A Sprinkling of Blog Magic

Bloggie friends!!!

The fabulous Guy Saville who has helped me and many many many others with their writer-ly journeys, is finally having his book Afrika Reich published today.

It has taken him 12 years to get to this stage. The Times calls his book “a horrific re-imagining of the Dark Continent” (29 Jan 2011) and the Daily Telegraph gave his book 4/5 stars (12 Feb 2011). Historian Simon Appleby at Bookgeeks says his book is both “action packed and thought provoking”.

This really could not be happening to a nicer guy – he is one of those quiet types who never self-advertises the assistance he gives, but will always help and advise. I wish him all the best.

If you are able, please do check out his website where you can sample a chapter of The Afrika Reich.

The lovely Kim from Musings on a Small Life/Fuzzy Tales has lost her special kitty, Annie. When I read this, I wept. Kim is a lovely astute and wise woman whose daily life experiences are a joy to read. I feel as if I live next door to her and share many of her ups and downs.

I started this blog when I was losing my cat and I know in the great scheme of things this is tiny and non-pet people may not understand, so it was a lifeline to stumble upon Kim’s blog and to realise I wasn’t alone.

Charlie says: One day I shall learn how to open this window.



It’s nearly Friday!! Have a great weekend, everyone!

Perseverance pays off - eventually

"I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident. They came by work." Thomas Edison

Samples of success through hard work:

Here is Guy Saville's guest blog on how his Afrika Reich nabbed a two book publishing deal with Hodder & Stoughton. It took him ten years and 15 effusive rejections!

And Talli Roland's interview on how she reached publication by never giving up. She wrote 5 previous novels - all rejected - and struck gold with her 6th book The Hating Game.

Lucky continues to survive.

And here is another very determined cat.




*************************************************
And on a smaller scale - I finished my story that I hope is suitable woman's mag fiction reading material. I won't find out until my tutor sees it first!

I wanted to call it "The Red Cat Litter Tray" but thought that if this were the real world - that story will be litter tray material if I ever used that title!

Insider tip though from the fab womagriter : Women's mags editors tend to change the title of your story anyway.

And the Tech people from faraway Dell are finally arriving on Friday! Yay!

Charlie says: OH NO!! That means silly human pointing that flashy thing in my face again!

Have a great Thursday everyone!

It couldn't happen to a nicer Guy...

...Saville, that is.

His book The Afrika Reich has finally found a publisher. (Thanks to Welshcake for the info!)

Let me start from the beginning.

In 2006, I took my first tentative steps at writing stories. I wasn't the most confident of writers, my personal life was to put it mildly going up the creek without so much as a paddle, a banana cake and a flask of "tea" but by all the gods and goddesses, I had a dream.

And the dream was this. I wanted to write stories that people would actually enjoy.

Alone (you can be truly alone even in coupledom as I was then) miserable and insecure, I took an almighty step and a leap of faith and placed one of my stories up on a peer-review site.

A site for sore eyes. A site where strangers can read your stories and tear them apart like feral cats do with fresh meat. Well actually people there were quite nice but if they didn't like your story, then the buzzer got pressed, the hatch opened and down you went.

Guy Saville came along and read my story. Then he wrote a 6 A4 double-sided page critique. It was full of encouragement for my writing, grammatical and spelling checks but most of all, most important of all, proper constructive criticism. As in,

this bit might work better if you perhaps would try and do this instead and here are my reasons why I'm suggesting this...

(not his actual words - but you get the gist).

You could only imagine the impact such careful and considered feedback had on me and my self-esteem.

And he didn't stop there but throughout the years has been a sort of online mentor to me and to many other writers.

He really was like the male version of the wonderful and fabulous Nicola Morgan without the blog.

And all the while struggling to get his novel published - getting rave rejections and I think at one point he threatened to flush his beloved Afrika Reich down the toilet!

So congratulations to Guy!

I noticed on his brand spanking new site that there's gonna be a blog.

Finally.

:-)