Files we can't open.

Prospective competition entrants - just a quick note to remind you that, with the archaic technology we have at our fingertips, we are unable to open .docx or .wps files. You must send your entries as .doc or .rtf files, or at a pinch as PDFs, otherwise we'll have to ask you to try again.

(We'd also love you lots if you used single spacing and pressed the tab button rather than making multiple assaults on the space bar every time you want to create a paragraph indent, but I suppose that's just being picky. When formatting pieces for inclusion in the book, we make them single spaced, fully justified, 12 point Times New Roman with 5mm paragraph indents, and we replace any double spaces after full stops with single ones. That's just a suggestion, you know, if you're hunting around for a format.)

We're working on Ada and More Nano-Fiction at the moment, correcting the first draft of the PDF, and also we're liaising with the winners of the Young Writers' Competition and tweaking Ada's cover and answering emails and sometimes we sit in the garden 'cause it's quite sunny. If you wanted to know what we're doing. Goodo.

Young Writers Competition – Results

We had lots of fun judging the Young Writing Competition; the entries were, in varying degrees, adorable, intelligent, highly humorous and ridiculously impressive. Here are the results from all three age categories:

Under 11

Winner
'The Great Barrier Reef' (poem) by Hugo Grundy

Runner-up
'Sicilian Adventure' (poem) by Dualtagh Grundy

Commended
'Avril' and 'Doors' (poems) by Hector Stellyes
'Colours are for' (poem) by Gemma Baker
'The Queen's Lyre' (story) by Rebecca Daniels
'Mysteries and Mirrors' (poem) by Ellamae Hindley
'The Sand Witch' (story) and 'Welshness' (poem) by Mollie Thomas
'Katia's Story' (story) by Bethany Barnes
'Snow' (poem) – Shayahi Kathirgamanathan
'After Dark' and 'Mind Your Manners' (poems) by Evan James Ward
'I've Never Seen' by John Roberts
'What does my Daddy do at Work?' (poem) by Dominic Wills
‘Rebellious Megan’ (story) by Sumeyya Tontus
'The Ghost Galleon' (story) by Imogen Shortall
'The Amazing Pebble' (story) by Archie Clark
'My Wales' (poem) by Ruby Johnston
'Pet Dinos in my Garden' (poem) by Jonathan Potter
'Mr Leroy' (story) by Carley Ann Hayes

Under 14

Winner
'Taste of a Tic-Tac' (poem) by Henry Gould

Runner-up
'How can I look forward when I don't know where to go?' (poem) by Shakira Dyer

Commended
'New Life' (story) by Henry Gould
'Garden Exploration' (story) by Shakira Dyer
'Leprechaun Holiday' (story) by Cerren Richards
'Sights of Newport' (poem) by Saskia Barnett
'Darkness' (story) by Selena Drake
'Weekends' (poem) by Oscar Lowe
'The River' (poem) by the Creative Writing Club, Penryn College
'Surfing' (poem) by Samuel Moore
'The Trenches' (poem) by Ellie Hendricks
'Geraint and the Lady of the Lake' (story) by Konrad Edwards
'They Don't See What I See' (story) by Cleo Mathias

18 and under

Winner
'Journey in the Countryside' (poem) by Phoebe Power

Runner-up
'Writer's Block' (story) by Mairi Templeton

Commended
'Regifting' (story) by Mairi Templeton
'History, Period Two' (poem) by Luke Webber
'Deliveries' (story) by Amy Pay
'Reality' and 'All I Need is Inspiration' (poems) by Louise Hunter
'An Education' (story) by Charles Risius

Congratulations to our winners and commiserations to those who didn't make the list. Better luck next time. All of the above will be included in the competition anthology, which'll is yet to be named. Keep checking the Leaf Books blog, forthcoming newsletters and the news page on the website for further information about the production of this anthology. Our thanks to all who entered.

(And a dollop of other news: Dancing with Delsie and Other Poems is now available for purchase. Ada and More Nano-Fiction is in the advanced stages of production and will hopefully be available for purchase by July. See the website for further details.)

Desperately seeking nanoist.

If you're a K.M. Bainbridge who entered our nano-fiction competition, could you please get in touch with us at contact@leafbooks.co.uk? You only put the first half of your email address on your entry form.

Some points of order.

Hello, all. Hope you're well. We've just sent out the March newsletter, which is full of March-related news, but thought we may as well repeat ourselves here for anyone who doesn't, you know, like newsletters.

A special hello to any new Leaf followers who became aware of us following the Wicked Words and Witty Women event in Cardiff on March 11th. It was a jovial night of storytelling, poetry-reading, creative-writing and generally unnecessarily fantastic event in honour of International Women's Day. It was hugely successful and we hope to hold similar events in the future, about which we'll keep you informed.

We'd like to remind anyone who was involved in our nano-writing workshop on the night that they're more than welcome to send in the 50-word stories that they produced in response to our prompts (and apologies to anyone reading the newsletter who thought that was a general call for 50-word stories from the public at large, because it wasn't, though that's not to say that 50-word stories aren't a jolly useful thing to have - being as they are a great warm-up for more epic writing and little poetic masterpieces that many other websites would doubtless be happy to house).

Another quick reminder: the Young Writers' Competition closes at the end of this month, so please get your entries in as soon as possible, or nudge any young people you might know until they disgorge a short story. Judging for the nano-fiction competition is ongoing, and we hope to announce the results in the April newsletter (and hopefully slightly earlier than that on this blog).

And a final note: Dancing with Delsie and Other Poems is in the final stages of production, but we've yet to hear from one of the winning authors. If you happen to be Christopher Korta, author of 'Memory of my Father', could you please get in touch with us as soon as possible at contact@leafbooks.co.uk. Thanks.

Poetry Competition Results

What were we calling this one? Poetry Competition 2008 part II? 'Cause it's 2009 now. Anyway. Whatever it's called, I'm pleased to announce the results of it. You know the one I mean. It ended last October and now it's been judged and soon there'll be a book. Here are the answers. I mean results.

Winner:

'I Do' by Eloise Williams

Runner-up:

'Dancing with Delsie' by Sally James

Commended:

'Snapshot' by Francis Hayes
'Armchair revolutionary' by Francis Hayes
'Retired' by Francis Hayes
'Pants Outside, Trousers, Big Letter H On T Shirt, Here To Save The World' by Jonathan Pinnock
'Sandra and Me' by Catherine Edmunds
'sky' by Catherine Edmunds
'Motherlode' by Deborah Harvey
'How My Family Got Into South Africa' by Liz Cashdan
'Collecting Pieces of you in Boxes' by Jan Harris
'Tracing the Shape' by Alfie Bryman
'Lion' by Anthony Watts
'Against the Storm' by Leah Armstead
'In a Circle it Doesn't Matter' by Leah Armstead
'Convalescent Hill' by Kate Rhodes
'Irish Quartet' by Margery Forester
'The Keeper/Blackwater' by David Underdown
'Toaster' by Charles Evans
'Jess's Box' by Joanna Ezekiel
'Mendelssohn's Nose – 1939' by John Feakins
'Memory of my Father' by Christopher J Korta
'Personal Best' by Alan Dunnett
'Whisky' by Dorothy Fryd
'What Smruti Sees' by Jenny Morris


Congratulations to all of the above and commiserations to those who didn't make the list. Better luck next time (which means April). All of the above will be included in the competition anthology, which'll be called Dancing with Delsie and Other Poems. Keep an eye on the blog and the news page on the website for further information about the production of this anthology.

Our thanks to all who entered.

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.