Exciting New Project – Mostly Life

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

And there is quite a lot of news.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spoof and Humour – I Could Do With Some

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

Ceci

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

Not being famous.

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

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

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

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

Sam.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What’s your news?

Gav.

Guidelines

Good afternoon folks.

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

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

I still love you.

Matt.

Micro-Fiction Winners

Micro-Fiction 2007 Winners

Winner:

‘Derek’ by Gina Goodwin

Runners-Up:

‘You are my giraffe now’ by Jason Jackson

‘Imaginary Origami’ by Amy Mackelden

Commended:

‘Badger Play’ by Gina Goodwin

‘Backwards’ by Jason Jackson

‘Lee & Holly’ by Amy Mackelden

‘Heavy Petting’ by Amy MacKelden

‘The Crumb’ by Catherine Edmunds

‘Not a Good Idea’ by Catherine Edmunds

‘The Truth About Janet’ by Sara Benham

‘Picture Your Father Without A Picture’ by Teresa Stenson

‘The Tower’ by Su Barkla

‘Going Home’ by Cath Drake

‘And I’m Gone’ by Jo Else

‘I, Witch’ by Jo Else

‘Mountain Air Footie’ by Don Taylor

‘The Miracle’ by Stella Pierides

‘Callers’ by Sue Anderson

‘Finding faculties, fainting goats’ by Jackie Sullivan

‘The library book’ by Tania Hershman

‘The Long Not Yet’ by Chloe Richards

‘The Colour of Romance’ by Sara Browning

‘Doing Something’ by Varihi Scott

‘The silence of sleeping with him’ by Louise McErlean

‘Unfortunate Noses’ by Katy Whitehead

‘Floating is easy’ by Katy McAulay

‘When my third foot grows’ by Nancy Saunders

‘Bridged Perspective’ by David Hallett

‘We’ll Meet Again’ by Laurie Porter

‘Sailing to Valhalla’ by Michael Massey

‘Car Park’ by Caroline Adams

‘Cl²’ by Matthew Mead

‘Signalling’ by Amy Sackville

‘Looking Down’ by Alice Blake

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

‘Queen of the Nerd Prom’ by Shaun Manning

‘Fading Footprints; Downy Flakes’ by Robin Tompkins

‘The Corn Carter’ by Jane Rusbridge

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

Gav.

No cups on MY head.

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

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

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

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

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

Sam.

Micro Fiction and Matt’s Head

Micro Fiction and Matt’s Head

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

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

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

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

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

Ceci.

Team Leaf Office Challenge (part 2)

We think this implies that we win...

Matt.

Buy this book, please.

Matt.

Sneak Preview - Coffee and Chocolate

Click here for Coffee and Chocolate Cover Large Version

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

Gav.

The Better Craftsman - now available

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

– Extract from ‘The Better Craftsman’.

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

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

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

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

Gav.

Hay Festival 2007 – Only for the Famous!!

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

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

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

Ceci.

The Micro Fiction Competition – What’s Happening

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

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

Ceci.

Better than an Easter Egg - Open Short Story Winners

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

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

Open Short Story 2006 Winners:

Winner

'The Light That Remains' by Paul Currion

Runner-Up

'Natural Selection, Gaza 2004' by Robert Wilton

Commended

'Starshine' by Mark Wagstaff

'Breakfast Things' by Mark Wagstaff

'Third Person' by Michael Stewart

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

'Treasure' by Holly Barratt

'Hide and Seek' by Jenny Jack

'Something to Write Home About' by Ian Madden

'Mid-Life Baby' by Annette Keen

'Burning' by Sue Anderson

'Standing Up on the Pedals' by Joanna Quinn

'Perhaps Birches' by Joanna Lilley

'Break, Break, Break' by Sally Douglas


Gav.

Open Poetry Competition 2006 - Results

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

Winner:

'Outbox' by Nicky Mesch

Runner-up:

'The Craft' by Gill Learner

Commended (in no particular order):

'The Calorific Value of Anxiety' by Gill Learner

'Window' by Benjamin Logan

'Learning Science' by Kathy Miles

'Stranger Danger' by Mark Chatterley

'Hieroglyphic Love' by Gwen Seabourne

'A Son' by Pat Borthwick

'Rats' by Tracey S Rosenberg

'Sonar' by Robert Warrington

'The Same Lover' by Hilaire Wood

'Bottle-Green' by Hilaire Wood

'do not add post' by Jason Jackson

'Endowment' by Juliette Hart

'Sandman' by Juliette Hart

'After the Funeral' by Chris Kinsey

'Levi, 2001' by Sinead Collins

'Learner Readers' by Margaret Eddershaw

'Winter Kafeneion' by Margaret Eddershaw

'The Dreamfisher' by Oz Hardwick

'A Candle for Daphne' by Gabriel Griffin

'Bedazzled' by Sue Anderson

'Things I Do' by Gwyneth Box

'Body' by Alice Blake

'Tough Love' by Claire Trevien

'Prayer' by Charles Evans

'Upside Down' by Charles Evans

'Maternal Visit' by Doreen Gray

'Sea Change' by Jenny Morris

'A Splash of Colour' by William Wood


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

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

Sam.

Nearly news.

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

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

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

Sam.

Oh. Yes. Also.

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

Sam.

Data protection and the dehydrating effects thereof.

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

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

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

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

Sam.

Guidelines and paper clips.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sam.