Novella submissions: still very much closed.

Apparently there are some websites still reporting that Leaf Books is requesting open submissions of novellas. This is sadly untrue. We had to close novella submissions some weeks back due to an unexpected lack of funding, and we shan't be opening them again. We've had a couple of emails from understandably confused people who've submitted novellas to us and had them returned, and then read the contradictary and enormously incorrect rumours that we're still open to submissions. Now, obviously we're very sorry indeed to disappoint people, but let's make this absolutely clear. We're disappointed as well. We wanted to publish a novella. We most certainly weren't pretending to lack funding purely to clear a backlog of unread manuscripts before finding that the money had magically reappeared. Money, in our experience, simply doesn't do that. We're all writers ourselves and we know how gruelling and unrewarding the submission process can be. We're very sorry to have disappointed you; we would never deliberately make things harder for other writers.

As a rule, we can't really control what other websites and blogs report, though obviously we'll try and gently correct those ones that are reported to us. Please take the information on our official website - the only website that we're capable of editing - as the last word in what we are and are not accepting at present.

Sam.

Science Fiction and Fantasy Competition Results

Hello. You'll be wanting to hear the result of the Sci(ence)-Fi(ction) & Fant(asy) comp(etition), won't you. I know your sort.


The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing Competition Winners

Winner:

‘The Dogstar’ by Kathy Kachelries

Runner up:

‘The Glass Tower’ by Sarah Thompson

Commended:

‘Charlie and the Letting Go’ by Michael Hulme
‘Lady of the Plagues’ by Elana Gomel
‘Time of Death’ by Robert Wilton
‘A Question of Madness’ by Anthony Howcroft
‘A Good Mother’ by T. Rawson
‘Meal Deal’ by Mona McKinlay
‘The Tycoon’ by Sally Quilford
‘Pretty Boy’ by Tracey S Rosenberg


There. I hope it makes you happy. Congratulations to all our winners and commiserations to all our not-winners. And look at Robert Wilton there, getting himself in another competition anthology. He does that all the time. It's really very hard to stop him. The anthology will go into production pretty much as soon as all of the above have lobbed over e-copies of their lovely stories and then it'll be sent off to the printers and then there'll be the usual frustrating delay and then essentially it'll be up for sale. We'll keep you, you know, informed.

And I'll be sending out the critiques to those who requested critiques on their sci-fi comp entries within the next few days.

I rather like sending out the emails that say 'Hurrah for you, you've won etc.' That's really one of the nicest parts of the job. What I don't like so much is the heavy lifting. Possibly you don't think there's a great deal of heavy lifting involved in publishing. You're so engagingly naive. Yesterday Ceci and myself carried boxes of books from our old office out of which we've been turfed into our new squatting space while the man of the team licked envelopes. Mr Bingley would've been aghast. I don't really get the whole Darcy-love thing. Stroppy little git. Anyway. The man moved some boxes later in the day when we more or less went on strike. Also Coffee&Chocolate came back from the printers and we upset the nice receptionist lady by giving her twenty-eight parcels of books to send out. We're beasts like that.

I'm going now because this keyboard's running on a sort of time delay and throughout this post I've been typing three times as fast as the words have been appearing and I've been massively SUFFERING for you here and now I'm going to sit over there and ostensibly do some work but probably mostly think about cake and the papal schism and that. Good.

Sam.