Merryness.

Just a quick happy Christmas type post before signing off till 2009. We hope everyone received their copies of Discovering a Comet and More Micro-Fiction in time for Christmas. If you're awaiting any orders, everything outstanding was sent this morning, so hopefully those should all be with you shortly.

Comp-wise, the Mostly Life competition winners will be up on www.mostlylife.com early in the new year: we'll be sending out a newsletter as soon as that's occurred. The Poetry Competition is still being judged and has been slightly beset with computer-related issues (nothing severe: just a bit delaying) ... but we should be all set to announce the results in February 2009. Keep an eye open. And that's about that.

Have a jovial season.

All at Leaf.

Mostly Life Competition

We're daftly happy to announce the results of the Mostly Life competition.

Winner - 'Mrs Cheveley in the Conservatory at Tenby', an animated poem by Emily Hinshelwood.

Emily's poem will be published on the Showcase blog at www.mostlylife.com, and she'll receive £200 prize money. The following running-up pieces will also be published on the showcase:

'Historic Conversations' by John Buckley
'Ask Mairghread' by Clare Girvan
'Hi, David Gaffney' by Nadia Kingsley
'From Romford with Love' by Paul Smith
'The Care and Attention of Your Man' by Sally Quilford
'Forget-ful' by Jane Pearn
'And the Consequence was ....' by Jennifer Price

All of the above have been contacted by email: please get in touch if you're one of these people and you've yet to receive a personal notification.

Congratulations to the successful entrants and thanks to all who entered.

News: new book, new comp, that's about the size of it.

Discovering a Comet is now in stock (and into its second print run already), and available to buy from the Leaf Books website. The first button is the full-price (£7.99 plus £1 p&p per copy) version for the general public to use, but if you're a featured author you can use the author's discount button at the bottom of the page to buy it for only £6 (plus £1 p&p). All of the pre-orders (bar a few who've been contacted - we've had some internet-issues of late) and free copies have now been sent out and should be with their owners in the next few days: let us know by the end of next week if anything's gone astray.

What else? There's a new competition open: Young Writers' Competition, for authors aged eighteen and under: see the website for details. The Nano competition is still open as well.

The Mostly Life competition judging is almost completed and we hope to make an announcement by the end of the month: please keep an eye on the blog for further details. The recently-closed poetry competition is also being judged, and we expect to inform the winners early in the new year.

And we think that's more or less it.

Has anybody seen this author?

We've received an entry to the nano-fiction competition through the post that came with no identifying information, such as an entry form. If you are the author of 'The Crow', one hundred words exactly, can you please get in touch with us at contact@leafbooks.co.uk? We need to know your name, postal address and email address if we're to enter you into the competition.

Discovering a Comet. Very nearly found. And more besides.

Discovering a Comet and More Micro-Fiction is all set to go to print by the end of this week. If you're one of the twenty-nine authors featured in this book, you have till Wednesday the 5th, remember, remember etc, to pre-order copies at your special extra-reduced author's discount price type thing. Obviously you can order copies after that date, but it'll cost a little bit more.

And people who aren't featured in the book can pre-order copies as well. Have a look at our website where you can take a peek at the front cover and pre-order the book for £7.99 (plus £1 p&p) per copy - use the first PayPal button on the page or just send us a cheque in the post and a little note saying how many you want. We're impressively informal.

Thanks to everyone who entered the poetry competition that closed at the end of October - there was quite a flurry of entries in the last few days. Hopefully we've replied to all entrants by now to tell you we've received your entry/entries, but if not just drop us an email and we'll put your mind at rest. The judging will take place over the next few months and the winners should be announced early in the new year (also, the Mostly Life Humour Competition results should be announced by the end of the month, if you're interested). Keep checking the blog and our monthly newsletters for updates - and visit the competition page of our website if you fancy entering our nano fiction competition for tiny weeny stories of 100 words or fewer. It's adorable really.

Mostly at present we're engaged in making poetry books and novels and things along those lines through our private printing service. Lots of people are taking advantage of the service ... bimble along to the website if you want to find out what we're offering.

Sam.

Holiday over. Note on cheques.

Okay, sabbatical's come to an end. Ceci isn't stranded overseas. We hope you are same. Stop. Apologies again for delays in sending out stuff during this period, but we had a mammoth posting session this morning - well, relatively mammoth - and hopefully all the errant stuff should be with you soon.

News-wise, we've had some responses to our special offer on poetry pamphets the production thereof, so that's quite exciting. Also the Mostly Life competition entries are coming in at an improved pace - remember you need to step on it if you want to enter because the competition closes at the end of the month.

(I entered a competition the other day for something I'm not going to tell you about, and they sent me a lovely informative email to tell me my piece had arrived and when they'd next be in touch in a vague sort of a way, and basically it made me feel a bit guilty for sending out a stingy 'Thank you for your entry/entries' as notification of receipt. Sorry about that. I'm not promising a new improved service, I'm afraid, because there are only two of us and it takes a lot of time to respond to you all. I'm just saying sorry. The 'Thank you' note is basically to stop you panicking about whether or not your entry's arrived - if you want full information about the competition and dates of announcements, which are usually though not always decided on at an early stage, you can find it on the website.)

Finally, a note about cheques. Some of the cheques accompanying the entries to the Mostly Life competition are made out to 'Mostly Life'. PLEASE don't do this - it doesn't work. You need to make the cheque out to 'Leaf Books', because that's our registered name. Many thanks.

Sam.

A week and a half.

Leaf Books will be taking a sort of a part-time sabbatical for the next week and a half ... well, basically till Friday of next week. I'll be around to check emails and answer queries and anything along those lines, but we shan't be able to collect post or to send out orders until the aforementioned Friday, which is the 12th. Apologies for anyone who's going to be left waiting till then, but we will get everything sent out as soon as we possibly can.

Sam.

Poetry Pamphlets.

Hello, dearests. Are you well? We're keeping fairly busy. We've been working properly hard at setting up and starting off www.mostlylife.com, our series of jovial comical blogs. There's plenty to do there, and there'll be plenty more as more people get involved, so nip along when you've got a moment and add to a Round Robin story, or alternatively be inspired by a prompt or maybe just send us some original material to showcase. We want this thing to be mind-bogglingly humungous. That's mostly our aim.

In other news, poetry pamphets:

Poetry Pamphlet Offer

Are you gathering together your poetry collection? Want to have it printed as a classy properly bond book? We’ve had a few people enquire as to what we can do. This is what we’ve come up with:

50 pages (so that includes contents, poems, verso page, etc)

100gsm bookwove paper (that’s quite thick and classy)

Perfect bond (with a spine)

Glossy full colour cover

Free ISBN

Free Barcode

£6.00 per copy for the first 25 copies (minimum order)

Following copies £4 per copy (to be ordered in batches of 25 minimum)

This includes all typesetting services, you just send us the poems, blurbs etc. We turn them into a book, send you a free pdf proof.

If you are ready to go ahead in September or October your pamphlet can be ready before Christmas.

For the cover you can choose one of the following options:

1.With artwork provided - £40 (that’s for making the cover print-ready with barcode, etc.)

2. Original design from our designer - £100

3. A choice of 3 designs from our designer - £200

We can also sell the book via our website service (see below).

Contact us at contact@leafbooks.co.uk for any further information.

***

So there's that. Excellent.

To finish off this inter-newsletter update, I'll just remind you that we've two competitions currently open that we'd very much like you to enter - the Mostly Life competition for humour in most conceivable media, which closes at the end of September, and our Poetry competition, which closes at the end of October.

Sam.

Micro-Fiction competition winners

I sent this info out in the newsletter and then forgot to put it on the blog. Sorry about that. Here it is.

2008 Micro-Fiction Competition: Results

Winner

‘Jesse and Jesus’ by Freda Love Smith

Runner-Up

‘Discovering a Comet’ by Pauline Masurel

Commended

‘Green Light’ by Freda Love Smith

‘The Bob Dylan Story’ by Freda Love Smith

‘The Surrealist Manifesto’ by Freda Love Smith

‘Hubris’ by Casey Parry

‘Causality Doesn’t Work Like That’ by Rich Hough

‘A Day in the Country’ by Margaretta Jones

‘A Precious Possession’ by Margaretta Jones

‘What Stinks’ by Lorraine Cave

‘Sadie Jones took me Line Dancing’ by Rosie Garland

‘Heirloom Quality’ by Rosie Garland

‘An African Plant Begins with a D’ by Maureen Gallagher

‘Invisibility for Beginners’ by Helen Pizzey

‘Beside the Seaside ’ by Andrea Davies

‘Light’ by Gavin Eyers

‘Behold’ by Jon Prawer

‘A Pebble from the River for Annie’ by Douglas Bruton

‘Movin’ On’ by Mary Pooley

‘Weather Goddess’ by Andrea Tang

‘Victor’ by Christine Genovese

‘They say that Belgium is a nice country’ by Robert Lankamp

‘Satisfaction’ by Keith Souter

‘The Factory for Other People's Happiness’ by Lloyd Markham

‘Field’ by Laura Tansley

‘We are all the same person in the crowd, for an instant’ by Laura Tansley

‘Where There’s Smoke’ by William Letford

‘Infested’ by Stewart Tiley

‘The Eskimo Word(s) for Love’ by Amy Mackelden

‘Birdcage’ by Christine Todd

‘A Thousand Coats’ by Peter Meredith Smith

‘Curiosity’ by Karen Jones

‘Bad Apples’ by Karen Jones

‘Green Fingers’ by Ruth Harris

‘The Street’ by Mo Singh

***

Congratulations to all of the above, and better luck next time to those who didn’t make it onto this list – there were several near-misses. The competition anthology, to be called Discovering a Comet and More Micro-Fiction after the runner-up story and containing all the selected pieces, will go into production shortly (though not really for the next couple of weeks because I'm going on holiday slightly, but do continue to reply to my notifications of your success, dear authors, and sending me your stories and biographies and that - I'll respond to everything when I get back). Keep checking the blog and the news page on the website for further information about this title.

(Note: This anthology will also contain Sara Benham’s story, ‘Whisky and Cigarettes’, which was commended in the previous micro-fiction competition but had to be omitted from the anthology when we couldn’t get in touch with the author – fortunately that’s now been rectified.)

Mostly Life website

Hello, people - just to let you know, http://www.mostlylife.com/ is currently down. We're communicating with the hosting people in an attempt to get it back up as soon as possible. We've arranged it so that, in three days' time (so from Friday onwards), you'll be able to get on to the website and therefore enter the competiton via http://www.mostlylife.org.uk/, but until then I'm afraid there's no access. You can still enter the competiton, however, via http://www.leafbooks.co.uk/.

We'll let you know how it goes. Thanks for bearing with us.

Sam.

EDIT. All fixed, people. Thanks for your patience.

Some books and some comp stuff and the like.

Hello. Didn't entirely mean to ignore you for two months there. It's not so much that we've had masses to do as that we've actually managed to pull Leaf Books back to such a shockingly managable level - that'll seem potently amusing when I'm buried under a mountain of micro-fiction entries next week - that we haven't really had anything much to communicate. We actually took a couple of days out to send our own novels to publishers and, er, write a sitcom and that sort of thing. But there is a smidge of news.

- The Someday Supplement is out and about and available for purchase. Have a squint at the website. I'm not entirely sure the Supplement's gone up on the website to be honest, but it most certainly will do in the next few days. It's quite amusing really. It contains the contents of the Mostly Life website and oodles more besides, and there's a slightly racy picture on the front. (There isn't really. It's just a renaissance willy.)

- The micro-fiction competition closed a couple of days ago. Thank you for your flurry of entries. I'm just done sending acknowledgements of receipts, in fact, and soon there'll be the databasing and the judging and we'll be outrageously busy people again. To be fair, we have a lovely work experience person in at the moment and she's going to do quite a lot of databasing for us and we're really very grateful.

(We had, incidentally, a bit of a problem with people who sent two entries and paid for them together being charged erroneously for p&p. We've only just become aware of the issue and have refunded all those that PayPal will allow us to refund - and if you sent an e-cheque, we'll be able to refund you once it's cleared. Sorry about that. We can't seem to fix it, but to avoid the problem in the future, pay for each entry seperately - unless you're doing the 4 for £10 thing, in which case it's fine to pay all at once.)

- Someone sent us cash instead of a cheque with their micro-fiction entries, so we're going to have an unusually exciting lunch. Cheers for that.

Sam.

Leaf Books Poetry 2008 Competition – Winners

We’re well pleased to announce the results of the Poetry 2008 Competition.

Winner:

‘Standing on the Cast-Iron Shore’ by Kathy Miles

Runners up:

‘Caliban’s Dream’ by Clare McCotter

‘The Wall Menders’ by Kate Noakes

Commended:

‘Dragons’ by Kathy Miles

‘Sledging’ by Chloe Balcomb

‘Olivetti’ by Liz Cashdan

‘Sunday’ by Sara Ridgley

‘Homes’ by Joan Michelson

‘Hierarchies of Art’ by Leah Armstead

‘Relaxation CD’ by Leah Armstead

‘Cabin Fever’ by Leah Armstead

‘Escape’ by Leah Armstead

‘Waiting for a Friend’ by Leah Armstead

‘The Future’ by Emily Hinshelwood

‘Swimming Lesson’ by Keith Shaw

‘About the House’ by Anthony Watts

‘Last Day of the Holidays’ by Pat Borthwick

‘Whale Watch’ by Pat Borthwick

‘My Neighbour’s Myna’ by Pat Borthwick

‘Serving Abroad’ by Sue Anderson

‘Our First Day’ by Sarah L. Dixon

‘Reined-In’ by Jenny Morris

‘Father’ by Susan Groom

‘Son of the Soil’ by Margaret Eddershaw

‘New Town’ by Sarah Smith

‘The Night Boatman’ by Oz Hardwick

‘The Coming on the First Caliph (July, 1941)’ by Owen Lowery

‘Mapped Out’ by Sally James

‘Flight of Imagination’ by Aileen Lobban

‘Morning Milk’ by David Underdown

‘Macadamia Nut Steamers’ by Julie Bolitho-Lee

‘Uncle Albert’ by Tracey S. Rosenberg

***

Congratulations to all of the above, and better luck next time to those who were not successful. The competition anthology, Standing on the Cast-Iron Shore and Other Poems, will go into production very shortly.

A note to the featured poets: you’ve all been contacted individually by now, but if for some reason this is the first you’ve heard of it, please check the inbox of whatever email address you gave us when you entered the competition. If you don’t find an email notifying you of your success, please get in touch with us at contact@leafbooks.co.uk.

Sam.

Just so as you know type thing ...

... the Poetry 2008 Competition has been judged and all the winners barring two who didn't provide email addresses were informed this morning. If you're a poet who did provide an email address and you haven't received notification of success, better luck next time. If you're a poet who didn't provide an email address, you may perhaps get an exciting letter in the post. But then again, if you don't have an email address, you're unlikely to be reading this blog.

We'll give the winning poets the next couple of days to check their emails and go 'ooh' and the like, and then we'll release the results on Monday. Hurrah.

It really is upsettingly windy out there.

Sam.

Imagine Coal/Mostly Life

O Readers,

Imagine Coal and More Micro-Fiction came back from the printers this morning. The book will shortly be on sale via our website - it costs £9.99 per copy, plus £1 p&p, or £7 if you're one of its authors (though still with the £1 p&p). Please note that free copies have already been despatched to the authors (with the exception of two for whom we didn't seem to have postal addresses: check your email), so hopefully those should be with you in the next few days. Or after Easter at any rate.

Also www.mostlylife.com is live.

Sam.

To Do.

Mondays generally kick off with the composition of a 'Things to Do' list. Here are some select highlights, as I suppose highlights by definition have to be, of what the Leaf Team expects to be doing during the week commencing March 10th:

- add more charming and brilliantly patient Leaf Authors to the authors page on the website;
- photocopy some forms with numbers on them for some people or other;
- answer the accountant's unkind and unduly inquisitive email;
- continue work on the typesetting of The Someday Supplement;
- finish putting up the Mostly Life website;
- judge the poetry competition;
- unhook the cat from the noticeboard;
- consume a banana;
- write a blog post.

I'm going to put a tick next to that last one.

Probably the blog post is supposed to have more profound content therein than the information that a blog post was due to be written. Which it undeniably was. And I suppose our most interesting news is that the Mostly Life website, as featured in the middle of our 'To Do' list, is in the process of going online. The entire text site is live and functioning and housing the winners of our Spoof and Humour competition, which will also be published in the hardcopy anthology, The Someday Supplement, and the graphical site is sort of partially there. It's a sizeable job and a work of genius, mostly, but yes. It's properly on its way. You can access both versions from the landing page, which is at www.mostlylife.com. You can enter the Mostly Life Competition from there as well, whereby we invite you to submit funny stuff of all descriptions. Full details on the competition page. It's the most predictable thing about that website.

Ceci's currently felling the accountant and I'm halfway through the banana.

In other news, there's a bit of storm on its way, and we're slightly in a forest, so if you fail to hear from us in a month or two, send rescue. It's actually just monsooning at present. We can cope with that. Leaf's getting along very nicely, thank you. We're typesetting The Someday Supplement, as we say, and we have some private printing jobs in the offing and the poetry's going to be judged and announced by the end of the month and the cat hasn't actually eaten any drawing pins at all this morning. It's t'riffic.

Also today we have a work experience person with us, experiencing work. Please give him a wave. And write to tell us you've done so. We don't much hallucinate here.

Sam.

Massive Great Update.

Greetings, folks. We decided it was about time for a massive great update on pretty much everything we've been doing. Here it is.

Current Competitions

We’d like, first off, to give our hearty thanks to the entrants of Leaf Books’ first poetry competition of 2008. It closed at the end of January and we received an impressive great wadge of verses. Judging will be taking place over the next couple of months and we hope to make an announcement about winners and the like at the end of March. We shall, as ever, keep you informed.

Until then, you might’ve noticed that the Leaf Books Micro-Fiction Competition 2008 or whatever we’ve called it has leapt selflessly and seamlessly into the gap left by the late poetry comp, or opened on February the 1st if you want to be staid about it. We’ve already had a few entries in and we’re hoping for a fair few more. We invite you to send micro-fiction of up to 300 words on any subject whatsoever. You can enter online or by post. It’ll cost you £3 per single submission or £10 for four submissions. The winner receives £200; the runner-up receives ten free pocket-sized Leaf books. All selected entries will be published in a competition anthology. The competition closes on 31st May 2008. We think that’s more or less it. Please check the website for full details and guidelines and entry forms and things along those lines.

In Production

Ooh, lots of things. Well, two. First and foremost, or first at any rate, is Imagine Coal and More Micro-Fiction, our latest micro-fiction anthology with a revealing and suspense-ruining title. It’s enthrallingly close to completion: basically it’s just undergoing a final proofing and decorous touching-up before being booted off to the printer. Meaning you ought to be able to buy it in March. And you bally well should, because, you know, it’s great. Have an extract and some blurb:

The Woman with a Coffee Pot opposite me is so ugly with her work-a-day blue dress. Without rest I have to stare into her large, thick, round face, so like my own mother: the stern gaze, the bulbous nose. She is admired. Cezanne kept her. I am a working girl fresh from the fields, so blotted out.
‘You are the invisible form of my composition,’ he said.

– Extract from ‘Imagine Coal’ by Mary Cookson

Imagine Coal contains the winning entries from Leaf Books’ second micro-fiction competition of 2007. The thirty-one tiny fragments of wonderfulness within very concisely discourse on a fantastic variety of subjects, from artists’ models to attempted matricide via alien invasions, dancing GIs and elderly men with aphasia.

The competition was judged by the Leaf Team. Our thanks to all who entered.

*

There. You’re all excited now.

The other piece of work in the pipeline is the very exciting anthology of the winners from our recent Spoof and Humour Competition. It’s exciting for two reasons, mostly: first off for its content, obviously, which is funny and witty and talks quite a bit about soup, and second … off … because it’s getting a dual release – in print as the punningly titled anthology The Someday Supplement and online as part of the content of the newest and bestest iteration of our comedy website Mostly Life.

Mostly Life, that erstwhile and erudite if slightly under-construction repository for all things mirthful, is in an inordinately exciting phase at present. You can see the holding page at http://www.mostlylife.com/ and the even more enthralling blog at http://www.mostlylifeblog.blogspot.com/, which explains more or less what we’ve been up to and what we’re likely to be up to and in what sense we’ve been deflating the moon. We’re more in the habit of confusing and intriguing you than we are of giving the game away, but basically the website progression’s gone from funny words hidden under clipart images of bicycles and umbrellas through a cluttered office desk housing an knicker-clad aspidistra (no, really though) to a ship’s cabin with a resident platypus, and I think there was a brief diversion via an Escher print at one stage as well. Anyway, this version’s going to be spiffing. Properly spiffing. It’ll be going live in the next few weeks or so. There’ll be fanfares and things. It’s wholly exciting. Mostly.

Other Stuff

Other stuff, yes. Well, in between all our making books and designing websites and generally scouring Google images for comical 1950s-style underwear, we’ve been doing Other Stuff. That includes populating the authors’ page on the Leaf Books website, which is slow but significant work. If you're a Leaf Author (that does include the poets and micro-ficcers) and you've not send us a biography (up to 500 words) or a photograph and would like so to do, please get in touch with us. Also feel free to get in touch with us if, in our confusion, we've put up an out-of-date biography for you, and we'll wallop the correct one into place forthwith. Or as soon as we have a moment.

We’re also still very much in the habit of compiling anthologies for writers’ groups, should you happen to be a writers’ group with an anthology that wants compiling (or an individual writer with a novel or a collection of poems or anything along those lines). We’ve recently done All Roads Lead to Bute for the Bute Writers’ Group and Against the Clock for The Grail, and seemingly the links to those are misbehaving something chronic at present, but you can find them yourselves via the Writers' Groups page on our website. Anyway. Have a look at the ‘Printing Service’ page for further information about getting your own work printed. You nab a page on our website into the bargain.

And that's more or less it for the time being.

Sam.

Cardiff Chinese New Year Celebrations

In our capacity as the Mostly Websites website developers (we fit it in between publishing and sitcom-writing and tree surgery or whatever the other one is), we, being almost wholly Ceci, has made a lovely website for the Cardiff Chinese New Year Celebrations. The event is being run by Cardiff Chinese Community Services and is taking place at the Red Dragon Centre (where the daleks live) on Hemingway Road in Cardiff Bay. On Sunday February 10th. From 1.30pm - 3.30pm. 'A unique celebration of Welsh and Chinese culture,' it's going to feature a lion dance, martial arts demonstations, short plays, all manner of stalls and exhibitions and much more besides. Basically, it all sounds very exciting. Pop over to the website to see what precisely will be going on and to, you know, generally marvel at the website.

In other news, we've just started (at long last) putting together the authors' page for the Leaf website. It's going to be a long job, because frankly there are billions of you, or two-hundred at the very least, but yes. It's coming along. If you're a Leaf Author and you've not send us a biography (up to 500 words) or a photograph and would like so to do, please get in touch with us. Also feel free to get in touch with us if, in our confusion, we've put up an out-of-date biography for you, and we'll wallop the correct one into place forthwith. Or as soon as we have a moment.

Sam.

Spoof and Humour Competition - Provisional Results

Happy New Year to you all. We're highly pleased to announce the provisional winners of our 2007 Micro-Fiction Competition. They’re provisional because some of them have yet to get in touch with us after our informing them of their jolly good fortune – not because we’re fickle and might go ‘pah’ and change our minds at any given moment. If you’re one of the authors named below and this comes as a delightful surprise, do check your inbox and get in touch with us as soon as possible.

Many thanks.

Winner

‘Note Bene’ by Gearalt MacAodha

Commended

‘Letter from a Lotus Eater’ by Gearalt MacAodha

‘The Jedi Guide to Clubbing’ by Ben Langley

‘Horoscopes’ by Robert Wilton

‘Dead Duck’ by Robert Wilton

‘Diary of a Data Entry Clerk’ by Tracey A Gilbert

‘USA Holiday Solutions’ by Sally Wild

‘No Relative Values’ by India Farquharson-Smithers

‘Nanny Knows Best’ by Vicki Jarrett

‘Out and About With Julian’ by Vicki Jarrett

‘Hyperbolitics’ by Nigel Macarthur

‘Letters Page’ by Nigel Macarthur

‘Corrections and Clarifications’ by Sally Quilford

‘Local News’ by Kevin Wilson

***

Congratulations to the above and our thanks to all who entered. The anthology, to be named The Someday Supplement, will go into production very shortly – it will feature all of the above (or at least all of the above who are happy to be featured) with additional material from the Leaf Team. We shall keep you up to date on its progress.

Sam.