Updates on books, general gabbery, Happy Christmas etc.

Why, hello there. I've been massively neglectful, I know. It's very much time for an update. Where to begin. Well, the latest news is that Naked Thighs and Cotton Frocks and Other Short Stories is essentially not going to be available in time for Christmas. It might well be back from the printers in the next couple of days, but basically we'll have missed the last post by then. It's a little bit vexing, but printers are busy people in December so we knew it was bound to be a bit iffy. Never mind. BUT, nonetheless, and I'm vaguely sorry to shout at you there, the exciting news is that you'll be able to buy it very soon indeed and have it tumble through your doorway some small number of days after the conclusion of the festivities, which'll be cheering because it's lovely book full of smashing orangery stories and there's a bottom on the front cover. Good. Ceci's just put a nice PayPal button on the website, here, so you can order it from there any time you like and we'll send it to you as soon as we possibly can. Or you can send us a cheque and a letter or an email if that's the sort of thing you prefer. It'll cost £9.99 (p&p £1 per copy).

The other anthology-in-progress is Imagine Coal and More Micro-Fiction, which is currently at the collating and editing stage and will probably go to print some time in January. So that's jovial. You might also be wondering rather frantically about the whereabouts and whenabouts of the Humour Competition, you know, if you've got a particularly empty sort of a life. Or if you're addicted to all things Leaf. We're fine with that. Well, it's all in hand and actually we've done a fair bit of the judging, but we're holding off finalising the final selection (I'm fairly sure there are better words I could be using here) until January when we can devote the necessary amount of time to it. So remain for the moment on tenterhooks. We'll release you in the weeks to come.

We've been all sorts of kinds of busy these past few months, primarily making competition anthologies for ourselves and compiling work for lovely other people via our Root Creations service (send us text and have it magically transformed into a novel or a collection and possibly a bit of a website on the side - that sort of thing). That's been keeping us tremendously occupied. We've also been working through various iterations of the Mostly Life website with a view to making it generally spiffy (there's quite a test-ish sort of a version up at the moment, but the next 'un's very much in the offing), and all-in-all being website designers and humour writings and contemplating penning a sitcom. Basically what happens is that Ceci sees something on the telly that gives her a magnificent idea, and the next day it's been added to our lengthening CV. It's very exciting. Tomorrow we might be plumbers.

The websites are very nice indeed though. You can see them all through the Mostly Websites page, which is kind of our headquarters. It's a jolly page that makes you go 'What the dickens?' quite a lot, which always amuses us. The first dot's the one you're after. It links to a page called 'What?'.

I can't think offhand what else I need to tell you. Ceci has two new kittens and I have a peculiar itch just behind my right ear. I don't think there's any sort of a connection. So mostly I should just cease to blither now and wish you a happy Christmas and general adaptable seasonal greetings, and we'll be back in January with new books and websites and possibly we'll be designing bridges by then as well. We'll take some photos. It'll be splendid.

Sam.

Micro-Fiction competition results.

The 2007 Micro-Fiction Competition Winners are as follows.

Winner

‘Imagine Coal’ by Mary Cookson

Runner up

‘Moving House’ by Anne Youngson

Commended

‘Toothbrushes’ by Mary Cookson

‘The Writing on the Wall’ by Anne Youngson

‘Fish’ by Una Corbett

‘Ten Past Five’ by Robert Warrington

‘Whisky and Cigarettes’ by Sara Benham

‘The Man and the Pea Ball Chain’ by Frederick Mugford

‘Acquiring Wisdom’ by Suzanne Weichhart

‘Outside the Station’ by Lauren Huxley-Blythe

‘Letter to Bridget’ by Lyn Browne

'Fallen Fruit' by Ken Elkes

'The Alien Prisoner's Dilemma' by Rich Hough

'The Affluence of Incohol' by Jo Horsman

'The Woman Who Starts Accidents' by Jo Horsman

'Memoir 101' by Lockie Hunter

'Love' by Morag Edward

'A Strong Hand' by Sarah Dunnakey

'Spilt Milk' by Ruby Radburn

'Pop-Lockin'' by Marie Gallagher

'Drowning Mother' by Ruth Fay

'A Space of Waste' by Shirley Golden

'Entertaining the Idea' by Shirley Golden

'Illumination' by Shirley Golden

'A Problem Shared' by Helen Pizzey

'Velcro' by Emma Dewhurst

'Nape' by Lorraine Cave

'Pineapple' by Lorraine Cave

'Missing' by Lorraine Cave

'Three Times by Water' by Ailsa Cox

'RIP' by Christine Todd

'Gingerbread Mum' by Anne Shewring

***

Congratulations to the above and our thanks to all who entered. The anthology will go into production very shortly. Naked Thighs and Cotton Frocks and Other Stories is near completion. All very exciting.

Sam.

Rejoicings for the presence of Derek and Dogstar.

For they are indeed amongst us. They're so beautiful. It's almost absurd. We're really very smug. We've started sending out the complimentary copies of both titles and we'll resume doing so at the beginning of next week, because the post-sorting-person understandably has conniptions if you try to bury her entirely underneath 57 moderately bulky envelopes or however many it is. All the orders have been fulfilled though. Good. You ought to buy these books, you know. Really you ought. Derek and More Micro-Fiction sports the last Matt-designed cover and The Dogstar and Other Science Fiction Stories has an equally brilliant Ceci-designed cover and there are many and varied, you know, words inside and it's all just a bit divine. And they're heavy and shiny and bookish. We love them obscenely much.

Ukraine and Other Poems next. Shockingly soon, actually, and Naked Thighs and Cotton Frocks and Other Stories not long after. It's brilliant. It's like we're eating nothing but oats and steroids.

Sam.

Apologies for the current lack of Derek and Dogstar.

We know Derek and More Micro-Fiction and The Dogstar and Other Science Fiction Stories are currently listed as 'in stock' - we were under the impression that they very much would be when we put that announcement on the site, but unfortunately they've actually been slightly delayed at the printer by a couple of unforseen graphics errors. Luckily that's all sorted now and we've given the go-ahead for the clever book-compiling machines to do whatever it is they do best. The books should be with us within the next few days. Apologies to anyone who's put in orders and to the authors who are expecting their free copies - we'll get everything sent out as soon as we possibly can. Thanks for your patience.

Sam.

2007 Short Story Competition winners

On this computer, all the buttons and things for posting and editing and sauvegardering maintenant and the like are in French. I studied French for a good five years at school, so I don't really understand it. Apologies therefore if I accidentally do anything deranged.

The 2007 Short Story Competition Winners are as follows.

Winner

‘Naked Thighs and Cotton Frocks’ by Anne Shewring

Runner up

‘Translations’ by Mark Wagstaff

Commended

‘Jared Williams Again’ by Jenny Jackson

‘Looking at Water’ by Alan Markland

‘Turning’ by Pippa Goldschmidt

‘The Spirit of the Age’ by Nemone Thornes

‘Mortgage’ by Priya Sharma

‘The Volcano’ by Catherine Chanter

‘Like a Good Boy’ by Aiden O’Reilly

‘Postcards from a Previous Life’ by Andrew Blackman

‘You’re Dead’ by Tom Williams

***

Congratulation to all of the above, and thanks to everybody who entered. Naked Thighs and Cotton Frocks and Other Short Stories has taken its rightful place in the production queue and will hopefully be available for purchase in time for Christmas.

In other news, there's a postal strike on, but probably you already knew that. As such, we're kind of behind in our orders and the like, but we hope to catch up as soon as possible. Our email's been playing up slightly as well. Comic timing. Never mind. Ukraine and Other Poems is in the editing stage. Derek and Dogstar are both in the final proofing stages and seem likely to go to the printer this very week. The website and Mostly Life are in fairly transitional stages and are basically waiting for other people to be a tad less busy. We have a new carpet in our office. Ceci's foot is giving her a certain amount of grief. I've lost a pair of swimming goggles. I don't know what 'brouillon plus' means.

It's fine on the whole.

Sam.

New books.

Outbox and Other Poems and The Light that Remains and Other Stories are amongst us, and really quite phenomenally available for purchase.

Outbox and Other Poems costs £7.99 and has the following blurb:

He swam the Mekong in Dong Det
with two dark-haired sisters who cast their nets
before inviting him to share their haul….
- Extract from ‘Outbox’ by Nicky Mesch

Outbox and Other Poems contains the winning entries from the Leaf Books Open Poetry Competition that ran during the winter of 2006. The thirty poems within cover such diverse subjects as love and hate, boat-building and ghostly rats, dreamfishers, funerals and science classes. What unites them is their brilliance.

The Light that Remains and Other Stories costs £9.99 (p&p £1.69 - lots of pages in this one) and is blurbified thusly:

‘Keep walking,’ he said, and we kept walking. The excited sound of the spectators at the edges of the crash itself, the whee-oosh clamour of the approaching ambulance, the burning scent that the cars offered up: none of it attracted him. Other people saw the wreckage, a body lying in the street (still alive, I think) and rushed over, like flies wanting corpses, for whatever reasons they have – but not him. Not at all. ‘Keep walking,’ he said.
- Extract from ‘The Light That Remains’ by Paul Currion.

A bookish boy’s learning to experience his city as a blind man would experience it; a fabled and helplessly destructive dragon that lives at the local takeaway and a biker’s encounter with a Harley-fancying mermaid. The Light That Remains and Other Stories contains the winning entries from the Leaf Books Open Short Story Competition that ran during the winter of 2006. The fourteen superlative stories residing within represent the pick of crop.

***

We think they're probably the nicest couple of books we've ever made. Kindly buy them and agree.

In other news, the judging for both the short story and micro-fiction competitions is ongoing, as is the production of Ukraine and Other Poems, as are several critiques and the website revamp and the launching of the whole Mostly Life phenomenon and also I need to fill out some forms for the dentist. It's all go really, and the printer isn't work. Fine.

Sam.

Spring 2007 Poetry Competition - Winners

We’re inordinately pleased to announce the winners of our Spring 2007 Poetry Competition:


Winner:

‘Ukraine’ by Julie Bolitho-Lee

Runner-up:

‘The Guest’ by Catherine Chanter

Commended:

‘Heart’ by Julie Bolitho-Lee

‘What Could Be Done To Make a Difference?’ by Catherine Chanter

‘On taking my 80-year-old aunt back to Ireland to look for our roots’ by Pauline Plummer

‘My Friend Barry, the Painter and Decorator’ by Pauline Plummer

‘You Watch Yourself’ by Barry Taylor

‘The Day is White’ by Mary Charman-Smith

‘I Made This Box’ by John Foggin

‘Explorer 242’ by Clive Gilson

‘Dumb-Show’ by Rosi Beech

‘Falmouth’ by Rosi Beech

‘Ersatz Fidelis’ by Harrison Solow

‘Aunt Matilda’ by Keith Shaw

‘Departure’ by Patricia Ward

‘Red’ by Margie Harriott

‘Monochrome’ by Sharon Hosker

‘Snapshots’ by Ian Stanley Ward

‘Daffodil Trail’ by Sarah James

‘The Welfare’ by Kate Noakes

‘Piopet’ by Helen Jayne Gunn

‘Obsession’ by Ivy Bannister

‘Colour of Life, Colour of Blood’ by Ivy Bannister

‘Home-Cooked’ by A.F. Harrold

‘This Englishman in Paris’ by A.F. Harrold

‘Flowers on the Salt Bush’ by Rob Mooney

‘BBC’ by Wayne Preece

‘The Washing of Plates’ by Simone Mansell-Broome

‘Portrait of Schoolgirls by Larchwood’ by Owen Lowery


All of the above poems will be published in an anthology to be called Ukraine and Other Poems that we very much hope should be available for purchase in time for Christmas. Congratulations to the winners and our heartfelt thanks to all who entered.

Sam.

News. Lots thereof.

Well, now we know how to get you talking. Make a two-line post then leave you to it for the next three weeks. Bravo.

Here are some other things for you talk about.

The Micro-Fiction Competition. Having been granted a brief extension (which means pantaloons), this now closes on September the 15th, in ten days time. So you've still oodles of hours in which to send us your short short stories for judging purposes. I hope they're all brilliant.

Judging. Ongoing. We're currently pretty darned close to reaching a result in the poetry competition and the short story comp's biffing along fairly nicely as well. Probably we're a touch slower than usual because we don't have Turbo-Reader Matt to help us anymore, but we're doing our utmost and we hope to make an exciting announcement within the next couple of weeks. Please to be bearing with us.

Books in progress. Outbox & Other Poems and The Light That Remains & Other Short Stories are with the printer as we speak and should hopefully be available for purchase by the end of the month. All featured authors, as ever, will receive a free copy as soon as we can bung it in an envelope and send it in their general direction. Derek & More Micro-Fiction and The Dogstar & Other Science Fiction Stories are both a significant distance along the production line and could very conceivably be at the printer within the next month or so as well. For which a hearty hurrah.

Leaf Itself. Hello there. Now. Probably you've noticed that we've undergone a couple of changes over the last few months. We've mislaid Matt, and Gav's going to go AWOL some time in the near future on the grounds of his needing a job that pays more money. Boo. But it's not all grim. We have, in recent weeks, acquired the assistance of a couple of extraordinarily able web-bods who are helping us first and foremost with Mostly Life, the Leaf Team's new and almost spleen-poppingly exciting project that I do believe Ceci might have mentioned to you once or twice before. It's essentially an online repository for various things humorous and quirksome and generally pleasing. There's going to be a spoof of a village newspaper, a section for less audio-based versions of radio 4 type panel games, the Someday Supplement for the housing of all manner of humorous writings and the Sensorama, for anything amusing in a visual or noisy fashion. Or tactile if you can work out how to do that over the computer. Please keep checking the website at http://www.mostlylife.com/ - we expect it to go live within the next couple of weeks.

Leaf Books itself is going to slightly alter its working processes in order both to match the requirements of its costumers and to enable us to be a bit more massively productive with the whole Mostly Life thing. Basically we'll be running fewer competitions - 2008's preliminarily going to see the production of a poetry anthology and a micro-fiction anthology, both of which we hope will be sizeable and slightly fantastic. We think this is in many ways a smart move. We were possibly getting a bit deranged with the competitions there and we were frankly kind of running out of names for them. A touch of focus was called for. Nothing much else is changing... newsletters will go out on a quarterly basis, all our books will still be very much available for purchase and the website at http://www.leafbooks.co.uk/ is going to get a spiffy new revamp with art deco shapes and coffee-ish colours and improved functionality and all those jolly things. Which is something to look forward to.

And now I'm off for a spot of breakfast. I'm thinking crumpets and lemon curd, and I won't be swayed.

Sam.

How to make us properly love you.

Don't start your letters with 'Dear Sirs'. We're mostly not.

Sam.

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.

This weeks happenings

ALMOST THERE -You know I finally did it. I'm managed to get Coffee and Chocolate to the printers and it's being printed as we speak. So I'll be updating the website so you can put in your orders for it very soon.

I was a little scared when we announced both these competitions (the Coffee and Chocolate Themed Competitions) as I thought that that all the stories would be very samey and that it would an un-entertaining read. I need not have worried though, this collection of poems, stories and short fictions if both varied and entertaining. And great with a cup of tea, coffee or even something stronger like espresso.

The Light that Remains and Outbox containing the Open Short and Open Poetry selections are going to follow in quick succession closely followed by Derek (our micro fiction collection). The Light that Remains is out biggest collection yet at over 200 pages! The covers aren't yet done but I'll post them as soon as they are in a showable state.

UPDATE: SCI-FI JUDGING DELAYED - I know the result is due at the end of the month, but someone didn't check their diary for this week, so the Committee of Readers hasn't been able to sit and make the final judgements on the short-list. We're not keeping you in suspense on purpose, honestly. The same person is also away from most of the world for next week. I'll try and get a decision for you as soon as I can in the week starting the 8th of July.

POETRY COMP ENDS TOMORROW - Don't forget that you have until midnight Saturday to make your entry to our latest poetry competition. If you've posted your entry don't worry we'll take into account the postal strike today.

I'm sure there is more but that's all I can think of for now.

Keeping writing,

Gavin.

Exciting New Project – Mostly Life

Has no one who is better at writing than me updated this blog? Is it down to the broken-footed to tell you all the exciting news from her sickbed? Yes.

And there is quite a lot of news.

Let’s start with the exciting stuff, then we will move on to the thrilling things and perhaps finish with the rather sad.

Exciting – New project afoot (sorry not obsessed with feet or anything).

Leaf is launching an online magazine. It’s not launched yet so don’t jump up and down yet. Obviously I won’t be jumping, well not for another few weeks anyway.

This is what the magazine is called – Mostly Life
And this is where it’s going to be – www.mostlylife.com , if you go there you can see whatever our lovely web developer may have put there today.
And this is the Mostly Life Blog where you can find out all about it - http://www.mostlylife.com/blogs/

We are looking for material or a writerly and comical nature as well as material of a not writerly but nevertheless comical nature so go look at the Mostly Life Blog.

Thrilling – We have so many books in production that the production team are in need of a holiday but aren’t going to get one because we have so many books in production. These are they –
Coffee and Chocolate, the anthology from the Coffee and Chocolate competitions (you may have guessed that). It is at the printers as we speak, or read, or eat chocolate or drink coffee or whatever we are doing right now at this very minute.
Outbox & Other Poems, the anthology from the Open Poetry Competition is well under way with the typesetting and cover design as is The Light That Remains & Other Short Stories from our Open Short Story Competition.
Derek & Other Microfiction, from (yes you did guess that) from the Microfiction Competition is being edited right now. Or probably right now, unless Sam has gone for a cup of tea or some sustaining food.

The Rather Sad – my foot’s still broken. And Matt is leaving us. Oh oh.

Cecilia posted this. No other member of the Leaf Team has broken any bones.

Spoof and Humour – I Could Do With Some

Yesterday we launched our new competition. It’s going to be the best and most fun yet because we are asking for funny stuff. This request was driven by me.

‘There’s nowhere to place humorous and silly writing these days,’ I said in a moment of idle humour. ‘Where is all the funny stuff these days? Where the budding wits and raconteurs? Where the mistresses and masters of spoof?’

The rest of the team nodded assent. Or I think it was assent. They were eating their lunches at the time and that might have been a chewing sort of motion.

‘Right,’ I said, in between mouthfuls of baguette, ‘Next comp is going to be Spoof and Humour.’ More chewing which I chose to interpret as enthusiastic nodding.

But I’m the bossy person so this is the competition. (Which Gavin had better be putting on the website at this very moment. You see? Bossy).


*NEW* Spoof and Humour Writing competition:
Leaf Books is inviting you to render us helpless with mirth. We’re looking for humorous articles and comments up to 500 words in length with an emphasis on spoofing regular magazine and/or newspaper content. There are no notable limits on your creativity, but we’ve produced a list of sorts that you might like to peruse for ideas.

Spoof articles/columns on the following:
- news; current affairs; commentary; regular column type pieces; reviews; serialisations; cartoons; diaries; fashion; sport; style; home and garden; science; environment; technology; politics; jobs; analysis; travel; money; arts; classified; obituaries; food; horoscopes; problem pages; recipes; lonely hearts; letters page; complaints; corrections and clarifications; pretty much anything else that occurs to you.

Entry fee: £3 per submission; £10 for four submissions.

All selected pieces will be published in a Leaf Books anthology. The overall winner will receive £200.

Closing date: 30th September, 2007.
PLEASE NOTE - ONLINE SUBMISSIONS ONLY.

Yesterday I also broke my foot having a sauna. So please, I’m at home and sad. Send us something funny.

Ceci

If you are vaguely curious as to how the hell a responsible woman of a certain age can break her foot having a sauna - http://ceciliamorreau.blogspot.com/2007/06/what-not-to-do-in-sauna.html

Not being famous.

We sent a sample of our anthologies to Gardners the bookselling/mediating type people the other week, and when I say a sample I actually mean all three of them. Nothing. They said on their website they'd get back within 48 hours. They did nothing of the sort. Our anthologies are beautiful, and I'm not saying that because I'm partial but because it's a kind of a universal truth type thing. But Gardners don't much want to know. Which is fine. Like we wanted to sell our books in the first place. Chuh.

The Hay Festival is on right now this very second. We are not going to the Hay Festival because we are not sufficiently famous. This is fine too. The Hay Festival is not terribly much about books these days. This is not in any sense a controversial statement. The drive, however, is very pretty, and I'm sorry we shan't be doing that this year.

I am currently alone in the office. I'm trying to write an introduction to Outbox and Other Poems. If one of you would like to do it for me in comments, that'd be grand. I don't know where the others are. I know where one of them is, so technically that's a fib. But I don't know where the other others are, and the central heating's on, and it's too warm. Otherwise, you know. Everything's fine.

One of us has a birthday tomorrow. It isn't me.

Sam.

Life, the universe and everything else that might apply to this post

Isn’t summer a perfect time to sit in the sun with a good book? I’m only mentioning that because I think I’ve finally completed Coffee & Chocolate. And I think it’s perfect sunny reading material. And with a good wind it’s going to start the printing process on Monday.

We’re now moving on to The Light That Remains & Other Short Stories and Outbox & Other Poems from containing the winners from our Open Short Story and Open Poetry Competitions. We promise to have these out in the world a little faster. We then have Derek & Other Short Short Stories to present for your pleasure.

You’ve definitely got lots of quality and entertaining bit-sized reading on the way.

Not failing mention a Sci-Fi/Fantasy-themed collection, whose contents is currently being judged and enjoyed.

On a more mundane note the usual office admin has been done, bills paid, office tidied (which had a surprisingly high amount of paper than needs correctly disposing off), and generally getting on with things.

Non-work related Matt is now an expert at Guitar Hero II and if there is a World Champion Competition I’m going to enter him in it; Ceci went to Chealsea Flower Show (though I’ve not had chance to ask her what she thought of the Dr Who Garden); Sam seems to have brought in home-made cakes but I’m not asking her about them yet incase they aren’t for us and I look greedy; and I’ve been playing with a £2000.00 camera, which is quite scary. Plus I almost managed to break a £400 lens yesterday when it landed on the floor after falling off the sofa. I don’t think I can be trusted with a £2000.00 item that can easily be dropped.

What’s your news?

Gav.

Guidelines

Good afternoon folks.

Plleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaase will you make sure your entries are anonymous? I'm not accusing you of smashing the world or anything quite like that, and much as you've all got wonderful names (some of you have ultra-wonderful names), we judge our competition entries anonymously for a very strongly-reasoned reason.

Novellas, sure, print your name on every sheet in 72 point bold Impact, if you like (don't actually), but on your delightful entries for the competitions we only require your name on the entry form/covering letter because otherwise we have to spend a massive amount of time defacing your masterpieces with permanent markers, thereby precluding their further use should you want them back and also making the databasing process a great deal more awful than it already is.

I still love you.

Matt.

Micro-Fiction Winners

Micro-Fiction 2007 Winners

Winner:

‘Derek’ by Gina Goodwin

Runners-Up:

‘You are my giraffe now’ by Jason Jackson

‘Imaginary Origami’ by Amy Mackelden

Commended:

‘Badger Play’ by Gina Goodwin

‘Backwards’ by Jason Jackson

‘Lee & Holly’ by Amy Mackelden

‘Heavy Petting’ by Amy MacKelden

‘The Crumb’ by Catherine Edmunds

‘Not a Good Idea’ by Catherine Edmunds

‘The Truth About Janet’ by Sara Benham

‘Picture Your Father Without A Picture’ by Teresa Stenson

‘The Tower’ by Su Barkla

‘Going Home’ by Cath Drake

‘And I’m Gone’ by Jo Else

‘I, Witch’ by Jo Else

‘Mountain Air Footie’ by Don Taylor

‘The Miracle’ by Stella Pierides

‘Callers’ by Sue Anderson

‘Finding faculties, fainting goats’ by Jackie Sullivan

‘The library book’ by Tania Hershman

‘The Long Not Yet’ by Chloe Richards

‘The Colour of Romance’ by Sara Browning

‘Doing Something’ by Varihi Scott

‘The silence of sleeping with him’ by Louise McErlean

‘Unfortunate Noses’ by Katy Whitehead

‘Floating is easy’ by Katy McAulay

‘When my third foot grows’ by Nancy Saunders

‘Bridged Perspective’ by David Hallett

‘We’ll Meet Again’ by Laurie Porter

‘Sailing to Valhalla’ by Michael Massey

‘Car Park’ by Caroline Adams

‘Cl²’ by Matthew Mead

‘Signalling’ by Amy Sackville

‘Looking Down’ by Alice Blake

‘Morris came in from the garden shed’ by Arvon P Whitaker

‘Queen of the Nerd Prom’ by Shaun Manning

‘Fading Footprints; Downy Flakes’ by Robin Tompkins

‘The Corn Carter’ by Jane Rusbridge

Our thanks to all who entered, and congratulations to the above. The anthology will go into production next month: we'll keep you up to date with its progress.

Gav.

No cups on MY head.

I've not made a post on this blog in something approaching 47 years. This is mostly because my computer at home, which isn't actually my computer at all but is more sort of communal, has unanimously decided I'm not to have access to blogger anymore and when I'm in the office I'm generally doing something I need to be in the office for, which isn't really blogging.

This morning, however, we are out of staples, and this has caused my work-rate to grind sufficiently to a halt that I'm able to make a post. There's an elephantine pile of databasing to my left. It is unstapled. I can't database it until it's stapled. Well, technically I could, but meddling with unstapled sheaves of paper that are much better off corralled into individual stories is practically courting catastrophe. Were I to embark on such an endeavour I fancy things would get in a pretty pickle, as the young folk say. I mostly say a ghastly mess. I don't at all. I don't know why I pretend such things.

We've judged the micro-fiction, you'll be happy to know. We wanted to have announced the results by now, but we rather dimly left the stories with the member of the team who was way too busy to get the names off the database, so we're going to have to do that within the next couple of days. Then there shall be an announcement. And it'll be almost on time. We're very close to being proud. Peculiar stuff though, micro-fiction. Don't take massive offence or anything, but I'm going to point out an area where lots of you went slightly astray. You wrote too much. Not too much for the rules or anything. Just too much for the stories you were writing. It's our fault for putting the word limit up probably, but this competition did largely lack the wonderfully concise, epigrammatic little two-sentence and single paragraph stories that were by and large our favourites in the first comp. The vast majority of these stories pushed right up to the 500 word mark, and it was either more or less wordage than they truly had in them. Which is possibly a thing to think about for next time.

Another way you can make us happy is to use tab indents for new paragraphs. We'll love you more than we love satsumas if you actually use the tab button instead of hitting the space bar four times. You don't know what joy that brings to a typesetter and an editor. Really you don't. And don't address us as 'Dear Sirs', because half of us are nothing of the sort. Thank you. I didn't mean to be telling you off.

As I say, we're out of staples. That's the kind of news you've been missing out on.

Sam.

Micro Fiction and Matt’s Head

Micro Fiction and Matt’s Head

The judging for the micro fiction is hotting up. Partly due to the fact that we have been sitting outdoors in this lovely weather in order to better enjoy the entries. Partly due to the fact that there is a finalists pile! No names to be revealed yet. Well, we don’t even know the names because we don’t look until after the stories are chosen. So, all you eager micro writers and writers of micro fiction, any moment now…

Also micro fiction is so fun that we have now opened another competition for it. This time, watch out, it is even more micro. Only 300 words. Ha, there’s a challenge for you.

Also, if you want to see just how it’s done, we have just had a further print run of ‘The Final Theory’ back from the printers. This book contains all the winners and commended entries from our first micro competition. There’s some great, impressive and very compact work in there. You can buy it straight from our site (we get more money that way) or from Amazon (they get more money that way).

Finally, Matt’s head was in no way damaged any further than it usually is by balancing all those cups on it. Could the person who promised to buy a copy of ‘The Better Craftsman’ if Matt could perform this amazing exploit please do so. Because we won.

Any further office challenges will only be taken up if the challengers promise to buy books.
Don’t tell Matt I said this, but, he claims to be able to do a headstand … that is surely worth buying a few anthologies for. Aside from which they are great to read.

Ceci.

Team Leaf Office Challenge (part 2)

We think this implies that we win...

Matt.

Buy this book, please.

Matt.

Sneak Preview - Coffee and Chocolate

Click here for Coffee and Chocolate Cover Large Version

I thought I'd share the cover of the upcoming Coffee and Chocolate Anthology for anyone that's interested. I think it's very sensual.

Gav.

The Better Craftsman - now available

'That was how Christina had first seen him, imagining him at first to be some offbeat academic conducting his tutorial in the open air. Only gradually did she learn that Peake was no lecturer, or leastways was not on any faculty’s payroll. While occasionally he might attend a public lecture, it would be to sit it out impatient for the question and answer session, which he would use to interrogate the speaker to the point of distress or, indeed, beyond it.’

– Extract from ‘The Better Craftsman’.

The Better Craftsman & Other Stories contains the winning entries from the Leaf Books Summer Short Story Competition. The ten unremittingly brilliant tales nestling within cover subjects as diverse as a student’s getting the most out of a maverick academic, a couple’s raising a family in a never-ending traffic jam and a landlubberly boy’s first visit to the seaside.

It arrived back from the printers on Thursday and as such is now officially available for purchase:

http://www.leafbooks.co.uk/readers/books/bettercraftsman.html

It really is very good. Go on: treat yourself.

Gav.

Hay Festival 2007 – Only for the Famous!!

Much disappointment and disillusionment is going on here. We have just received the news that we cannot once more reconstruct our Welsh Books Council stand mini-fest. What a calamity, we all enjoyed it so much last year (even the people who got a tad sunburnt because they were so gripped our fantastic authors that they forgot all about their factor 300). Apparently the powers that be chez Hay have declared, in their wisdom (!!) that only authors already appearing on the main stages can read elsewhere in the festival. Our mission to publish and promote new authors is completely flummoxed by this ruling. Doesn’t seem quite right to us that you can only be famous if you are already famous.

We are considering a minor revolution and may have to set up camp in the car park and read from there until security chuck us off, and send for the police, at which point we can do readings from the local nick. Any authors interested in in-cell performance?

If by some lucky chance you are already famous and reading on the main stage and also published by us – yay- you don’t need us anymore. Or please get in touch and you can support us supporting new writers.

Ceci.

The Micro Fiction Competition – What’s Happening

There is great curiosity and anticipation with respect to our very popular recent Micro Fiction Competition. People are asking ‘When are the results out?’ ‘Have I won?’ and ‘Is the prize a trip to Las Vegas?’

What I can say for sure is the prize is still £200 and publication. Not Las Vegas, sorry.
Also we are still reading, reading, reading. There were a prolific number of good entries and thus there will be more debating than usual re who is going to get into the anthology. However be assured we are giving the Micro Fiction our full attention and are hoping to announce results soon. Beginning of May we hope. That’s if we haven’t destroyed each other in our whole-hearted attempts to defend our favourite pieces of micro fiction.

Ceci.

Better than an Easter Egg - Open Short Story Winners

For some reason Blogger isn't behaving itself for Sam so it is left to me to announce the winner, runner-up and commended writers of the Open Short Story 2006 competition. The stories listed here will be available in a Leaf anthology later in the year.

Congratulations to the winners, and thanks to all who entered for the hours of entertaining reading and the tough choices in the judging.

Open Short Story 2006 Winners:

Winner

'The Light That Remains' by Paul Currion

Runner-Up

'Natural Selection, Gaza 2004' by Robert Wilton

Commended

'Starshine' by Mark Wagstaff

'Breakfast Things' by Mark Wagstaff

'Third Person' by Michael Stewart

'Darling, You Know and I Know' by Lynne Voyce

'Treasure' by Holly Barratt

'Hide and Seek' by Jenny Jack

'Something to Write Home About' by Ian Madden

'Mid-Life Baby' by Annette Keen

'Burning' by Sue Anderson

'Standing Up on the Pedals' by Joanna Quinn

'Perhaps Birches' by Joanna Lilley

'Break, Break, Break' by Sally Douglas


Gav.

Open Poetry Competition 2006 - Results

Here followeth the long-awaited results of the 2006 Open Poetry Competition. I've been long-awaiting them myself all day, and then I was so overcome with impatience that I decided I'd better announce them.

Winner:

'Outbox' by Nicky Mesch

Runner-up:

'The Craft' by Gill Learner

Commended (in no particular order):

'The Calorific Value of Anxiety' by Gill Learner

'Window' by Benjamin Logan

'Learning Science' by Kathy Miles

'Stranger Danger' by Mark Chatterley

'Hieroglyphic Love' by Gwen Seabourne

'A Son' by Pat Borthwick

'Rats' by Tracey S Rosenberg

'Sonar' by Robert Warrington

'The Same Lover' by Hilaire Wood

'Bottle-Green' by Hilaire Wood

'do not add post' by Jason Jackson

'Endowment' by Juliette Hart

'Sandman' by Juliette Hart

'After the Funeral' by Chris Kinsey

'Levi, 2001' by Sinead Collins

'Learner Readers' by Margaret Eddershaw

'Winter Kafeneion' by Margaret Eddershaw

'The Dreamfisher' by Oz Hardwick

'A Candle for Daphne' by Gabriel Griffin

'Bedazzled' by Sue Anderson

'Things I Do' by Gwyneth Box

'Body' by Alice Blake

'Tough Love' by Claire Trevien

'Prayer' by Charles Evans

'Upside Down' by Charles Evans

'Maternal Visit' by Doreen Gray

'Sea Change' by Jenny Morris

'A Splash of Colour' by William Wood


Congratulations to all the above and our thanks to everyone who entered. As ever, an anthology containing all the winning entries will be produced in due course. It'll be called Something or the Other and Other Poems, except 'something or the other' will be replaced with proper words, like a title or what have you. It's going to be grand.

Expect an announcement about the Open Short Story competition later in the week, if you think you can take the excitement.

Sam.

Nearly news.

Bother. I think perhaps I accidentally changed the font size. NEVER MIND. Good morning. We seem to have gone an awfully long time without blogging. I say 'We seem' as if I didn't know perfectly well it'd been eons and the like since we last put up a post. We're not wholly lacking excuses. The office building in which we currently reside lost its internet connection for a week or so, so that threw us all into a bit of a confusion. And I've tried a couple of times to update from home, but my computer there won't much be having it. Windows ME, you know. Doesn't let me do most things. But I think the primary reason was that we actually had very little in the way of news because we're pretty much tied up with judging the most recently closed poetry and short story competitions. It's a bit epic. The emphasis, I suppose, being on 'bit'. But it's quite a lot of judging all right and I gather the website implies that it might be over by the end of this month, and that's not really going to be the case. But we do hope to announce the poetry results within about a week or possibly two, and the short stories shortly after that. As ever, the results will go up here, on this blog, when they're ripe for the announcing. You shan't miss them if you keep checking. We don't meanly sneak out competition results when people aren't looking.

We do have a smear of news today. The Better Craftsman and Other Stories has been emailed off to the printer and should hopefully be back with us in whatever amount of time these things usually take. And then you can buy it for £6.99, which will make us inordinately happy. It's a grand little collection and it has ten entirely spiffing stories in it, and also quite an exciting cover.

And I really do plan on getting up to speed with the novellas today. Really I do.

Sam.

Oh. Yes. Also.

A quick note to those awaiting responses to their novella submissions... the first round - the ones who submitted approximately three months ago - are being dealt with right now and hopefully if you're one of those people you should hear from us within the next fortnight or so. Not quite three months, but absolutely as close as we can manage: it's been a very busy few weeks of late and we're getting on top of things gradually, but we do ask for a mite more of your patience. Many thanks.

Sam.

Data protection and the dehydrating effects thereof.

There's a seminar on data protection going on behind me. It's going on right in the office doorway, meaning I'm very excited at the prospect of its coming to a happy close and enabling me to visit the drinking water, because nothing about my lips is currently correct. Gav and Ceci are in attendance at this seminar. Every so often I hear one of them ask a clever question. I am not so much attending the seminar as I am hiding behind the partition and sending out information about our two competitions ('Spring 2007 Poetry Competition' and 'Science Fiction and Fantasy', lest you've forgotten, details of which remain very much available on the website) and trying to research the intricacies of getting real live bookshops to stock our anthologies, which obviously are entirely worthy of being stocked by real live bookshops.

Mostly I was writing because I noticed in February, when we announced the winners of the Coffee and Chocolate themed competitions, we said that The Better Craftsman and Other Stories was on course to be out and about by the end of 'this month', which is obviously pretty much a fib on account of that month's having ended. I think probably my intention was to say 'next month' anyway, because that was generally understood to be the plan. It still is the plan. Barring any printing mishaps or delays or what have yous, the anthology should be available for purchase by the end of this month, which is March. Apologies for any confusion and the like.

Oh. Well. Sigh. Water. They must be finished soon though, the data protection bods. The sandwich man who comes along daily in his sandwich van will be here any minute now, and no way will Gav and Ceci sit quietly and listen to people talking about data protection if it means risking the absence of sandwiches. It's not that we don't care enormously about protecting your data, but the sandwich man is our hero and 11.30am-ish is generally a very exciting time of the morning. I'm sure you'll understand. Especially you, Mr Ephraim Gadsby of the Nasturtiums, Jubilee Road, Streatham Common.

Joke, obviously. But an approving nod to anyone who can tell me from which author I lifted Mr Ephraim Gadsby.

Sam.

Guidelines and paper clips.

Mostly I think I was tinkering with a database and listening to two of the other three talking for five straight minutes about underpants and thinking about all the issues I'd have fun raising if we had a union when I noticed several things were very wrong with the submission guidelines, primarily the fact that not many people are adhering to them. This'll be our fault. We're going to make them a bit more obvious and accessible and link them up properly from the various upload forms, and we'll be adding a few new ones as well for larks and that, and also it's finally occurred to me that I can tell the hardcopy newsletter receivers to contact us for full guidelines rather than just letting them guess, but in the meantime I shall kindly direct your attention to a), the relevant page on the website and b), the following points about the online entry process:

- If you enter online and make a payment by PayPal using a different name and/or email address to the one you used to upload your competition entry, please make that clear in the comments section of the upload form, stating the name/email address/what have you of the PayPal account. Otherwise we get confused and fail to match up entry and payment (they come to us in two separate emails, for those inexplicably interested in the minutae of our working day) and end up emailing you and then waiting for a reply and it's all a bit upsetting. Not massively upsetting, obviously. I wouldn't let it trouble you personally. But doing the above would be really more than great.

- Sometimes... not often... things go wrong with some element of the process and we get entries without payments and payments without entries and entries without words and other permutations of the above. We deal with these issues via email. We'd advise you to look out for such emails from us in the days after you've entered just in case something's gone astray. As I say, far and away the majority of online entries reach us with no problems whatsoever, but sometimes mishaps are a tad unavoidable, and I'm pointing this out because, even more occasionally, the entrants don't respond to our queries about what became of the entry that should correspond to this payment and what have you. We still have a couple of problematic half-entries outstanding from the recently closed micro-fiction competition, and we can't wait indefinitely. We don't much want you to miss out on the whole entering business, so do try and be electronically available in the couple of days after submitting your work.

- Not to be putting any contact information on the entries themselves, please. This is quite important and often sadly overlooked. We do delete all the errant info prior to printing the entries out, but this does slow down the whole process and makes us a little bit jittery. It's not a question of our not loving you regardless, but we'll love you even more if you don't put your name on your entry.

That's about it. As I say, we'll be tweaking the guidelines appropriately in the near future. There's a website update going on as we speak, in fact. Mostly that'll be Gav's taking down the now closed Micro-fiction competition (which, numbers wise, was even more of a rip-roaring success than the previous one, so hurrah for that) and putting up the new Spring Poetry Competition 2007 (or possibly Spring 2007 Poetry Competition) instead. If you ask nicely in comments, and I'm not saying that we're in any sense desperate for comments, perhaps he'll put the links in this post when the pages are complete. Or you can just keep refreshing the website, which is also fun. Root Books - our new branch (we are SUCH wits) that's all about giving new authors a bit of a boost and the like, with the print-readying and subsequent printing of any manuscripts they might want printing and, you know, more besides, has its own page on the website. We've written a new newsletter and made an amusing advert with Venus on it. And I am unamused to discover that my favourite paper clip has escaped. My second favourite paper clip, which is circular, honours us still with its presence, but the triangular one is AWOL.

You can post sitings here if you so wish. In comments. And don't go thinking we care about comments.

Sam.

HA

To Emma, whose wonderful envelope brightened a dull morning; thank you.

Matt. (Who is alive.)

Cracking on

The front page of the website has been given a little re-refresh - sorry about that. I was trying to keep the stocking up until next year but got over-ruled - boo!

We're very much enjoying micro-fiction entries. There is less than two weeks left to enter but I'm sure you've already marked that in your calendar.

Production on the Better Craftsman (containing the results of the Summer Short Story Competition) is progressing marvelously and I think Matt is looking for a 70s revival with the cover. Very stripey and pretty. And production of the yet unnamed Chocolate and Coffee anthology is starting this week.

Reading/judging of the Open Short Story and Open Poetry is well underway.

Root Creations first self-published collection (The Red Book) is doing well. We've also re-introduced our critiquing service to the website for anyone looking for positive and practical feedback from our editor and team of readers.

And that ends this blog posting.

Gav.

We Aren'tn't Dead

Which title, technically, is plagiarism, but we're going to call it intertextuality today. Mostly we're wanting to apologise for the slightly defunct and unchanging appearance of the front page of the website. You may have noticed that certain other pages have been going up and that we're not being wholly neglectful or anything of the sort, but the front page does have something of a deceased competition mentioned thereon and does also sort of have a bit of a Christmas stocking theme in the offing. Never mind. It will be updated very shortly and is pretty much top of the list after all the other terribly important things. There is a slightly frightful lot on a moment, but we're pretty much getting there. Don't think we're any description of a time warp. We're really not.

Sam.

Strangest thing.

This place where we work. It's gone all pretty.

The trains are running fine, which is unsporting of them (too many folk are damnably ungrateful for a country that breaks massively on the rare days when there's sledding to be had), but that's not going to prevent my using (and that, I believe, was a gerund) the weather as an excuse to knock off really very early and walk to a quite different station for no reason other than my rather liking (and that, I believe, was another gerund) walking in the snow.

And also because the station here has no departure boards so if there was no train due till October I wouldn't really know it.

Sam.

Why is the internet called the web?

Because it's full of threads that connect lots of things to lots of other things, and it can quite easily get mind-blowingly confusing.

This might just be my opinion. I’m in the middle of a complicated website update and so threads are very much on my mind. For example I’m trying to make easier to use our critiquing service by adding an ‘upload and pay via Paypal option’, which is relatively straightforward, but I also want it make it easy to request a critique and make an online entry. This I’m finding isn’t so easy. I have a solution it just takes a little longer to do.

The main bits of the update should be done over the next couple of days; where I’ll be adding the Root Creations wing. Though for balance we do have a Brief Leaf wing under construction on the other side. I’m just waiting for the plaster to dry.

Please mind the wet paint on your way round.

gav.

I shot the database. I didn't really.

Well, I don't know. You veritably prostrate yourself all over our inbox in your desperation to hear the results of the Coffee and Chocolate competitions, and then we give them to you and you say nothing. Whatsoever. Not a whoop or a boo or an about time too. I don't know.

Mostly this weekend I engaged in a staring competition with the online entries folder, which contained pretty much a hundred emails, all of which needed printing off and databasing come Monday. I stared at it in the hope that it would turn away first, but it didn't. It very much won, and it gave me my customary Monday headache a day early out of pure vicious spite. Then we all databased it this afternoon, which is by and large what it wanted. But don't ever try and make our lots easier by not entering our competitions, because frankly we'd much rather you did than otherwise. I'm only saying. Also I came in half an hour early today with a view to getting started on it, and nobody knows except me, and now everybody. I don't think there's much reward in coming in half an hour early of your own volition unless you subsequently make a spot of noise about it.

Next comes the judging of the Open Short Story and Poetry competitions, which we hope will be concluded by whatever date we said we hoped they'd be concluded by on the website. You'll have to go and look for yourselves really. See how clever? And the Coffee/Chocolate winners are in the process of being edited. Or tomorrow they will be. And 'The Better Craftsman' is being formatted mostly and will be being bookified inordinately soon, about which we're all massively excited. I fancy it's going to have a faintly intruiging spine. Two competitions remain open - Science Fiction and Micro-Fiction - as does the open submission call for novella(e)(s). Which is yielding lots of novellas, essentially, and that's about all you can ask of it. Bravo.

The loos here, by the way, smell faintly of aniseed. Things could be worse.

Sam.

Coffee and Chocolate

Dear eager ones. We thank you for your patience, or alternatively your dogged persistence, but you shan't be needing either of them anymore. The results of the Coffee and Chocolate Competitions are published beneath.

Coffee:

Winner:

‘Aged 3, an Italian coffee bar, Pembrokeshire… ’ by Simone Mansell Broome

Runners up:

‘Coffee Haiku’ by Anna Caddy

‘Culture’ by L M Myles

Commended:

‘Time Tunnel’ by Sue Anderson

‘The Latté Literalist’ by Kenneth Shand

‘Nice’ by Peter Rolls

‘Filtered’ by Lynne Taylor

‘Stained’ by Sally Flint

‘Coffee to Go’ by Jan Petersen

‘Coffee, Kahwas and Orchids’ by Waldo Gemio

‘Morning Coffee’ by Angelina Ayers

‘Coffee Culture’ by David Miah

‘On It’ by Philip Taylor

‘That Which Prevents Sleep’ by Gertrud Gustafsson

‘Last Sunday’ by Ben Barton


Chocolate

Winner:

‘The Conspiracy of Thinness’ by Sarah Evans

Runners up:

‘Friction and Fondue’ by Amy Mackelden

‘The First’ by Carmen Ali

Commended:

‘Just a Ride’ by Janet Thomas

‘Chocolate’ by Kate Noakes

‘Just One More’ by Bethan Hole

‘Wagonwheel’ by Maire Cooney

‘Leave to Cool then Cut into Squares’ by Juliette Hart

‘The Halstead Chocolatier’ by Jeremy Dixon

‘Chocolate Super-Woman’ by Naomi Carter

‘Substitute’ by Dianna Robin Dennis

‘Hot Chocolate’ by Emma Hardy

‘Choc Talk’ by James Nelson

‘Zucci’s’ by Marie Gallagher

‘The Memory Box’ by Beverley Clarke

***

Well. There we go. Congratulations to all who entered and especially to all the above types. The listed entries will be published in a Coffee and Chocolate themed anthology that we're hoping will be available by the end of April. 'The Better Craftsman and Other Stories', by the way, which is the next anthology in the offing, remains on course to be out by the end of this month.

Next I need to put this jolly info on the website, but the editing device is a tad bust. It refuses to connect to the server. Mostly I'm saying this out loud here so you know it isn't my fault, but also in the hope that the very much offline-at-present Gav might hear me and fix it.

Sam.

Typots.

Dear Readers. I know there is a typo in the addendum to the newsletter. I know this because two people have... kindly... written to tell us. And to offer their proofreading services. An Unnamed Member of the Team has... thoughtfully... passed on my name to them as the one responsible, which is nothing more than the truth. I know also that it's fairly important that, being a publishing company, we try reasonably hard not to come off as unduly illiterate. I apologise, therefore, and grovel, and primarily acknowledge my abject failure. At life. At copywriting anyway. Though also, admittedly, at life. Other people - if you're better qualified for my job than I myself am, and quite frankly, you patently are... go for it. It will lessen my ALMIGHTY SHAME. Seriously though. I'm genuinely debating whether or not to bank my next paycheque.

If I'd been The Guardian, probably I would've misspelled all the names in the dog breeds chart that they somehow managed to get right.

Anyway. Mostly what I'm saying is, though I'm appreciative of the learnin' and that, please don't write to tell me about it ever, ever again. Not never.

There's good fellows.

Sam.

Databasing. How we love it.

And actually (cf. Gav's post beneath, which you ought to read if you're desperate to hear the results of the Chocolate and Coffee comps - not that it contains them), I was writing a post at the same time that Gav was fundamentally altering the means in which we make posts to this blog.

The post:

During vast swathes of yesterday, I databased. Gav also databased. Today, Ceci is databasing and reports that her brain is somewhat dying. It's a thing that each member of the Leaf Team is obliged to do at least once a week, but we do it, I think, with good cheer. And a merry heart. And sometimes we say slightly rude words about it.

It's not beyond our powers to use the whole databasing experience, what is fundamentally integral to our working lives, as a sort of a learning process. Life-enhancing. No less. I, par example, have been learning that some people write their telephone numbers in a format quite alien to me, namely 0123 456 7890 as opposed to 01234 567 890. I was under the impression that regional codes consisted of five numbers and then the personal bit was essentially the remaining six, but this seems to suggest more of a four-seven split. For a while I assumed you were all being contrary and remade your telephonic choices for you. But I've got over that. I guess you all know what you're doing.

(Please staple your manuscripts together, but not to the entry form. Thank you. I hope that was sufficiently sublimin(ab)al.)

Also I have a favourite postal addres, but you're not to hear of it. I'm not one to be loose about the data protection act. But if you've written to us and have an amusing (and faintly ironic) postal address, I'm probably talking about you.

Sam.

Well we are getting there

Our extreme apologies to all the coffee and chocolate entrants waiting to hear if they’ve won. We’ve almost arrived at a long list and hopefully a final meeting on Monday will result in the decision of a couple of winners.

In other news:

Production of The Better Craftsman and Other Stories is well underway.

Umm Matt or Sam is much better at writing these things. Once they emerge from their computer induced trances I’ll get them to write a better post.

gav.

When we are not blogging we are making books. That's a good thing.

Hello. Yes. Hello. And it's undeniably a sign of neglect when you have to start a post with hello, especially twice. It's not entirely that I've nothing to say. Mostly you should interpret a lack of blogging as a sign of immense in-office productivity. Oh, the things we've been doing.

- I've been editing the contents of the upcoming short story anthology, which we've decided is to be called The Better Craftsman and Other Stories. I have been reading entries. I also have a couple of short-story critiques on t' boil.
- Matt has been editing my edits and will shortly be making a book.
- Gav has been reading novellas and doing website things.
- Both Matt and Gav have been working most hard on the launching of... secret, special things. I don't know if I'm allowed to say. Probably not. You shall have to await their own blog posts for further info, which is always good because it means you might come back.
- Ceci has been doing EVERYTHING, including accounts and organising our entire working lives and restocking the office with paper and right now she's sending some books to Trinidad. And Tobago.

Also we had a pleasant meeting. Ceci made a very good joke about Brazil nuts.

Sam.

New Year's Resolutions

As far as I'm aware, we have none.

Actually that was a massive lie, because now that I'm telling everybody the whole office is chirping up:

- Sam vaguely thinks she'll do more writing this year. And will possibly buy a camel.

- Gav has decided to lose weight and do things with his chest hair, involving the colour pink. Which frankly disturbs me, because Gav is not only hairier than me by far, but also a real man with a beard and things like that.

- Ceci is frightened by the organisation of her handbag. This is to be remedied. Her head-hair is to be dyed, because presumably she doesn't have chest-hair, and is mostly remembering to write 2007 on things.

- Me, which is Matt, had you not already guessed... well. Did you know that it took me twenty minutes of concentrating very tersely to work out why everybody was having a Bond-themed party this new year? Yes. Well. This year I will become a steel magnate, own six airlines, forcibly eject several governments and stop eating Bounties at lunch time, for they are ill-meaning.

Also Leaf Books have slashed the price of all of our titles by half, meaning that - save for the Big Books - all of our titles are now £1.

£1!

That even justifies an exclamation mark.

Happy New Year to all then. I hope your resolutions are both brilliant and workable, and that during the festive period did not forget that we've OPENED SUBMISSIONS TO NOVELLAS and have LAUNCHED A SF & FANTASY COMPETITION.

The latter is the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me.