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.

 

My Unbound Diary Part 5 – Back On Track

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Catherine Smith, crowdfunding, Dianna Vickers, fame, fiction, Gethin Anthony, James Ellis, Latitude Festival, poetry, publishing, short stories, short stoy collections, social media, spoken word, stars of the week, Unbound, Word Theatre, writing

Crowdfunding a book is overwhelming. There is so much marketing to do just to eek out one or two supporters. Unbound (the crowdfunding publisher I have signed to) send you a pledge update once a week so you can see who has pledged and what level they’ve opted for. Everytime someone pledges I want to shout their name from the rooftops. In fact my book In The Future Everyone Will Be World Famous For Fifteen Minutes is, as the title suggests, about fame and I am going to offer to give top pledgers the star treatment on social media.I will make you famous for a week. This is not necessarily about the amount pledged. Here’s the first:

Last week I was a bit despondent having only achieved 13% of the required funding in a month. This week I am 26% funded! Over a quarter of the way there! This is a big deal for me; I am beginning to think that it can be done. There is about 8 weeks left to pledge. If I work really hard I can do it but I can’t do it without your help.

Amongst my pledgers this week was my old Creative Writing tutor, the wonderful poet and short story writer, Catherine Smith. When I first started writing Catherine made me feel as though I was actually good at it. She also taught me that adding a bit of poetry can lift prose into something really meaningful and thought-provoking. I write poetically, I can’t help it, I like language to flow, to alliterate, to unfold like a movie in your mind. (These days I don’t like too many similies so I don’t know why I wrote that last bit.) Catherine left me a message on my last blog post:

I loved Starlings and am so glad you are going down this route, Unbound is an excellent model, though I think UK publishers need a kick up the arse to be less prejudiced against publishing short stories, which as we know is a transcendent and exacting form.

Take note UK publishers and thank God for Unbound, who really are enabling many writers outside of the mainstream to get published.

Unbound have a Facebook support group on which shell-shocked writers can exchange experiences and come up with new ways to get pledges. One of the writers, James Ellis, is a Rattle Tales regular and I asked if he wanted to do a funding event in Brighton. Other authors in the group expressed an interest too so I’m going to book a date at The Brunswick Cellar Bar and see what happens.

I have a sort of plan –  when to contact certain people, when to push Facebook/Twitter ect. how to drawn attention to the project. One of the stories (Underneath) was performed by Games of Thrones actor Gethin Anthony and Diana Vickers at US spoken word group Word Theatre’s UK shows a couple of years ago. I contacted Word Theatre to ask if they could help promote and was told there was a video of one of the events. I was lucky enough to see the performance at Latitude Festival and it remains one of the thrills of my writing career. Here’s a short extract:

Please pledge to this book of short stories. There is something in it for everyone. For just £10 you can help bring this book to life.

https://unbound.co.uk/books/fifteen-minutes

 

 

Nothing Lasts Forever

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Black Rock, Brighton, Brighton Marina, cemeteries, Elvis, fame, Highgate, Louis Walsh, Pere Lachaise, sand, Sand Sculpture Festival, Sinatra, X Factor

On Thursday my friend Lisa and I went to the Brighton Sand Sculpture Festival at Black Rock. The sky was blue for a while and the kids needed a run around so we drove to the Marina and took the short walk to the exhibition. The perimeter wall had a sign on it asking graffiti artists to use the wall inside as an outlet for the artistry, a gesture which has resulted in a colourful backdrop inside. When we got to reception we were told that entry had been reduced because the previous night’s storm had damaged some of the exhibits, we could use our tickets again when the sun was out and the sculptures had been remodelled but for now some of the work wasn’t at its best. We went in anyway and we weren’t disappointed.

The theme this year is music. The first sculpture we saw was of the X-Factor judges but the storm had taken Louis Walsh’s head clean off! Simon and Cheryl seemed oblivious to their cohort’s de-capitation but our party found it hilarious, a fitting comment on the musical legacy of the TV show, and that judge in particular. 

The sculptures are made by compacting sand through various stages until it is solid enough to carve. It all looks amazingly clever and time consuming. Many of the works are as intricate as any stone sculpture. We saw a sphinx-like Beethoven, beautifully rendered tributes to the Cavern Club, superstar DJs, 1970s glam and 1990s Brit Pop battles. There’s an amazing recreation of the Abbey Road cover (though there were only three Beatles for some reason) all flowing hair and flares that gave the impression of actual movement. Sand noise explodes from Jimi Hendrix’s guitar; Beyoncé’s butt undulates in smoothed grains.

It was time for a cup of tea. The kids played in the enormous (and quite damp) sandpit with spades and moulds provided and we headed to the tea bar. One of the artists sold us tea and asked us if we were enjoying the sculptures. We told him we were and that we actually liked the effect of the crumbling sand, that it seemed a fitting comment to the impermanence of the subject matter. He wasn’t so keen, there’s nothing good about Elvis losing his head. But I disagree, though I would like to see the exhibition in its restored glory, the damage makes it look like the tributes of an ancient civilisation, with much in common with Mayan temples or the pyramids. The crumbling effects of time have been accelerated by the use of sand and the famous should take note, nothing lasts for ever no matter how big you are.  I am particularly interested in fame at the moment; I’m working on a collection of stories about famous people. The famous characters are not the important ones though, the stories are all about ordinary people who come across the famous in their everyday lives, and it could be an obsession with an actress, a chance meeting with someone well known or just events unfolding during a TV show. The famous in these stories are transient, impermanent, a bit like the sand sculptures. Frank Sinatra is there but his face isn’t, Elvis has left the building but the man who sweeps the floors is still there.

As the sea mists rolled in the place took on the aspect of one of the famous cemeteries, Pere Lachaise or Highgate, very spooky and melancholy, we left taking with us happy and sand-covered children and leaving behind a sand sea-turtle and a tunnel to Australia. I would recommend this as an afternoon out, storm damaged or not. It runs until September and you can see work being carried out on the sculptures until the end of April. For details visit http://www.brightonsandsculpture.co.uk/