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.