Fifteen Minutes Out Now!

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books, celebrities, fame, Fifteen Minutes, short stories, Warhol

It’s official! Fifteen Minutes is out now, after months of crowdfunding and readying for publication the book is available to order from bookshops and on kindle and for other e-readers directly from Unbound Publishing.  I can’t thank my pledgers enough because without them this book would never have happened. Please consider it for a summer read and let me know what you think. If you’ve got a book group make it your next read – I might even come along and talk about it. There will be a launch party in Brighton in October, I’ll keep you posted!

15 Minutes – A Cover Story

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15 Minutes, Andy Warhol, apes, book covers, book design, books, celebrities, celebrity, crowdfunding, fame, Laura Wilkinson, Mark Ecob, Mecob, publishing, short stories, short story collections, Skin Deep, starlings

Last year I was signed by British crowd-funding publisher Unbound and now my short story collection about fame, 15 Minutes, is almost ready for release. Yesterday I was sent the final cover proof and I’m sure you will agree that it is an arresting image!

Writers don’t usually get any input in their cover designs. With my first book, Starlings, I was just sent the finished cover with a note saying ‘here’s your cover – hope you like it.’ Bizarrely that cover looked like the front of my house at the time. In the first few months of editing Unbound Digital send their authors a questionnaire to fill out for their cover designer Mark Ecob to work from.

It’s quite a long document and it really makes you think about the book you have written. The questions vary from the practical; title, buy-line, genre, to, ‘Describe the tone and mood you want to come across on your cover,’ and, ‘who do you think your readers are?’  These questions really make you think about your reader. Who is going to buy your book? What are their age, gender, interests? They even ask how they will buy it and where from. As a writer I have to admit I don’t actually think that much about my reader, certainly not when I’m writing, but in order to sell you have to know who you are appealing to. The first reader I listed was ‘short story enthusiast’. Then came the question about genre and the book is obviously made up of short stories but  I realised there and then that each story is its own beast, there’s literary fiction and sci-fi and experimental fiction and memoir and  it became very hard to pin down.

I was asked for a synopsis, again something the writers of short story collections will know is an almost impossible task, I provided key words and a list of the celebrities in the stories. I tried to get across the idea that fame is not necessarily a good thing. At one point I suggested that if there was a face on the cover it should be hidden in some way, blinded by paparazzi flashbulbs perhaps or masked.

Finally, they ask you what sort of cover you have in mind. This was a curve ball – I didn’t have anything in mind. I made a few suggestions. The Warhol connection was the obvious route, pop-art, bright colours, paparazzi photos. I also had to send an extract and I picked one from a story about a man obsessed with Scarlett Johansson.

Mark phoned a few days later. Surprisingly he didn’t seem that keen on a Warholesque cover but had picked up on the idea of fame as artifice. We talked about masks and dropped cameras. Then I mentioned that the last story was a flash fiction about a talking ape and Mark asked me to send it to him.  A few days later he sent over a series of ideas but the one that was the basis for the final cover was the standout. Not Warhol, not pop-art but the suggestion that fame is nothing more than a performing monkey seemed to sum up what I was trying to say.

The proposed cover designs then went to Unbound and I had a long wait before finally getting to see the finished cover complete with cover quote and blurb.  Seeing the finished image brings home the fact that this book is really happening and I am absolutely thrilled that soon you’ll be able to read my take on the masks and artifice of fame.

 

Listen To Your Editor

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amwriting, anthologies, books, craft, creative writing, criticism, crowdfunding, ediotrs, editing, feedback, Fifteen Minutes, publishing, Rattle Tales, short stories, short story collections, The Brighton Prize, writing

I am currently co-editing an anthology of short fiction. I also supplement my paltry writers’ income with freelance editing projects. I’m not a proof reader; the edits I offer are structural, though I will pick up on any punctuation that has gone awry.  Editing is something I enjoy. The idea of helping a writer to perfect their work makes me happy but I also find that editing other people’s work makes me a better writer. Editing not only raises my awareness of common writing pitfalls, it also reminds me to put away the resistance to criticism that all writers experience.

I’ve been lucky enough to have been on the receiving end of dedicated and improving edits for both my books. Uppermost in my mind is my collection of short stories, Fifteen Minutes, which has recently undergone several in-depth edits with Unbound Publishing. This was an amazing learning curve and the book is vastly improved as a result. When the first edit arrived I opened a manuscript which was literally covered in red marks and comments. My editor had forewarned me that this was normal in her email but even so it was quite a shock. I have had short stories edited professionally before, for publication in journals like Rip Tide and The Manchester Review. The editors of those journals did brilliant job and, yes, each manuscript was covered in crossings out, with sentences shifted and lengthy comments inserted. Again, I was a bit shocked by the extent of the mark-ups.  For a moment I wondered if the writing was any good after all.

This seems to be a common experience for most writers. When faced with a manuscript covered in mark-ups and comments we tend to take it personally. The self-doubt nags, we mutter things under our breath like, ‘obviously they haven’t read it properly,’ and, ‘they wouldn’t know a joke if it got up and bit them.’ What we forget is that as writers we can become too immersed in a piece to see the flaws and the gaps. The writing is obviously great or it wouldn’t have been selected for publication. However, the editor has read it more closely than anyone else ever will. Their mark-ups don’t mean that the writing isn’t good, just that as the writer we have become too used to what we have written. We think that because we can picture it in our head our readers will be able to too. This is not always the case. If an editor points something out as not being clear, and you have to use a paragraph to explain to them why it is clear, the editor is right and you are not.

Obviously editors are not infallible. This is why they often work in pairs. The first edit of Fifteen Minutes suggested alterations that the second editor then suggested should be changed back. At this point it was up to me to decide which worked best. Often it was the original – but not always – sometimes it was something completely different. You can always negotiate. If you truly believe that your piece is better without the changes, that the reader you have in mind will know exactly what you mean, then go ahead, argue your case. What is interesting is that as you progress in your career you will get comments such as ‘still not clear’ from a professional editor a third or fourth time no matter how much you plead. If this happens you have no choice but to adhere to their suggestion. If you are arguing about the placement of commas and the cutting of single words you are being too precious. Go with what the editor suggests; it’s what they do for a living. They know what they are talking about. The real shock will come when you get your proofs back and realize you know nothing about punctuation!

For further information on my freelance editing services please email erinnamettler@gmail.com I specialize in shaping up short stories for publication or competition but I have edited full-length manuscripts from children’s books to spy thrillers.