News and Advice, mostly in Bold.

Hello, readers. You've been fairly impressively abandoned of late. It's not that we lack news. It's more than I wasn't entirely sure how to work the blog after it moved to its new location. The answer is in precisely the same fashion I used to work it previously. What do you know.

But news. Such news. I forget what it is for the moment. You'll know about the new website, won't you. We're all very proud of the new website. That was mostly Gav's doing. I propose a few cheers for Gav. Three, I think, is customary, but the size of the donation is ultimately up to you.

The best thing about the new website, in my opinion, is that it's vastly reduced the number of complaints we receive about the impossibility of entering competitions online. That's fairly great of it. I hope you're all finding it similarly smooth and silky. It's not been entirely glitch free, to be honest: we've had a couple of cases of people paying for one entry and then submitting three all at once, which wasn't really supposed to happen. Just to make it clear: the Summer Short Story Competition costs £6 per single entry, not for an unlimited number of entries; likewise the poetry competition and two themed competitions cost £4 per single entry. Yes. We can see the weird little symbols too. We can't, sadly, physically forbid you from inadvertantly paying for one entry and then sending us more than one, because we're not quite that fantastic at web design - so please make sure that the number of purchases on the Paypal form matches the number of entries you intend to submit. That'd be more or less great.

And people... please to be specifying your FREE BOOK when you enter a competition. All our competitions entitle you to a free Leaf Book of your choice, provided you choose one that's actually in print, but very few of you are actually telling us which book you'd like. You can mark it in on the comments section of the online entry form, and we'll pop it in an envelope and send it to you, and really no-one loses out. And if you enter twice, and pay twice as well, you get two free books. Which I think deserves at least a muted hurrah.

I'm enjoying all this bolding.

(I've given no specific advice as yet to non-online entrants. What I'd mostly like to say is please, please write your name and all contact details quite clearly on the entry form. Some people are not writing their names and contact details particularly clearly, and that makes us sad and confused. Don't worry though. I'm not going to do any naming and shaming. Mostly because I can't read your names.)

Now then. NEW BOOKS. Don't get over-excited. It's not as though they're actually here or anything. But we have yet another estimated time of arrival, and this time I think I believe it. They're now supposed to be here next Monday. Sorry, grovellings, sorry again, but it's been out of our hands for some weeks now. The latest stage in the saga has something to do with the binders' having cut the books too high (which I think must be a technical binding term that outsiders are not necessarily supposed to understand), and now they all have to be re-printed and re-bound. It's terribly sad and a little bit tragic, but everyone's being pretty heroic about it and the printers are pulling a couple of all-nighters and hopefully the whole sorry tale will conclude next week with some really shiny and properly cut books.

Finally. Other Stuff. Well. We've judged another competition. That was fairly exciting. It was the Short Short Story competition. All the winners have been informed, except for the ones who live in far away countries and haven't provided us with email addresses or telephone numbers, and the date of their knowing the happy news is entirely dependent on the whims of the postal service. Let's send hopeful and hurrying thoughts to the postal service. We'll put the winners up on the website and on the blog at the beginning of next month, which is very soon really. And then we'll open our new Short Story competition, which has a terrifically handy word limit of 1,500-5,000 and is utterly open in topic terms and invites you to submit stories on any subject whatsoever (such as grapes or athlete's foot or paper clips or the offside rule or professional trampoliners or integral calculus or peanuts - we are full of ideas). But don't submit them until October the 1st, after which time we will welcome them with open arms.

And that's about the size of it.

Sam.

Well Hello and Welcome

As I hope you've seen Leaf Books has a bright and shiny new website. Like the previous one you can get information on all Leaf Books titles, our authors, and check on the details of our current and previous competitions.

Hopefully, we've also made it easier find all the information you need. We've also made it easier to order books and enter our competitions.

If you have any thoughts or feedback about the new site we'd love to hear from you.

Gav.

In which we struggle to overcome our numerous disappointments.

Good morning. And isn't it a lovely morning? Well, frankly, no. I mean, the sun's biffing about over the yard-arm and the lark's getting on with whatever it is that larks are proverbially best at. But we have no new books. And our website is down. And we have no new books. I'm mostly quite upset about the lack of new books. It's not wholly fair. Especially now the website is down.

This thing about the website's being down. We're sorry about that, but please be assured that it's all in a good cause. There's going to be a shiny new website, with bells and foliage and a double-glazed conservatory and, more honestly, a great deal of improved functionality. We have every confidence that it will make considerably more sense than the old one. You'll even be able to submit work online without risking the attendant coronary incidents that the previous procedure generally provoked. See me alliterate plosively. As we speak, Gav's hacking manfully away at the old HTML coalface, which I understand is how websites are generally hewn and shapen. And it's coming. I promise you. In the meantime, there's a holding page through which you can enter all our competitions.

(We thought the books were coming then. A silver van pulled up and there was a man with a clipboard and everything, but it wasn't the books. We are truly inconsolable.)

In other news, spiders are developing a fort of some description in our storeroom, between the copies of the 'In Love' poetry anthology and some discarded polysterene. We're being fairly brave about it.

Sam.

Out with the old

...And in with the new. There is only so much prodding and poking you can do: Leaf Books's old website is no more. The new one, should, with a little luck, be online later this evening on the link of www.leafbooks.co.uk (with no hyphen). It’s the same one that is in all our literature. I'm hoping that any confusion will be minimal.

Sorry for any inconvenience.

More later.

Gav.

They are coming, truly they are.

I know you don't believe us about the new books. You're well within your rights. I'd be all doubting and dubious and hurrumphing too if I didn't know what an essentially honest and decent and hardworking collection of bods we are at heart. Not only at heart but also on the surface. By which I do not mean superficially. We are decent bods through and through. We don't wittingly tell fibs about new books.

This is the current state of affairs. The new books very genuinely are at the printers. We know for a fact that the printer chappie started spitting them out of his machine last Friday, because he telephoned us on the telephone to ask if we were quite sure we didn't want them laminated, and we said 'ah, go on then', so that's what's happening. In the time it takes for the printer chappie's machine to disgorge ten bulging boxes of the dinkiest, shiniest, most eloquently written little books you could ever hope to meet, the new books will be here. They will come in a silver van (with wings... and driven by a PIXIE). It will be more than very exciting.

I know the wait is vexatious. But it's so character building and you'll be glad of it in years to come.

Otherwise we are pimping our new poetry competition left right and centre. So why not here? It's new and it's great. It's the Leaf Books Open Poetry Competition 2006 and it kindly invites you to submit poems of up to 25 lines in length on any subject whatsoever, such as hats or donkeys or oblate spheroids or free will or cabbage soup or Norfolk. It cost £4 to enter, and that £4 entitles you to choose one of our existing 19 titles and have us pop it in the post to you with a sweet little compliment slip and a newsletter. So off to the website with you now. To the submit work page, to be precise, where you can download and print off an entry form or enter online or all manner of jolly things.

And you might want to have a stab at entering the Summer Short Story Competition as well while you're at it. It's not that we're in any way DISTRESSINGLY SHORT OF ENTRIES or anything. It's just, you know, a good and worthwhile and SOMEWHAT UNDER-APPRECIATED competition. That's all.

No other news of great import. The sun is coming in at an unkind angle through the window, because we've been on the blinds waiting list for about seventy-two years now. The office is a little untidy. Possibly we may have to commit a spot of arson on it later in the week. The weather is not unseasonable. Our lunches were digested with little in the way of complaint.

Oui.

C'est more or less ca.

Sam.

Luddite vs. Databasing

You've got nine thousand online entries looking up at you, ostensibily screaming Notification and Wages but mostly kicking you in the frontal lobes with the databasing/juggling prowess involved in even starting to correlate paypal numbers with the website's dedicated index. And you're not usually one to complain about things, but swear there's some sort of sinister plot afoot when you're scrolling (slowly) through a table-field like a lunatic to find the files and the email addresses and (perhaps) a good story to cheer you at the end of it.

So that's sometimes what the end of competitions can herald. You're wondering whether or not to procrastinate; read over some hardcopy entries, visit the kitchen for a brew, not frown so much (rather express vacant bemusement) at the entries from people who've not read our guidelines or file any sort of injunction against that chap who rings weekly wondering why we don't much like his violent erotica.

You're ok though. Lunchtime is approaching and you're feeling important because Sam's giving you Documents of Imperative Worth to proof.

Matt.

Slightly incompentent but mostly great.

Today I printed off a (well) hard copy of Leaf Books' September 2006 newsletter and Ceci, who is less scared of machinery than I, photocopied it about several billions times with a view to our disseminating among those who, you know, like that sort of thing.

Now. This would've been a happy tale and fit to tell the young ones had I not made a fairly massive error in the shape of printing off a fairly shambolic draft containing two not entirely insubstantial typos and then not proofing it. Nobody, in fact, proofed it. We simply put our faith in its inherent goodness.

The first lesson that we can take from this story is that we are trusting.

I hasten to add that we do proof all our books many more times than several billion, but we, or mostly I, suffered an extreme moment of fallibility this morning.

The second lesson that we can take from this story is that we are endearingly human.

I did not mince the rogue newsletters. I corrected the errors (firstly, poor Lynette Craig, one of our Commended entries in our recent Short Poetry competition, was denied her own surname; second, the maximum line count in our NEW OPEN POETRY COMPETITION that is worthy of capitalisation read not so much '25 lines' as it was supposed to, but more sort of 'specify length', which was less than ideal). I corrected them painstakingly, with a pen and with my own hand. Possibly this makes us look a wee bit unprofessional. Mostly it SAVES TREES. IT SAVES TREES, people.

The third and fourth lessons we can take from this story are that we are unbelievably tenacious and environmentally friendly.

So, to recap.

1. We are trusting.
2. We are endearingly human.
3. We are unbelievably tenacious.
4. We are environmentally friendly.

Wow. Essentially, go us. We shall now consider the matter closed.

By the by. Did you want to see the minutes of that meeting we went to last Thursday? Did you? Ha. Well, you shan't. You shall see the menu instead. That's infinitely more of a treat.

Ceci and I originally ordered the vegetable curry, but were thwarted by its being off.
I went for fish (grilled) and chips (less so) and vegetabalious matter instead.
Ceci had Glamorganshire sausages. Those meatless jobs. Dandy.
Matt had a great big manly pie with animals in it.

A splendid time was had by all. We came away quite motivated, and also slightly bloated.

And someone who shall remain unnamed had half a bitter at lunchtime. You may write in with your educated guesses. Don't proof my blog post unless you can simultaneously come up with half a dozen reasons why we're wonderful. Thank you.

Sam.

Short Poetry Competition Winners Announced

We're pleased to announce the winners of our resoundingly successful Short Poetry competition. It was judged by renowned poet Sheenagh Pugh, who read all 525 entries submitted and commented on the impressive standard:

For a small competition the standard was high - far higher, certainly, than in the last big-money competition I judged. A lot of the poems felt very fresh and individual; though technically accomplished, they were not mere technical exercises. - Sheenagh Pugh, judge.

The winning entry was 'Tundra' by Alice Allen, a poem that, Pugh says, 'leaves the reader's mind a little marked, altered from what it was... that is what, as poets, we are all trying to do'.

Highly Commended were 'Clear Night' by Pat Borthwick, 'Razzamatazz' by Rosi Beech, 'Owl-Night' by Marc Harris and 'Love' by Charles Evans.

Commended were 'Gulls' by Christine Lowes, 'Boxes' by Emily Gale, 'Stepmother' by Simone Mansell Broome, 'Thought While Driving Home From Swansea' by Rona Laycock, 'Ophelia' by Kate Noakes, 'Office Block' by Michael Price, 'Mountaineer' by Rosy Wilson, 'Alien on a Train' by Marguerite Colgan, 'Reflections' by Carol Boland, 'Afghan Dream' by Caroline Clark, 'New Age' by Rosi Beech, 'The Accomplished Lover' by Rosi Beech, 'Doorstop' by Katherine Stansfield, 'Family Reunion' by Paul Cuddihy, 'On the Doorstep' by Clive Gilson, 'The Winning Score' by Marc Harris, 'Whale Watch' by Pat Borthwick, 'Vodka Kicks + Teardrops' by Charles E. Baylis, 'Early Childhood' by Tom Dowling, 'Matthew' by Sue Anderson, 'Her Sons' by Frances-Anne King, 'Mirror, Signal, Manoeuvre' by Juliette Hart, 'Orang-utan' by Merryn Williams, 'Cuttlefish' by E.V. Brooks, 'War of Attrition' by Geraldine Mills, 'Five Rhythms' by Rosemary McLeish, 'Fuel' by Jo Verity, 'Commandment No. 5' by Ben Barton, 'The Trampoline' by Dawn Schuck' and 'Durer's Mother' by Lynette Craig.

Leaf.

Short Poetry Competition 2006 - Judge's Report

I'd just like to mention first that I read all the poems. There wasn't a sift, as is often the case these days. There were 525 poems submitted.

A few had to be disqualified after one reading, primarily due to a limited acquaintance with modern poetic practice: reading some contemporary poems before spending good money on entry fees is sound advice.

But there weren't many of these. Most of the poems had at least something that would call you back for a second reading. That's when the judge starts making three piles -yes, no and maybe -and hoping that the number of yeses will make it unnecessary to revisit the maybes, always the most problematical pile. Often, maybes are poems that have a lot going for them, but also something working against that general good impression. It may be one or two weak lines, and in that case it can make a lot of difference where they are. It is easier to forgive a glitch in the middle of a poem than a weak ending, which stays in the mind as the poem's final word. Sometimes, though, a maybe is just a poem that needed to be read more often, perhaps one that makes its impact more subtly, and when you read it that one more time, it turns into a definite yes.

There were 35 poems I thought worthy of inclusion in this anthology. For a small competition the standard was high - far higher, certainly, than in the last big-money competition I judged. A lot of the poems felt very fresh and individual; though technically accomplished, they were not mere technical exercises. There was a musicality about some that particularly pleased me; I would mention in this context "New Age", with its rhythmical refrains, and "Vodka kicks and teardrops", a personal favourite of mine for reasons I'm not entirely sure of, but I think it's because it sounds not only like a song lyric but genuinely artless. Which means, of course, that it is no such thing; it takes great craft and effort to appear artless.

There was also a great variety of subject matter, and some of the most difficult, i.e. political and popular subject matter, actually came off. I thought the idea behind "Afghan Dream", a fantasy in which the undervalued women walk out of the country en masse, leaving the men to their own devices, was brilliant, though I think revision could probably improve the execution. It was delightful to see a poem celebrating football that actually worked ("The Winning Score") and a persona poem in the voice of the eponymous "Orang-utan".

In the end I narrowed it down to 5 poems, all impressive in very different ways. The unrhymed sonnet "Love" is extremely accomplished; at first its line breaks look odd, but they are designed, in a way more reminiscent of US than UK verse, to throw a great deal of stress on the first word of the next line. It strikes me as completely in control of its language and ideas; if I'd been asked to find a runner-up, this would be it.

"Owl-Night" is a poem of senses and observation so sharp, it sends shivers through an alert reader. "Razzamatazz", from an author who has, I think, achieved three poems in the anthology, is another with a great deal of musicality, and also joy, an emotion surprisingly difficult to convey convincingly in poetry. "Clear Night", set very convincingly at sea (both real and metaphorical) carries a heavy freight of emotion. It also has an unstated back-story, which gives it its haunting quality and is, I think, almost always a bonus in a poem. Our reader does not have to know everything that happened before he came in; we can often achieve a more powerful effect by making him create some of that story for himself out of the hints we have left him in the language and imagery.

This thought was at the back of my choice of winner. "Tundra" is not a poem that explains itself neatly. We can assume the woman is some kind of archetypal refugee; we can recognise the universality of the contrast in verse 3 between her anguish and the indifference of the cosmos:

how the sky though beautiful
had neither watched nor cared
formal in its corridors of silver

But whether that baby was real or an illusion, and what happened to it, is far more equivocal. What is certain is that it exists in our minds after reading the poem, as do the woman and her situation. The language and imagination of the poet were haunting enough to put them there and leave the reader's mind a little marked, altered from what it was. That is what, as poets, we are all trying to do.

Sheenagh Pugh

New Competition - Open Poetry Competition 2006

Following the success of our Short Poetry Competition, which received over 500 entries of an impressively high standard, we are launching the Open Poetry Competition 2006.

We invite poems (maximum 25 lines) on any theme.

Selected entries will be published in a Leaf Books Collection. For more information and to enter, click here.

Leaf.

At the Printers - 8 New Titles

At the Printers - 8 New Titles

Eight new Leaf titles.

Featuring:

For Children

Barry's Barnet - Gareth Rafferty (Children's Short Story Competition Winner)

Barry has always been a bit of a loner. This is because he doesn't wash, he smells, and he has a lot of hair. Now, indeed, he's got so much hair that it's coming to life, growing rows of very sharp teeth and eating things. On the plus side, he's finally found a friend. Pity it's getting bigger....

Kafka meets Roald Dahl in this wickedly humorous tale of a hygiene-shy boy with literally uncontrollable hair. Adults and children alike will be delighted by this highly original story.

Pat Hopper - The Gang of Three (Children's Short Story Competition Runner-Up)

Emma wasn't happy. She'd just seen her big brother jump into a fairy ring and vanish in a puff of smoke. She must get Jason back. With Al Cappuccino the frog perched on her foot and Miss Pretty the cat in her arms, she follows Jason into the fairy ring. But there’s trouble awaiting the Gang of Three....

Lora and William Gill - The Monkey and the Diamond (Children's Short Story Competition Runner-Up)

What would a monkey do with a diamond? Greed leads to unwise choices in this lyrical and beautifully illustrated tale of a jewel and its ever changing parade of would be owners. Perfect for younger children.

Moira Andrew - The Very Useful Bag

Henry is itchy and very bored indeed. He can't find anything interesting to do until he finally hits on a really splendid idea: making useful bags for all the family. But these are no ordinary bags....

A gentle, funny and imaginative story. Ideal for younger readers.

For Adults

Robert Wilton - In No Man's Land (Winter Short Story '06 Winner)

50 years after the First World War, a group of veterans returns to the trenches where they fought each other. Some have come to remember, some to forget. But neither process turns out to be as straightforward as they expected, as a series of revelations challenges their memories and values. The importance - and perhaps the impossibility - of the attempt to come to terms with our own past is exposed in this unpredictable and moving story.

Kathy Mansfield - The Steady Bookkeeper (Winter Short Story '06 Runner-Up)

Paul Phiri is an ordinary, decent man in an ordinary, decent life: taking care of his family, holding down a 'good' job, respected in his community. He is just one of millions of people living ordinary lives in Africa, neither starving nor caught up in a war. But Africa is not ordinary, and doing 'the right thing' is not a straightforward decision.

Maria Lalic - Paper Dolls and Coconut Mushrooms

Three sisters enjoy a childhood of innocent games and make-believe. They share everything - except, perhaps, paper dolls and coconut mushrooms - in this collection of funny and honest autobiographical episodes showing that none of us ever quite grow up.

Conrad Williams - The Cryptanalyst

Meredith has been painting the city in code. His secrets are written on bus shelters, factory walls and public toilets. Raglan's on to him: a loner, a spy, a man who likes to spend his time unpicking knots. Raglan and Meredith, scorpion-dancing all over the city's streets. And I was there to watch it go horribly wrong....

An intense, adult and darkly comic tale by a noted fantasy author.

More Details Coming Soon.

Leaf.