The Blogger and The Independent Press by The Mole

On Friday 26th February we attended an event at Nottingham Writers' Studio entitled "The Only Way Is Indie". After coming away I started to digest everything we heard and felt that I, as a blogger, had a small voice to be heard in all of this.

The event was attended by various writers (fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoirs etc) and small independent presses of various genres, ages, and sizes - the idea being for independent presses to put their case for submission of work to them.

One of the benefits of it has to be that the small independent is prepared to take a risk if they think that the book is really worthwhile as against the big five publishers who want "safe bets".

As reviewers we have no aspirations to writing and we do it because reading is one of the things we enjoy doing and it's from that, neutral, perspective that I am trying to express myself.

I want to address writers here as much as anything because we see a lot of books from authors of all types:- self and vanity publishing, small independent presses as well as the big five.

So you have a story, you've written it up and you've had friends and family read it and give you an honest opinion... or have you? Does your partner really believe in you and when they say "Well, it needs more work" are they really frightened that if they let you believe it's fantastic, should it fail they don't want to have that failure held against them? And the inverse of that - they tell you it's great but every publisher sends a rejection? And that goes for friends and other family members. Can you really get an HONEST opinion from them?

We receive many review requests from authors and the first thing we check is who has published it. Is it self published? Now that in itself is not a reason to reject a book - we have read quite a few self published books that were very good. Brilliant? Rarely, but maybe with work they could have been better. And proof editing... this is a subject that I find can stop me reading a book and self published books can be terrible for it. I read one for which I prepared a list of about 30 common errors - not a definitive list - and sent it the author who was very nice about it but went quiet for a while. They then came back to me and told me that he had found a product on the web that he submitted his manuscript to and it found all of mine plus more - yet he thought it was proof read. Essentially it had been a good book unlike others that were never finished and polite emails were sent explaining that "we couldn't get on with it". We are now wary about self published but we still consider them when time allows.

When you submit your manuscript to a small indie and it's taken up they are putting their money and their reputation on the line and so will work hard with you to make it as good as they can. They will have read it with an independent eye and will believe in its potential at the very start but be prepared to listen and be involved in the necessary edits and suggested changes that they raise - don't be prissy for the sake of it.

When a request comes in to us as reviewers and is published by an independent press the first thing we do is check whether we have read anything from that press before - and did we like it? And this is another point that was made at the event:- read some things from the indie that you plan on submitting to and see if (a) you like what they print and (b) if what you've written is in the same genre. If you are convinced that they are right for you then READ their submissions policy and follow it. These small presses generally have day jobs and really don't want their time wasting - and yes they generally are just one or two people.

We know quite a few indies who we like to think of as friends and I'm sure that their published authors do too. It's a great relationship for everyone BUT at the end of the day that indie, that PERSON, is putting their money into your book so please respect that. But friends or not we will always endeavour to publish an HONEST review - recently I suggested an author take the main character out for a drink and get to know them better.

Now our relationship to indies... we support indies wherever possible but we don't blanket accept books from them. We don't just accept books from anyone. We do get books delivered that we didn't agree to and if neither of us want to read it then it won't make the TBR pile but rarely will we turn round and ask for a book if it's not offered first. We both read a wide range of genres from very young children's through to literary fiction and reading the catalogue of a few presses would limit that. BUT if an indie press would like us to review one or two of theirs (even if we've reviewed some in the past) we are happy to consider it and if we say no then that doesn't mean we won't say yes to others. And we may well accept more in the future.

Getting published with an indie is certainly a start for your work, you may get rich (which the indie will appreciate as they are generally breaking even on books!), you may not, but you will learn a great deal about the industry, make some great friends and it may just lead to a contract with one of the big five somewhere down the line. But go on... make an indie rich.. for me?

The Independent Presses represented were:-
Ross Bradshaw from Five Leaves Publications Jane & Claire from Bird's Nest Books CIC Jacqueline & Martin from Stonewood Press Tracey and Phil from Wild Pressed Books Sara-Jayne Slack from Inspired Quill (Event Organiser) Dr Teika Bellamy from Mother's Milk Books (Event Organiser) Kate from Three Drops Press Emma Wright from The Emma Press Georgina from Mud Press Ashley Stokes from Unthank Books Anne McDonnell from Pewter Rose Press Stephen Holland from Page 45

Random Dingoes by Ira Nayman

Review by The Mole

A new drug is in town, Joy Joy, that causes the user to see their lives in other multiverses - at the same time! Noomi and Crash (see "Welcome To The Multiverse") are sent to track the dealer down but along the way another, more important, case comes up so they team up with Radames Trafshanian, a Time Agency agent, to find the user of an unlicensed time machine that threatens the fabric of the multiverse.

Nayman's work is always funny and quirky but here, more so than in the other books I have read by him, the plotting is deeper, more consistent and the story is stronger. It's almost a more serious novel except that it's not - it's still hugely entertaining making you smile on most every page - if not laugh out loud.

The study questions, at the end of each chapter are something not to be taken seriously (obviously, when you read them) but add to the humour - in case you are taking things too seriously.

Sci-Fi fans may not take Nayman seriously but here, in this novel, he approaches that hot potato of time travel that no-one gets 100% right and does a remarkably good job of trying. Come on Sci-Fi fans,stop taking it so seriously and take a trip aboard the Transdimensional Delorean - you may just enjoy yourselves.

Genre - Adult Humour, Sci-Fi
Publisher - Elsewhen Press

At Hawthorn Time by Melissa Harrison

Here's where it all ends: a long, straight road between fields. Four-thirty on a May morning: the black fading to blue, dawn gathering somewhere below the treeline in the east. 

This is how Melissa Harrison's Costa Shortlisted novel At Hawthorn Time opens; from there the story moves back to the month before, as Spring comes to the countryside around the village of Lodeshill, and four people set out on courses which lead to this moment early one May morning.

I loved At Hawthorn Time when I first read it last year, and revisiting it before paperback publication I felt just the same.


Here's the full review - At Hawthorn Time -  and my summing up from it
 "At Hawthorn Time is a lovely, compelling read. While it doesn't share the brutality of Cynan Jones' The Dig, it has the same quality of depicting rural life intimately and seeing it clearly, without blinkers; of showing that it's not glossy and chocolate box pretty but a place of dirt, and that without it being a place of work it will become empty and sterile. 
There's also a little touch of the thriller about it. As the story brings us closer to discovering who was involved in the accident and why, it will have you turning the pages faster or wanting to sneakily check the ending - I'm not sure I'd advise it as, like the motorist whizzing along a country lane, you'll miss so much in the details."

Maryom's review - 5 stars 
Publisher - Bloomsbury Publishing 
Genre - adult literary fiction

Look At Me by Sarah Duguid

review by Maryom


Searching her father's desk for a telephone number, Lizzy stumbles across a letter; with its pink envelope and hint of scent, it immediately attracts her attention. Inside is something waiting to overturn Lizzy's comfortable world - the news that she has a younger half-sister, Eunice. Her father Julian thinks the matter should be dropped; his wife Margaret (who died two years ago) was fully aware of his other daughter, and 'cool' about the situation. Her brother, Ig, agrees; nothing can be gained by further contact. But Lizzy feels something more is needed, and gets in touch with Eunice. At first they meet for lunch but gradually Eunice works her way into their lives .... and then how do they get rid of her?

For Lizzy and Ig life so far has been pleasant and sheltered; living in studio-flats built in the garden, and sharing their parents' arty, hippy life-style, they seem to float through life unconcerned with practicalities, and despite being in their late twenties feel no need to grow up and move on. The death of their mother has added another barrier between them and the real world with their house becoming almost a shrine to their mother's memory - a place where time has stopped and everything is preserved as it was before Margaret died; all her clothes are kept, her jewellery and ornaments are just as she left them, nothing must be moved.
Into this atmosphere Eunice brings the  'everyday' world of dead end jobs and mortgages, and a huge dose of practicality. Cuckoo-like, she reorganizes, orders and moves things around to make space for herself, unwittingly trampling over memories and emotions as she does.

I really loved this debut novel; so much that it's hard to enumerate everything that delighted me. Certainly I loved the over-all feel of the laid-back bohemian lifestyle of Lizzy and family - where money seems to present no hindrance to following one's artistic life; wouldn't we all like to live like that? Then there's Lizzy's impulsive good nature which rapidly changes as she realises the trouble she's let into their lives. Or the way the author lets us in on the intimate details that make up a family, the way their lives slot together, and the way the dynamic changes with Eunice there, forcing her way in, altering things to suit her, while everyone seems paralysed to stop her.

To say 'psychological drama' too easily infers a thriller with death and destruction by the end, but this isn't that nature of drama. Instead it's a look at the under-currents of family life, the history and secrets they share, and the disruption one outsider can cause to a stable family group - with its light touch and occasional comic moments, particularly in regard to Lizzy's relationship with her director/lover, it reminded me of an Ayckbourn drama.
It's a wonderful first novel from Sarah Duguid and I hope there'll be many more.

Maryom's review - 5 stars
Publisher -  Tinder Press
Genre - Adult fiction, literary, family drama

Thomas and Mary by Tim Parks

review by Maryom

Thomas and Mary have been married for thirty years - and drifting out of love for almost the same length of  time. Now the children have grown, there doesn't seem any point in staying together. Tom embarks on a string of affairs. Mary gets a dog. Neither are happy with their lives but don't seem ready to give up on their relationship.
Thomas and Mary seems a rather bleak look at love - almost the opposite to a happy-ever-after rom-com - as over the years we see their once happy relationship crumble away. The story unfolds mainly from Tom's point of view, as he stumbles through life, trying his best to cope with the demands of both wife and girlfriends, his mother's terminal illness, or the problems of his teenage son. Tom, of course, justifies himself at every turn, but chapters narrated by others, such as an old friend, change the reader's perspective of events.

Although this is a close intimate view of Tom and Mary's world, it just didn't 'click' with me - I think because I didn't really engage with any of the characters. Tom comes over as incredibly indecisive and selfish, not merely in regard to his relationship with Mary, but with his girlfriends, mother and children too. Mary on the other hand was too easy going - seeming far too happy about Tom's affairs and always complacently confident that he'd return to her.
I've seen this book described as darkly humorous but it didn't really strike me that way, just as a rather sad tale of two people who'd be happier going their separate ways but finding themselves tied together by life and commitments.



Maryom's review - 3.5 stars
Publisher - Harvill Secker
Genre - adult,

The Forgetting Time by Sharon Guskin

review by Maryom

 Noah is  a troubled four year old who knows things other kids his age don't - all about Harry Potter or guns or how to score baseball for example. At night he's plagued by dreams of drowning, and cries for his mama to rescue him, but when his mother, Janie, tries to comfort him, he insists she isn't his real mama - that he lives somewhere else, with another family. Growing increasingly worried, Janie consults various doctors but the best they can suggest is that Noah must be schizophrenic, so in desperation she approaches Dr Anderson, a scientist who believes he's encountered such cases before and that they are attributable to reincarnation, and the remembering of a previous life. Janie is clutching at straws, and Anderson's interest is solely in writing up Noah as a case-study, but together they decide to track down this other family that Noah talks about in the hope that meeting them will end his nightmares.

A young child remembers a previous life, details of his 'other' family, his pets, his old house and the way in which he died. To settle his nightmares, somehow this past life must be confronted and someone presumably brought to justice for his murder. It's the sort of plot-line that you could imagine Mulder and Scully working on in the X-files, one willing to believe in any supernatural happening, the other looking for scientific evidence to support the theory - and in that sort of setting, this whole story would have sat more comfortably for me. Here though, there were such a lot of personal side-issues that I found distracting from the main story-line, so while some parts had me intrigued and wanting to know what would happen, others left me cold.

I'm not sure whether this should be classified as a 'crime' novel or not - there is a certain element of murder mystery about it, but it doesn't really pan out into anything complex or gritty and is quickly and easily solved.
There's a little of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones about it all, and if you liked that book (I didn't) this may appeal to you - just as you don't need to believe in ghosts for one, you don't need to believe in reincarnation for the other.

Maryom's review - 3 stars
Publisher - Mantle (Panmacmillan)
Genre - adult fiction, supernatural, crime 

Slade House by David Mitchell

review by Maryom

" Turn down Slade Alley - narrow, dank and easy to miss, even when you're looking for it. Find the small black iron door set into the right-hand wall. No handle, no keyhole, but at your touch it swings open. Enter the sunlit garden of an old house that doesn't quite make sense; too grand for the shabby neighbourhood, too large for the space it occupies."

This strange building, Slade House, lies at the heart of David Mitchell's latest novel like an evil witch's hovel in some ghostly horror tale - and every nine years someone is enticed within its walls and never seen again! In 1979, a mother and son are invited to a musical garden party; nine years later, Detective Inspector Edmonds is following up a lead to their disappearance; another nine years, and a group of students investigating paranormal activities find their way to Slade House; in 2006 the journalist sister of one of those students comes seeking further information; and in 2015 a Canadian psychiatrist with an interest in abduction psychoses finds her way into the mysterious garden of Slade House. With each section the tension builds, a little bit more of the House's origins are revealed, and the horror that lies at its heart grows....

 I've been longing to read this book since I heard David Mitchell read the opening section at Hay Festival last May, but as always there seemed to be something else that needed to be read first so it's taken me quite a while to get round to it. That taster definitely set the tone for the book with that 'read if you dare' feel of a good ghost or horror story, which terrifies you but encourages you to carry on reading; you know that no matter how scary, you are NOT going to put this book down till the end!
 I've fairly recently read The Bone Clocks for my book club, and while I enjoyed it, it was a slow drawn-out read; Slade House is the opposite. Possibly because at 230 or so pages it's a lot shorter than other David Mitchell books, possibly because of the way the story falls into five almost self-contained parts, possibly because each section lures the reader towards both its own climax and then the next 'episode', I raced through it.
 With the book splitting into five self-contained sections, you might expect a slight skimping on character development, but no, with the skill of a short-story teller, Mitchell develops each and all of them, relating the stories in first person to make the reader privy to their thoughts and attitudes. We're introduced to an autistic boy struggling to quite 'fit', a world-weary policeman still gullible enough to be seduced by an attractive woman, students with their mix of attitude and cool, a journalist plagued by guilt, - every one a believable 'real' person.
 Slade House inhabits the same 'world' as The Bone Clocks, and makes several passing references to events and characters from it, but stands alone, so there's no real need to have read one to enjoy the other. I actually think if you've heard of David Mitchell, and been intending reading his novels but been put off by the length, Slade House is a brilliant place to start.



Maryom's review -  5 stars
Publisher -  Sceptre
Genre - ghost/horror stories,