Calling Ghost Hunters!

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authors, books, crowdfunding, Domini Mortum, ghost hunting, ghosts, Halloween, haunted, horror, most haunted, Paul Holbrook, Pluckley, Unbound, writers

As the weather gets more autumnal and the wind scratches at the windows my thoughts are turning to Halloween. Halloween is my absolute favourite festival, so much better than Christmas with its 6 month build up, Halloween is just fun from start to finish. As a special ghoulish treat this week I have a guest blog from writer Paul Holbrook. His novel Domini Mortum is extremely close to being fully funded by crowdfunding publisher Unbound. I know how this works because my own book 15 Minutes has just been released by them. Paul is offering some great pledges in his crowdfunding campaign, not least one which should appeal to even the most fearless ghost hunters.

Hello Paul tell us about your book?

Domini Mortum is a novel set in late Victorian England, and set in London, York, and the village of Pluckley in Kent.   

It tells the story of a journalist called Samuel Weaver, who has travelled down to London from his native York to work as an artist and reporter for The Illustrated Police News (the preeminent tabloid of the day).  Weaver is obsessed with a series of murders which occurred six years earlier in London and the man accused of the crimes, who died before he could be brought to justice.

Weaver travels around London, and to Kent, to meet people who knew the accused, in the hope of writing a book about him.  However, the more he finds out about the murders, the more he becomes embroiled himself with the people and organisations who have the most to lose by being exposed in the press.  Meanwhile another set of murders has begun in London which hold a much darker and foreboding purpose.

Domini Mortum is a tale of how single-minded obsession can lead to a person’s downfall, and how it is impossible to escape from the sins of your past.  Once a heart is blackened by deeds, it can never recover.

The book is currently the centre of a crowdfunding campaign by the publisher Unbound.  The way it works is straight forward; each book has a cost in order to get it published.  Lovely generous members of the public give their support to the book by pledging to buy it.  Once enough people have pledged and the target amount is reached, the book is published and everyone who supported it gets a copy with their name inside on a list of people that made it happen.  It’s a quite brilliant idea, to get books published that people actually are interested in and want to read, rather than books that a publisher thinks the public wants.

How can people pledge?

Pledging is easy, all you have to do is visit www.unbound.co.uk/books/domini-mortum have a read of the synopsis, the excerpt, and then decide what pledge level you want to support the book at.

Once you’ve decided, it’s just a case of clicking that button and entering order details.  If you’ve pre-ordered a book from Unbound before, then you will have an account already.  I’m so glad that I am publishing my book through Unbound, the quality of the authors on show on their website is extraordinary, and I find myself wanting to support quite a lot of books there.

One of the pledges catches my eye in particular, the ghost walk. Can you tell us a bit about this pledge and what it entails?

Ah, the ghost walk, yes.

“We do not have time to enter the ‘Screaming Woods’ this evening, my friend, which is a terrible shame as it is an experience to be savoured,” he said holding his arm across my chest.  “The eldritch howls of the long and recent dead can be heard throughout the night, and it is a brave man who dares enter.  Few have tried and they left in such terrible states that they ended their days unable to speak of what they saw, most were placed in asylums, gibbering wrecks of men, hollow of mind and bereft of soul.” 

“What did they see in there?”  I asked awaiting a terrible tale of murder, suffering and the afterlife. 

“See?  See?  I don’t know, Samuel.  Did you not you hear me say that they never spoke of it?”  He lowered his arm and paced away muttering under his breath.

The ghost walk pledge came about because of a section in the book which is based in Pluckley in Kent, supposedly the most haunted village in Britain.  In the book Samuel Weaver visits the village as part of his investigations, and ends up taking part in a drunken ghost walk with a local called Edward Higgins.

The character of Edward Higgins, is named after a friend of mine, who I definitely had in mind while writing the story.  Samuel and Higgins experience the full horror of the ghosts of Pluckley during their tour, which is both humorous and frightening.

In writing the book I did an awful lot of research into Pluckley, watched countlesYouTube videos of ghost hunters visiting the various haunting sites, and read just about every word ever written about the village.  For those lucky people that pledge for the ghost walk, they will get a copy of the book, with their name inside, as well as making their way to Pluckley where I will meet them, have dinner and a drink or two in the Black Horse (the pub which Samuel Weaver stays in) before heading out into the dreadful night air to experience such sights as The Devil’s Bush, The Screaming Woods, and St Nicholas church where the famous ‘Red Lady’ has been sighted, as well as many other spooky stops along the way.  I will of course be inviting my friend Edward Higgins along, to make it all a bit more authentic to the book.

It’s a very adventurous pledge, but one which I am really looking forward to fulfilling, it will certainly be a night to remember for those who take up the challenge.

 

 

New Year New Submissions

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A Kind of Loving, authors, Brighton, champagne, journals, literary journals, magazines, New Year, Rattle Tales, roulette, short stories, spoken word, submissions, writers, writing, writing competitions

I have ranted about this before and I have no doubt I will again. Blame New Year re-organisation. I started 2014 in a pretty good place. I’m superstitious when it comesto New Year’s Eve and January 1^st believing that it somehow affects the entirety of the following year so I normally try to do all the things I would like to be doing for the next twelve months. This year was a great one, a lovely dinner with good friends during which we drank a lot of fizz (with stars in it!), ate homemade profiteroles and planned our summer holiday, followed by several games of roulette. I started off badly and then won big, by 2am I wanted to lose so I could go to bed and bet everything on black, twice, winning both times, in fact we did stop then because I’d broken the bank. I am taking this to mean that the year will be a slow build but I should take a few risks to reap the benefits. Before sleep I wrote a page of a short story and then read a page of A Kind of Loving. This month I plan on finishing my short story collection (almost there) and ploughing on with my Yorkshire-set novel. 

I have also decided to submit my writing everywhere possible (journals, competitions, events) in the hope that spread betting will eventually pay off. To do this I realise I have to be more organised. Last year I had a very hit and miss approach to submitting work. I’d often send things off on a last minute whim and fail to make a note of doing so, or I’d scribble it down on a post it note and forget about it, sometimes even a line in an obscure submissions folder. I’ve spent a few hours now going through my frankly anarchic submissions files and I can tell you the process is not helped the failure of many organisers to even acknowledge a submission. The number of deadlines passed, journals published, awards presented, all missed by me (and presumably most of the other people who sent work in) is astonishing. Here’s my rant – FFS IF PEOPLE SEND YOU THEIR WORK AT LEAST HAVE THE MANNERS TO A) ACKNOWLEDGE IT AND B) TELL THEM WHO GOT THROUGH!!!!!

Obviously a huge amount of comps, journals and events organisers are just as polite as they should be, some even more so, some even offer feedback or copies of anthologies to their hopefuls but many do not. I salute you if you are one of the good guys. You were probably a struggling author once, deciding if you could have a tin of beans for tea or save the money for that big break competition. Many others out there seem to just want to take your money and pull the shutters down until next year when they send you an email asking for more money. If you can send a round robin email asking for more money you can send one on the publication of the long list. I don’t really get it – don’t you want people to know who has been successful? Why not? What are you hiding for? Some of the organisations I’m talking about here are big ones with equally big entrance fees. Sort it out. Don’t be so fucking rude.

Last night I went to the Rattle Tales selection meeting for our first show of 2014. We had a huge number of submission for this show, many more than ever before. It was quite a stretch to read them all but everybody did, notes were taken and decisions were made. When anyone submits to Rattle Tales, they get an acknowledgement right away, when the stories have been selected everyone who submitted gets an email telling them if they have been successful or not and then (if they want it) we give them feedback. It’s just good manners really. Lots of people do it. The first two emails are standard so don’t take that much effort to send. I’m not taking the credit for this, I’m not the one whose job it is to send them out, but I don’t think it takes hours to do a quick reply.

Think about it – what sort of reputation do you want amongst potential submitters?

Rant over.

If you would like to submit to Rattle Tales or find out about our very exciting news head over to the website and sign up for our mailing list. We really value you.

Feed Me – The Importance of Feedback

Tags

authors, feedback, publishers, Rattle Tales, rejection letters, rejections, selection process, The Brunswick Hove, writers

Feedback. I can hear you groan from here. Feedback is that terrible entity writers both crave and loathe. It makes us better writers but it also makes us uncomfortably aware of our shortcomings. It’s a familiar scenario; you send off your story/poem/extract full of hope and good humour. You wait for weeks, months even, convinced that the recipient will be so blown away by your submission they will drop everything in deference to its brilliance and phone you immediately offering untold fame and fortune. Time passes and you forget, a little, but then one day, comes the ping on your inbox or the thud on your doormat and somehow you instinctively know what it is. It is the beginning of that terrible exchange that tells every writer at some point in their career that they are not as good as they think they are.

I’m always amazed how I know without looking that I’ve received a rejection. I suppose most good news is delivered by telephone but even so more often than not I’ll know a rejection before I open it. I wonder if this is because deep down there’s a bit of doubt there already, maybe I know what I submitted wasn’t as good as it could have been.

So, you open your email/letter and discover the bad news – you didn’t win that publishing deal/writer’s retreat/£15,000, you didn’t even get published in that online journal with a readership of around 50 people! And here’s the rub, your whole being screams that you want to know why and, at the same time, your whole being just wants to crawl under a duvet and wallow in self-pity. Knowing why is the last thing you want. In fact, whoever has judged you doesn’t know what they are talking about. They are in the wrong, not you, short-sighted imbeciles, wouldn’t know good writing if it bit them on the arse. That’s right isn’t it? Thinking like this means you can stay comfortable in your little cocoon of ignorance.  You like your little cocoon of ignorance don’t you? I know I used to.

Over the years this has changed for me. When someone rejects my work I am no longer content with just NO. No won’t do. These days I want to know WHY? And if people haven’t told me why I invariably get back to them and ask. Am I mad? Maybe, but let me tell you about my last two rejections (possibly too strong a word) and the feedback I got.

The first came just before Christmas. It was only a flash piece, so it hadn’t taken long to do, but it was a great idea and it had been edited and refined over several drafts. I got a standard rejection about a week later, just ‘no thanks try again later’. That morning I had a workshop with two people I trust implicitly and as luck would have it I had sent them my story in advance of the meeting. They were so positive about it (and believe me, if they didn’t like it they would say so) that it made me wonder what the reason for the rejection was. So, rather than feeling sorry for myself I got back to my rejector and asked for feedback. This is what I was sent:

Hi Erinna, 

I’m happy to give some feedback. 

In all honesty, it was a close call! The piece is beautifully written and has some startling images. We particularly liked this: “Planes fell from the skies, their impacted carcasses landing softly on downy runways, like so many bulging toothpaste tubes,” and the thought of the earth as a snowball was striking. 

However we thought the first paragraph was problematic. In the second, everything gets going – but the first seems too long. Would you consider cutting it?

There were also a few details that niggled – if everyone is dead, who is reporting on sky news (or is the idea that Sky News is the devil’s work)? 

Whilst the idea that this is being narrated by one of the devil’s minions is a good one, it took a couple of readings to register the full implications of the last paragraph. I wonder if there is a way to make the information here more immediate – or to plant the idea of the battle between heaven and hell earlier? 

If you felt like reworking the story we’d be keen to take another look. As I said, it was a close run thing.   

And do you know what? – they’re right! The first paragraph is too long and there should be a hint as to the narrator earlier. I’d actually taken out the bit about toothpaste tubes because in my opinion it doesn’t fit, but I don’t agree with them about Sky News – everyone knows who their boss is! But isn’t this better than no thanks try again later? See how much more productive a little bit of feedback is?Even if the feedback isn’t as positive as this is wouldn’t you rather know the truth than fear the worst, or even labour under the misconception that it’s good when it isn’t?

I had more feedback on another submission last week, I didn’t ask for it and was surprised to get it, but it was very welcome and, again, totally on the button. What I thought was a wonderfully clever allusion was actually ineffective corniness and needed to go, but I would never have known this had it not been pointed out to me. There was also the usual pep talk about not giving up, about it being a very close thing and please re-submit. Far from being negative it was enlightening and confidence boosting.

As a member of Rattle Tales I give a lot of feedback. Our selection process is very stringent, we all read everything and make notes on each piece then we discuss each one in detail before we make our selections. We don’t give feedback as standard but we offer it in our notification emails. If writers want to take us up on the offer the notes on the discussion are there ready to use. We probably get a 50/50 request rate.  I hope what we say helps. The thing is to give good feedback you have to have read the submission in detail and you have to know what good writing is if you don’t you shouldn’t be giving feedback in the first place. Also bear in mind that work is often rejected out of personal preference. At Rattle Tales we reject work which we don’t think will work in a live performance, the piece could be beautifully written, ground-breaking even, but if it doesn’t read aloud well we can’t take it. If you don’t ask for feedback you’ll not know why, you’ll assume it’s either rubbish or that we are philistines.

Some writers take it personally. We once had an email from someone, whose work we had rejected because it wasn’t a story, saying that if we ever felt brave enough to try something different we should get in touch with them. You could almost taste the bile on those words but, hopefully, if they really thought about what we’d said they would realise that we were right. If you receive feedback that really riles you put it aside for a couple of days then go back to it, read your writing with it in your mind and see if it’s right. If you still don’t agree fine, forget it and try somewhere else, it’s their loss.

These days I always ask for feedback, at the very least it ensures that the person rejecting my work has read it well enough to tell me why they didn’t want it.

The next Rattle Tales show is on Feb 20^th at The Brunswick Hove tickets available here.