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.

[Fanfare] Summer Short Story Competition Results [/Fanfare]

Hear this, or alternatively read it. The much-awaited results of the Summer Short Story Competition 2006.

Winner:

'The Better Craftsman' by Martin Tyrell.

Runners up:

'Crater Beelines' by Robert Ewing.

'The Space Between' by Jo Cannon.

Commended:

'Viento' by Angela Dodson.

'Everything She Touches' by Chris Williams.

'The Gordon Highlanders' Farewell to Helpmakaar' by Steve Connolly.

'White and Red' by Graham Dickson.

'Ghost Fishing' by Simon Lake.

'Maiden Voyage' by Lynne Voyce.

'Jam' by Jo Cannon.

***

Congratulations to all who entered and most especially to the good people above. All of these names are quite new to us here at Leaf. And lots of them are men, we notice, which is faintly notable. Well done to them. All of the above stories will be published in a Short Story Anthology to be produced at the start of the new year: do keep checking for further announcements about that, because there will very much be some.

That aside, the next point of major interest should be the results of the Coffee and Chocolate competitions, to be announced jointly, hopefully some time in January. That's the plan. Hurrah.

Sam.

A New Post.

Matt tells me I haven't made a blog post in some moons and have so to do, therefore I am. But I embarked on the whole process without anything in the way of a subject in mind, so you're going to have to sit quietly through the vocal exercises and tuning up before the essential meat cometh along.

Memememememememememememememeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Things are relatively quiet on the entering competitions front at present, its being close to Christmas and all. They are less quiet on the ordering books front, very likely for the same festive reason. Probably we shall have to get more copies of The Final Theory printed, which we find a hugely exciting prospect. Hugely. No, really. The trouble with hating exclaimation marks, which I pretty much do, is that genuine sentiment ends up looking awfully sarcastic. What I need to do, or you can do it if you've seriously nothing better to be getting on with, is invent a punctuation mark that conveys the same WOOHOOishness at which the exclaimation mark is so adept, but is simultaneously kind of tasteful. I'm just checking the keyboard for a spare one. ~ <-- Does that have any specific purpose? Can we use that? Probably I should bagsy it swiftly.

We're thinking of putting info about us on the website, and photographs. Note DO NOTE that I do not say true info, nor do I say photographs of us, but the issue is being borne seriously in mind. Thank you.

(And we didn't drown that time we went home in the rain. We were smacked fairly offensively in the collective face with handfuls of surprisingly sharp water, but we didn't drown. Go us.)

Sam.

Christmas Holidays CONFIRMED

I don't much mind Christmas, you know. It's a bit like Easter only much better, I suppose, but not half as good as Summer, which is like Christmas and Easter but infinitely longer, warmer, and more illuminative.

I'm not a religious sort of fellow but I'm all for the socialist element. Not that I'm much for socialism either, but if we're apportioning political standpoints on to what is essentially a pleasant few days in which to give the people you like a present or twelve, then we might as well say that Christmas is the most kindly.

Not that I give twelve presents to people I like, mind, but there we are. I also feel for those less fortunate, and this Christmas is no exception -- on a personal level at least -- since my entirely beloved is abandoning me for three weeks to fart about in the Australian sunshine.

I am most displeased.

In terms of Leaf Books, which is possibly what this was meant to be about, we're going on our Christmas holidays between the 21st of December and the 3rd of January.

If you place an order or enter a competition or send us a novella extract in this time then we're sorry, but it won't much be processed until we get back. However, emails are probably going to remain accessible, so we'll do our best.

Did you like how I turned into We just there? A subtle narrative development.

We're turning back into Me now. I don't deserve the responsibility.

In more significant news I have bought myself a new pair of jeans, which means I'll no longer require the safety pins I'd emplaced in my last pair. Should I happen to walk past any errant magnets they will not pose me any danger. Furthermore, my new jeans make me look more convincingly like a real human adult male, as opposed to a scruffy street urchin, and I will no longer sponge up the puddles I walk through. Nor will I so readily reveal my underpants when bending over to fulfil your orders.

Sam claims to have bought me some kind of gift that involves me 'needing to wear the provided safety equipment.' Personally I am hoping for a crossbow, because combining a crossbow with these jeans would help me look very adult and flash indeed.

Sorry that this update contained nothing of importance, save those two dates.

Matt.

The Brilliant Box of Books

Yes, hello, and a very fond December from me.

Our newest book -- The Final Theory & Other Stories: The Leaf Books Short Short Story Anthology 2006 (breathe...) -- is very beautiful and quite available to everybody. But then you already knew that, didn't you?

What's more exciting, though, as I'd like to tell you, is a box I made today.

Leaf is so transparent that we're stupidly amused to tell you that we re-use envelopes when we can. Particularly we recycle the ones with bubble-wrapping in them. However, so moral are we that we also consider bubble-wrapping a double-edged... protective device... because as sure as it protects our beautiful wares it also takes about seventy million years to biograde. Precisely like a banana doesn't.

So. Today we had an order that was larger than most, and so needed some custom box-building to sort it out. Taking an old box to task -- which mostly involved me setting about it with a pair of scissors and a craft-knife -- I became very much the Dr. Frankenstein and ultimately engineered such a staggering piece of art that I just had to write here about it.

The merits of my home-made (work-made?) box are thus:

1) It's flush to the books it contains, meaning rattling won't occur.
2) It's got bubblewrap sellotaped neatly to its interior, meaning the books won't get bashed by reckless postal service machinery and/or vans.
3) Its corners are reinforced, much like an armoured vehicle.
4) Its postal label is set in 28 point Sylfaen, which I promise is a nice font for a postal label.
5) It contains beautiful books.
6) It is recycled.
7) It is not from Amazon but could well be, given the utter professionalism involved in its creation.
8) It is neat.
9) It is not naff.

That's all. If you'd like a box made by me, or any of the others, then do please order a large amount of books.

I hope you have considered your christmas presents wisely.

Love,

Matt.

The Final Theory

Right. The website update happened. My eyes are too much burned by monitors to spend much time in floridly typing, but the news I was waiting to inform you of was that The Final Theory & Other Stories: The Leaf Books Short Short Story Anthology 2006 is back from the printers and up for sale. Here:

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

It costs £6.99, or you can buy it in a bundle with Razzamatazz (the poetry anthology) for £12 the pair. It's great. There is nothing else to be said.

The rain is very sideways and I don't much want to walk into it. Matt and I lack cars and have to do feet, and then trains, and then feet again. And the rain is sideways. Pity us slightly.

Sam.

I am not sick.

There was an expression of concern for my welfare in the comments of the underneathmost post, which is really very gratifying. I do notice that there has been essentially nowt in the way of posting for a week. A primary reason is that I can't tell you about Something until an update relating to Something has been made on the website. A secondary reason is that I was actually going to post earlier in the week but then the databasing took an entire day and I couldn't. The very good news is that databasing is being excitedly rotated between the four of us so I shouldn't have to do it more than once a week (plus one extra day per month, presumably, thinking about it mathematically, like), which actually quite thrills me. I'll be much happier not getting a wage for not-databasing.

What I would say if I was posting is [censored due to Something] and also that we really truly are judging the Summer Short Story competition AS WE SPEAK, and also the two themed ones. We are quite busyish really with the judging. Also, because it's not as though two alsos per paragraph be sufficient, we had an interesting notion about the Summer Short Story competition. T'original plan was to make a flip book (as in Tea Dance at the Waldorf/Sex with Leonard Cohen - and greetings to the people at the Leonard Cohen fansite who've paid visits to our own site on occasion) out of the two winning entries. But what we've found is that there are significantly more than two entries we consider publishable, and we'd frankly quite like to publish them. So we're wanting to do a short story anthology, basically, with a winner and a runner up and then a small fleet of commended stories, and we think it'll be quite great. What do YOU think?

Plus I had my, ooh, what, two dozenth rejection from a short story magazine this morning (resubmitted this afternoon with no further editing - plucky or nonsensical?), so I'm well up for the idea of reducing notifications of rejections.

I wonder if we shall have Christmas decorations in the office.

Sam.

Mostly extending the poetry comp deadline, but also a little bit of singing.

The song that contains the following words is possibly my favourite song in the whole world:

#I once had a whim and I had to obey it to buy a French horn in a second hand shop;
I polished it up and I started to play it in spite of the neighbours who begged me to stop.
De-diddly-diddly-diddly-diddly....

Except really the diddlies are Donald Swann on the piano.

Hello there.

#To sound my horn, I had to develop my embouchure.
I found my horn was a bit of a devil to play DIDDLE-UM-DIDDY-DUM....

You'll possible be wanting some news.

News. Yes.

Oh right. Now, listen to this bit. Don't get distracted by comical song lyrics because it's actually kind of important.

The DEADLINE for the OPEN POETRY COMPETITION is being EXTENDED by ONE MONTH, so it now closes on 31st JANUARY. We've had a little bit of understandable flak in the past for extending the deadline on the Writing for Children competition, which upset some people who'd rushed to make the earlier deadline, and we do apologise profusely if anyone feels similarly pillocksed about on this occasion, but we're primarily doing it because we don't think it's really on to expect people to rush to finish their poems over Christmas. We hope very much that you approve. There.

#WHO. SWIPED. THAT. HORN? I'll bet you a quid somebody did, knowing
I'd found a concerto and wanted to play it, afraid of my talent at playing the horn,
For early today, to my utter dismay, it had vanished away like the dew in the morn.
De-dum-diddy-dum-diddy-dum-diddy-dum-diddy etc.

Otherwise our news is fairly low key, if not mildly tragic in a sort of mundane and essentially privileged fashion. Primarily we had a brief stationary crisis in the office yesterday, wherein we found ourselves quite horribly deprived of both A4 paper, clean and scrap, and sellotape. But we're over it now, and my back hurts a little, because I've spent a good forty minutes of the day bearing the ream of paper across country in my rucksack, in the most dreadful rain, and my umbrella has rusted into several fairly pointless sticks wrapped in soggy cloths, but what of it? We can print words off the computer screen, and then we can tape them to things. We ask little more from life.

Tomorrow we're having another meeting in the pub. This is mostly why our office is possibly just a little bit happier than yours.

#I miss its music more and more and more. Without that horn... I'm feeling sad and so for-lor-ooooooooooooooooooorn....

And if anyone knows where my French horn is, please to be letting me know in comments.

Sam.

On Publicity & Marketing & Having Sore Eyes

The keenly-eyed and beady-fingered (?) of you might well have noticed the posh banner we've got occurring in the sidebar over there ---->

Well, that's been made to facilitate the new media world that is blogging, myspace, livejournals, the lot. Believe me I'm quite the turbo geek so it's of no surprise to me that these things work. Essentially it gives us a 'click-through', that is, that someone clicks it and flies through to the Leaf website whereupon they fall over, marvelling at how brilliant our books are.

I meant to say something earlier but by all means please take one for your own blog, myspace, livejournal or even website. I know writers are more keen on having official websites than scrawly blogs but there we are. If you don't know how to embed one then don't hesitate to email us -- I'll say something nice to you with instruction. Otherwise you can email and request that you very much want to use the code, and with forthright politeness I'll send you it at once.

After that you can place it in your HTML editor, or your 'edit profile' page, or any place really that might happily support a spot of pan-internet sorcery.

Our appreciation is -- and always will be -- legion.

Matt.

PS: I sourced out my own safety-pin thank you. And elsewhere my eyes are behaving wrongly and are resolutely hurting my upper-face. And... and and and... if you're doing the National Novel Writing Month... well. You understand precisely what I mean, and good luck to you. I'm 8,000 words behind schedule myself.

I would like most of all to be printing (or in New Zealand).

What I'm doing right now is primarily passing time until the printer on the desk behind me ceases to be in use by people who are not me. It's fairly frustrating. Not that I'm begrudging the other printer-user. Well, I am slightly, but I'm aware that my begrudgement is unreasonable and somewhat mean, so mostly that makes it all right. It's sort of intermittently in use. The printer. I keep thinking the coast's more or less clear for me to get cracking on the sizeable-ish printing job I have to do, then it whirrs again into action - as it did just then - and I have to pretend I was just wheeling my spinny chair in its direction for the sheer bally joy of the thing. Oh woe.

Also we're slightly out of envelopes. And we badly need brown paper. The brown paper acquiring mission was set for last Friday, but it sadly failed when the designated vehicle broke down and stranded the operator, who is even now housebound and socially isolated and having to order food over the internet. Goodness knows how people without cars manage to do ANYTHING AT ALL. Possibly that was slightly low. I apologise. I genuinely feel sorry for people whose legs and train timetables have been eaten tragically away by their cars.

On the plus side, the sun has somewhat come out. But the printer is only deceptively silent.

Sam.

Razzamatazz and Other Poems.

Razzamatazz and Other Poems landed happily in the office earlier this week, and very keenly and with many salutations was it received. We're all agreed that it's an inordinately smart little publication, and chock full of really very excellent poetical offerings. I discover that I really quite despise the word 'chock'. Razzamatazz and Other Poems (it has a subtitle as well that I can't offhand recall - has something to do with its containing the winning poems from the 2006 Short Poetry competitions, which is nothing short of the truth) is available for purchase from the website. As are numerous other jovial publications. Did you know you can buy a Leaf Super Mega Turbo bundle type thing? I don't think it's exactly called that, but that's very much the idea behind it. It's the entire back catalogue in one absurdly exciting package, and it sets you back only about 89p per book. So, you know. That's rather jolly.

The Final Theory and Other Stories, which is the microfiction compilation, is due to go off to the printers very much shortly. There was an exciting blip with the cover at one point, where in these clever tilted monitors decided to hide from us the fact that the cover had gone kind of stripey, and it was only noticed when Matt stood up and looked at it a bit sideways. But that's all been beaten back into shape now, and everything is pretty much well. And I wish to apologise at this juncture for the fact that the Short Short Story competition results never went up on the news page, which is sadly unnewsworthy at present. I'd update it myself only the software's gone wonky. Badger Gav slightly in the comments and he might perhaps oblige.

We are mostly quite well. Matt still waits in vain yet touching hope for his safety pin. He is unravelling sadly from the ankle upwards. I told him he should've offered a free book.

Sam.

Also!

Because I am a scruff and because I wear my jeans too low, I have a hole at the bottom of my left trouser leg.

Would anyone be kind enough to include a decent-sized safety pin in their next postal submission to us?

The first person to do so will get a photograph of my repaired jeans placed here, with many kind thankyous added to the post. In effect they will receive an entry dedicated entirely to them .

No really, they will. I can't actually walk in them. It's very sad. They are my favourite jeans.

Help.

Matt.

Surprisingly for a publisher this post is actually about our books

The Final Theory & Other Stories is finished and very much about to fly off to the printers, having been lovingly crafted and commented upon by all as smashing. A perfect companion piece to Razzamatazz & Other Poems, which is due back from the printers today or perhaps tomorrow or perhaps never, because they're so good and clever they might well've turned sentient and ran off to their respective authors to appear on their welcome mats as smiling complimentary offerings.

And I might add that it is cold, and that even with two pairs of socks on my toes are possibly frostbitten and are probably only still attached to my feet because my laces are done up so tightly.

Anyway, there'll be a sneak preview of the new book's cover (The Final Theory's that is) up on the website over the weekend, with those having patiently awaited the poetry book hopefully fulfilled and happy by next week.

Otherwise, I smell massively of lockets again.

Are any of our readers doing The National Novel Writing Month? If you are... well. Let's hope that for Leaf's sake you fail and end up writing a stonking short story instead. Or if we pursue this novella idea your 50,000 words are edited nicely into something well below 40,000....

Can I do a smily?

I think I can do a smily:

:)

Matt.

Novella.

Tut. What's Gav going on about down there? Paragraphing, is it? Gav has a thing about paragraphing. We find it best to nod politely and then find a less upsetting job for him that has nothing to do with paragraphing.

My thing is mostly comma splices.

The printer behind me is churning out envelopes with a soothing whirr, and my blue spinny chair makes me feel most wondrous like an emperor. And what a fine day it is to talk about novellas. Novellae. I was too late for Latin. Don't tell me it's Greek. Possibly French. Yes, I am fairly ashamed.

The novella in all its darling fewer-than-40,000-wordedness cropped up in our Monday morning meeting. We were having a thought. A devillishly fine one. How about, we were thinking, a novella competition? 'Cause we don't do novels. We do bite-sized morsicles like poetry and microfiction and the jolly old short story. But a novella encompasses petiteness like pretty much no other form. 'Cause it's like a novel, only knowingly diminutive. We love them anyway and we think they sit well with the whole Leaf ethos, especially the bit about publishing new and struggling but downright excellent types. We were reckoning, so we were, that folk with a novella to display to the world at large are probably not having a lot of luck with their mission.

And we rather want to know what you think about that. Unburden yourselves. Are you faintly in love with the whole juicy idea of the novella? Do you write 'em? And how are you faring when it comes to getting them accepted by a publisher? Would you be well up for the idea of a novella competition? Would you enter in your droves?

Please say yes. OH DO.

(Razzamatazz should be with us in the next couple of days, by the way. It's almost painfully splendid. Have a squint at the website and then have a bash at ordering a copy. £6.99 a go. It's a damnably fine book, ma'ams. Sirs. Damnably fine.)

Sam.

A New Convention

I've taken 20 or so Summer Short Story entries home to read this weekend. A task I rather enjoy, but I do have an observation and a question. Eight out of the twenty entries what I'll describe as having internet paragraphing: so each new paragraph is a block of text rather than being indented.

Now the reason that text on a web-page such as this one is done in blocks is down to the way a web-page is constructed and the language (html) it is coded in, though this is changing with the advent of a language called CSS that can replicate print conventions.

A separate paragraph should denote a scene-break or a significant change but if they are used continually then the flow is interrupted and the writing can feel stilted.

So I was wondering if anyone has any thoughts about why this new style of internet paragraphing is becoming so widely used in the real-world?

Gav.

Breaking things for fun.

Momentarily at a loss for something to do before the minor deluge that was the arrival of the post, I was pleasantly surprised when I inadvertantly scattered several hundred paper clips across the carpet and was obliged to dedicate a good ten minutes to their retrival. We have a very fine collection of paper clips. One of them's purple, one of them's industrial in size and significance and another is entirely round. Ceci was speculating as to whether we made a net loss or a net gain when it came to paper clips, but I'm fairly confident that we harvest from competition entries more paper clips than we subsequently commit to bundles of paper in need of shepherding.

Next, I might, for my own amusement, dismantle and remantle the photocopier.

Sam.

Minor hauntings.

Hello. Have you been neglected slightly? What were you wanting to know? We could tell you about the proofs of the poetry book (Razzamatazz & Other Poems: The Leaf Books Poetry Anthology 2006) that returned at the end of last week and were great and fine and approved. The book's looking ever so splendid and should be available for purchase in about a week's time. We'll let you know when this promise comes to fruition.

But the big news of the day is that one of the toilet cubicles is haunted, or plagued, or possibly beset by or with scorpions. I was occupying said cubicle and was not unnecessarily perturbed by anything I encountered therein until I emerged to learn that people had been lingering around outside talking about 'something scary within' and hoping to zap it, and when it was free they flooded in on a mission of sorts and they wouldn't tell us what was going on. I am faintly disturbed.

(Also we have a new telephone number, which we mentioned once before, but we meant to mention it again. It was the lack of telephone calls that reminded us. It's on the contact page of the website. Possibly putting telephone numbers on blogs leaves one open to telephonic spamming, and that would be somewhat miserable.)

Yes.

Sam.

A mostly polite note about free books.

Dear peoples,

Just to be letting you know, anyone who from this point onwards does not specify their free book or books when entering competitions online will not be contacted to discover which book they would actually like. They'll be sent a random one picked by ourselves. This is not because we wish to be mean and undemocratic but more because it makes things sadly confusing when we have to wait for people to get back to us with their selections, and then we forget who's been sent what and when and it's all a bit unhappy. So we're quite sorry about that.

Matt smells massively of Lockets.

Sam.

The wrong 650 words.

There was going to be... an intention existed... this was the plan... that the blog post of the day... was going to be 650 words in length and planted amongst the blog posts at that 'History Matters day' collection of other blog posts with a view to elucidating the reading public of the year 2347 about the daily ongoings of a small and unfunded and strangely noble but not entirely hapless publishing company. But I just ambled over there and it turned out to be mostly schoolchildren talking about breakfast cereal, and I'm not entirely sure that's what the reading public of the year 2347 are going to be interested in reading. Or maybe the schoolchildren know better than me, but either way we're scuppered, because our working day simply did not involve breakfast cereal. A flapjack came into play at one point. A flapjack with seven unique e-numbers and a flapjack the consumption of which I would have no willing part in. But not breakfast cereal. Though I could, as it happens, seriously demolish some cornflakes.

Mostly we databased, in the new office to which we have recently repaired. I am still settling into the new office, personally, having spent a week at home coughing and inhaling lemsip. We live in a partitioned-off section at the end of a biggish suite. We are quite cut off. We can observe the enemy through cleverly positioned holes in the partition. Really there is no enemy, but pretending so makes the afternoons pass more swiftly. I mean the afternoons when we're databasing. Not when we're reading your delightful work. I'm not being sarcastic. I actually mean that. No, I mean that bit too. Everything looks so sarcastic without exclamation marks, and so cheap with them. What to do?

I wish I had a bassoon. I was thinking what fun it would be to sit behind the partition and randomly blow through a bassoon, and no-one on the other side would have the faintest idea what I'd done. They'd think I have magic lungs.

We get the proofs for the poetry book ('Razzamatazz and Other Poems') back tomorrow, with any luck. And we're currently in the process of sculpting the Short Short Story Competition Anthology (which is to be called 'The Final Theory and Other Short Short Stories'). I'm not sure if the two Others should be capitalised or not. Bear with me. And we databased like woah. We printed off envelopes, and sometimes we printed them the right way up. A special bonus prize to anyone who receives an upside down envelope from us will not actually be offered, because I don't think I have that kind of jurisdiction. But still, it's a nice idea.

And like I say, we didn't eat much in the way of cereal. Tomorrow I'm going to have crumpets for breakfast. Still nothing will be solved.

I hope posterity gets something out of it all the same.

Sam.

Staples.

From our submission guidelines...

4. Please number pages and staple them together. Do not put staples through cheques.

My thanks are this morning extended to whoever ignored that. There is now indeed a diminutive hole in my left forefinger and I've bled a little bit on my t-shirt which yes, is black, but probably isn't much to do with the point.

Matt.

All Change. Next Stop...

Without much fanfare or razzamatazz Leaf Books has moved offices this week. The only thing that's changed to the outside world is that we have a new phone number and we'll be able to get our post a little bit quicker.

Sam has a cold, which means she's missed the move. I think we've moved all her stuff. Yeah, I'm sure we did.

Leaf are off to coast tomorrow morning to say hello to the folks at the Welsh Books Council. I haven't been to Aberystwyth in years and I'm determined to have chips on the front. Though this will depend on the weather; nostagia is nice but not worth getting soaked for.

Speaking of Razzamatazz, the new format A5 Leaf Books Poetry Anthology (containing the winning entries to the short poetry competition) has just been sent on CD to the lovely people at the printers. So that should be on sale shortly.

Next stop... Christmas.

Gav.

I think the new books deserve two entirely similar blog posts.

This must be more or less how Amundsen and that lot felt after they did the equivalent of finally getting their books back from the printers. Do I mean Amundsen? Shall we assume I do?

There's really no means of adequately conveying how stunning these tree-derived beasts are. Mostly we're terrifically excited about the spines, and the colours and also the lack of staples.

I think you people should be buying them. Hugely. I did, and I work here, which is a bit like laughing at your own jokes. Oh they ARE so great.

Great like flying ponies.

Sam.

The New Books

THE NEW BOOKS ARE HERE

AS IN NOT THERE

OR ANYWHERE CLOSE TO THE WHEREABOUTS THEY OCCUPIED WHEN IN TRANSIT

IN FACT THEY ARE PRECISELY WHERE THEY WERE MEANT TO BE

AND

THEY

ARE

BRILLIANT

Matt.

Would that be a vanload of books?

OH the excitement. I think actually naming the excitement by name goes someway towards killing it mammoth-dead. And yet. The books are coming. Today. This very afternoon. Of course you believe me about as readily as you'd believe me had I claimed that Mr Charles Pooter c/o George & Weedon Grossmith, who mostly lives in my rucksack, had peeled himself off the printed page and taken up residence in the recycling bag. But you're WRONG, you see, to doubt me, you're wrong, and this time we win, because Ceci telephoned the printers and they confirmed that the books are en route to us right now, as I type.

They mentioned nothing about a delay-induced discount. On which point it is perhaps best to remain silent.

So currently I lie in wait, like a wolf, for the man to come with the van and the trolley and the clipboard. I hope Gav gets here soon, because there might be some heavy lifting involved, and I don't much fancy it.

In other news, the poetry book that the chaps were wrangling about yesterday (see previous post) is now fairly well corrected and more than moderately wonderful and will be send to the printers - not the same printers - on the morrow. You can see a picture of it on the front page of the website. And the time, I think, has come to introduce you to Leaf's new format. We are branching out somewhat into A5 books, mostly because we can. Our material will remain essentially pert and bite-sized, being poetry and micro-fiction and jolly old short stories. Razzamatazz & Other Poems: The Leaf Books Poetry Anthology 2006 is to be the first in a hopefully significantly longer line of A5 Leaf books. We do love our dinky little A6 pocket-sized booklings, and we do intend to make more in the future (the upcoming flip-book for starters), but the good old A5 format does have many advantages that it would be undeniably shirkworthy not to recognise and celebrate in a solid and papery form. First off, they go better on shelves and in shops, having height and bulk and legible spines and all those things that booksellers seem to value. Second off, they have more in the way of stature and import and properness and good old legitimate reality about them. And thirdly, and perhaps most significantly, you can fit more authors into them. We rather like publishing as many new and established and essentially perfectly spiffing authors as is humanly possible, so really we feel that Leaf and A5 are destined to be fairly happy together. That's what we think anyway.

Of course, we're always fantastically keen to know what you think as well. So tell us. Comment. Talk to us, sometimes. I THEE IMPLORE.

That'll do. Don't want to sound desperate.

(We might take photos of the books tomorrow. We shan't be able to express our joy in mere words. Well, no. Obviously we shall. Words are our trade. We simply choose... not to.)

Sam.

On Having Started An Office War: The Four-Point Plan Concerning Premeditated Nuisance

1) When typesetting new Poetry book, upset delicate aesthetic balance of previous designs by using different fonts to what (according to Matt at least) used to be house-style.
2) When making new Poetry book covers, use and forthrightly argue relentlessly and without mirth for a cover n0-one else wants.
3) When succumbing to group consensus, sulk.
4) Having got over oneself, use new cover, decide it's in fact much better, send it to everyone, have everyone say, 'Yes Matt, it's better,' and crawl back into small space between chair and monitor.

I banged my head four times yesterday, on various consistencies of metal or wood, and though this isn't necessarily as important as your caravan or your pesto recipes or the Chateauneuf du Pape you're saving to throw at someone prominent in the publishing industry, it is deserving of the utmost sympathy.

Sympathy is best addressed to 'F.A.O Matt, Leaf,' and is indeed helpful if in cheque or bung form.

I'm not at all keen on the word 'bung' I might add.

Today's super-smashing word is:

Pogonotrophy

which is quite frankly the cultivation or growing of a beard.

This word is derived not only in Greek but in Anatomy. Pogon is beard, whereas pogonion is the foremost point of the midline of the chin.

Discuss.

Matt.

The Next Thrilling Instalment.

Scene setting. Slightly parched rose petals being wafted in a tepid breeze. Children sing Ring-a-Ring-o'-Roses with a creepily off-key harmony. A lone sheep bleats plaintively on a distant hillside. Patrick Stewart reclines in a patch of purple heather, playing 'The Skye Boat Song' on a battered tin-whistle.

The books didn't come. The 'phone-call was not returned. VERY LITTLE is as it should be. And I'm waiting, honestly I am. I'm waiting as hard as I can. What more can I do? I cannot engage in warfare on the printers lest the books succumb to the ensuing rampant fires. I can't 'phone the printers because I'm scared of the telephone. Well, moreso because they don't really answer. I can only wait. I fear I may have to wait through lunch, because the office is currently manned by myself and myself alone.

Send sandwiches to the postal address on the website. Except they won't come in time. Can you send sandwiches by telegram?

Sam.

The Books (part the first)

Today started not altogether well. En route from the station to my place of work, a person of sorts drove past me (the narrator) at full pelt, through a fairly hefty puddle of very cold and very stagnant water, and soaked me quite publicly from head to foot. The general public maintained a decent and unlaughing silence. I had an umbrella, but because the BBC told me it wouldn't rain and because I didn't actually expect to assaulted horizontally by monsoons, I had no coat. I was quite drenched. And I had to spend the remainder of the working day quite drenched with my shoes and socks and jumper having an exciting and not entirely fruitful excursion on the radiator. I downloaded the final few entries to the Summer Short Story competition in a not altogether bouyant and merrisome spirit, but I downloaded them none the less, and now they are databased, and all is fairly well on that score.

And as for the new books?I don't know! I went home before the designated deadline for their arrival, because I needed to change my socks. They may have come. They may not have come. Only Gavin knows the answer.

TUNE IN TOMORROW FOR THE NEXT THRILLING... ooh, QI on UKG2. Acronym heaven. Later.

PS. Ceci. Tomorrow. BBC Radio Wales. 7.20am. I know, but I thought I might as well tell you all the same.

Sam.

News and Advice, mostly in Bold.

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

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

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

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

I'm enjoying all this bolding.

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

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

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

And that's about the size of it.

Sam.

Well Hello and Welcome

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

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

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

Gav.

In which we struggle to overcome our numerous disappointments.

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

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

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

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

Sam.

Out with the old

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

Sorry for any inconvenience.

More later.

Gav.

They are coming, truly they are.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oui.

C'est more or less ca.

Sam.

Luddite vs. Databasing

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

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

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

Matt.

Slightly incompentent but mostly great.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, to recap.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sam.

Short Poetry Competition Winners Announced

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

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

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

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

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

Leaf.

Short Poetry Competition 2006 - Judge's Report

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sheenagh Pugh

New Competition - Open Poetry Competition 2006

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

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

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

Leaf.

At the Printers - 8 New Titles

At the Printers - 8 New Titles

Eight new Leaf titles.

Featuring:

For Children

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Moira Andrew - The Very Useful Bag

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

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

For Adults

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

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

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

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

Maria Lalic - Paper Dolls and Coconut Mushrooms

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

Conrad Williams - The Cryptanalyst

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

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

More Details Coming Soon.

Leaf.