paperback would look. So here are my self-publishing tips for making a paperback with CreateSpace.
Before I plough on, I should point out that some authors prefer to publish their paperback before their eBook. This allows them to send advance reading copies to reviewers, and sometimes these ARCs are sent out with a draft cover design. However, I wanted to reach as many potential readers as possible in the shortest possible time so I started with an eBook. I might change my strategy for a second novel.
If you’re planning to publish a paperback, look at your own bookshelves and examine the differences between books. This will help you to make the following choices: Read more
https://annecharnock.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/pod-d.jpg492425annehttp://annecharnock.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/AC-name-banner2.jpganne2013-03-21 10:05:062015-07-10 16:38:20Self-Publishing Tips: Manuscript to CreateSpace Paperback
I’m ridiculously excited that I’ve shifted across to WordPress. I had to make the move because my previous blogging platform, Posterous, will be shut down at the end of April by its relatively new owner, Twitter. It’s a shame.
So this blog looks different from today: a little more (ahem) sophisticated with extra features such as a home page, category clouds, a little tweet feed, and ‘Anne’s Best Work’. These appear in the website sidebar, all thanks to widgets. Posterous didn’t do widgets – and I didn’t know what I was missing! Read more
https://annecharnock.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/widget.jpg278425annehttp://annecharnock.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/AC-name-banner2.jpganne2013-03-13 12:43:082015-07-30 19:56:26I’ve Survived the Move from Posterous to WordPress
I’ve set aside time this week to plug the gaps in my knowledge of B S Johnson, thanks to a splendid new compendium of his plays, short prose and journalism (including On Football). Three of the plays have never been published before including One Sodding Thing After Another. Such is the lot of an experimentalist.This year is already shaping up to be a Big Year for the late-B S Johnson. This month sees the 80th anniversary of his birth and so far there’s been: Read more
https://annecharnock.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/well-done-god.jpg354425annehttp://annecharnock.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/AC-name-banner2.jpganne2013-02-20 12:19:002015-08-01 10:56:07Well Done God. Revisiting Cult Novelist B S Johnson
I can’t express this any better than Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell: Ain’t nothing like the real thing, baby.
I’ve really enjoyed fine-tuning the paperback version of A Calculated Life and it’s now available on Amazon. Read more
https://annecharnock.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/kindle-cover-vsm.jpg453283annehttp://annecharnock.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/AC-name-banner2.jpganne2013-02-18 11:01:002015-07-30 19:58:54Paperback Paperback! Released
Indie-authors who operate outside the US often feel like country cousins who invariably arrive late to the party. But slowly things are improving. One breakthrough came earlier this year when Amazon’s CreateSpace switched to regional distribution for print-on-demand books. This alone persuaded me to go with CreateSpace for my paperback (announcement coming imminently on that front). Read more
https://annecharnock.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/£.jpg264340annehttp://annecharnock.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/AC-name-banner2.jpganne2013-02-14 08:45:052015-07-30 20:02:06Kindle Dollar Royalties Sorted, At Last
I’m wearing my artist’s hat this morning and I’m chuffed that Flashlight Worthy Books has published my list of recommended art-related novels: Novels on Art, Artists and Art World Shenanigans.
FLW operates from the US and brings together ‘Handpicked Book Recommendations on Hundreds of Topics.’
Here’s the full list, not exhaustive, but it covers a broad range from historically based novels to others with a contemporary setting. This list first appeared on The Huffington Post. Read more
https://annecharnock.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Art-list-FLW.jpg255283annehttp://annecharnock.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/AC-name-banner2.jpganne2013-02-12 11:51:002015-08-01 10:58:28Flashlight Worthy: 10 Novels on Art, Artists and Art World Shenanigans
As many of you know, I’m a fan of the Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin and I decided on the title of my novel A Calculated Life when I read this sentence from his science fiction dystopia, We:
But a thought swarmed in me; what if he, this yellow-eyed being – in his ridiculous, dirty bundle of trees, in his uncalculated life – is happier than us?
The ‘yellow-eyed being’ was a human, one of many, excluded from the perfect world of ‘One State’.An article in io9 this week, Did the very first science fiction magazine appear in Russia in 1894?, gives fascinating insights into Zamyatin and the emergence of Scientific Fantasy, Nauchnaia Fantastika, in the years before the Russian Revolution. It includes exclusive extracts from We Modern People: Science Fiction and the Making of Russian Modernity by Cornell University Professor Anindita Banerjee (Kindle edition more expensive than the paperback!) She delves into the history of early Russian science fiction and explains the Russian obsession with all-things-modern.
https://annecharnock.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2015-08-01-at-11.01.15.png274356annehttp://annecharnock.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/AC-name-banner2.jpganne2013-02-08 13:20:002015-08-01 11:01:45Did the First SF Magazine Appear in Russia in 1894?
Kate Atkinson – Life After Life
/in Book ReviewsWhen were you happiest? This is one of those questions that pop up in celebrity questionnaires in weekend colour supplements. The answers are fairly predictable or, at least, the variation in the replies is quite limited. (An alternative question – when were you unhappiest? – would elicit, I reckon, a far greater range of responses. But who would dare ask it?)
We can all look back and pinpoint our happiest times. In Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, Clarissa could identify ‘the most exquisite moment of her whole life.’ And that moment was fleeting.
Women’s Prize for Fiction Longlist
Kate Atkinson plies her craft in Life After Life, to show how lives can swing between misery and happiness almost on a whim, on a chance event, on a minor decision, say, to set our earlier, rather than later, to meet someone at a train station. Her story is forever retracing itself as her characters ‘revisit’ the same events, responding differently each time and thus precipitating vastly different outcomes. It’s no surprise that the novel is on the longlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Read more
Women’s Prize for Fiction Contender: Elif Shafak
/in Book Reviews‘Honour’ by Elif Shafak
This is the first novel I’ve read by Elif Shafak, who writes in both English and Turkish. Her novel The Bastard of Istanbul was longlisted for The Orange Prize and she is also well known for The Forty Rules of Love. Shafak has written eight novels to date. Read more
Hay Festival, Arthur C Clarke Award and more…
/in Book Reviews, Science FictionAny graph of my reading habits over the past 10 years would reveal vertiginous spikes in April and May. These are the months of my self-imposed, manic preparations for Hay Festival. This 10-day literature event (23 May to 2 June) is a high point in my calendar despite the obligation to camp on a sloping, […]
Self-Publishing Tips: Manuscript to CreateSpace Paperback
/in PRINT-ON-DEMAND, Self-PublishingAs soon as I released my Kindle eBook last November, I began formatting a paperback. Here’s a lengthy post with a few tips on self-publishing a paperback based on my experience with CreateSpace – a print-on-demand (POD) service operated by Amazon. The whole process was less fraught than I expected. In fact, I really enjoyed it.
Making a paperback is a fundamentally different process to creating an eBook. In the case of my Kindle eBook, I uploaded a Microsoft Word document – I explained the process in an earlier blogpost. In essence, this Word document was a long, single scroll of text. When readers download eBooks from the Amazon Kindle store, they can control the font and font size; those decisions are out of the author’s control.
Before I plough on, I should point out that some authors prefer to publish their paperback before their eBook. This allows them to send advance reading copies to reviewers, and sometimes these ARCs are sent out with a draft cover design. However, I wanted to reach as many potential readers as possible in the shortest possible time so I started with an eBook. I might change my strategy for a second novel.
If you’re planning to publish a paperback, look at your own bookshelves and examine the differences between books. This will help you to make the following choices: Read more
I’ve Survived the Move from Posterous to WordPress
/in Self-PublishingI’m ridiculously excited that I’ve shifted across to WordPress. I had to make the move because my previous blogging platform, Posterous, will be shut down at the end of April by its relatively new owner, Twitter. It’s a shame.
Well Done God. Revisiting Cult Novelist B S Johnson
/in Book ReviewsI’ve set aside time this week to plug the gaps in my knowledge of B S Johnson, thanks to a splendid new compendium of his plays, short prose and journalism (including On Football). Three of the plays have never been published before including One Sodding Thing After Another. Such is the lot of an experimentalist.This year is already shaping up to be a Big Year for the late-B S Johnson. This month sees the 80th anniversary of his birth and so far there’s been: Read more
Paperback Paperback! Released
/in PRINT-ON-DEMAND, Science Fiction, Self-PublishingI can’t express this any better than Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell: Ain’t nothing like the real thing, baby.
I’ve really enjoyed fine-tuning the paperback version of A Calculated Life and it’s now available on Amazon. Read more
Kindle Dollar Royalties Sorted, At Last
/in EBOOK PUBLISHING, Self-PublishingIndie-authors who operate outside the US often feel like country cousins who invariably arrive late to the party. But slowly things are improving. One breakthrough came earlier this year when Amazon’s CreateSpace switched to regional distribution for print-on-demand books. This alone persuaded me to go with CreateSpace for my paperback (announcement coming imminently on that front). Read more
Flashlight Worthy: 10 Novels on Art, Artists and Art World Shenanigans
/in Book Reviews, POSTS on HUFFPOSTFLW operates from the US and brings together ‘Handpicked Book Recommendations on Hundreds of Topics.’
Here’s the full list, not exhaustive, but it covers a broad range from historically based novels to others with a contemporary setting. This list first appeared on The Huffington Post. Read more
Did the First SF Magazine Appear in Russia in 1894?
/in Book Reviews, Science FictionAs many of you know, I’m a fan of the Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin and I decided on the title of my novel A Calculated Life when I read this sentence from his science fiction dystopia, We:
Read more