My Magazine Prototype!

Hurray!

So, I’ve finally gotten to the stage where I can print my magazine pages to take a look and hunt for mistakes. The thing about editing hard-copies is that you  can really nitpick, and often mistakes show up where you wouldn’t have spotted them on the screen. It’s also great for my research portfolio to demonstrate the different stages of  completing this project as a novice, and how I ensured quality to some degree.

This has been a tough but highly rewarding task, and personally I am dead chuffed with what I’ve been able to create all by myself – from figuring out indesign, to learning the difference between RGB and CMYK, to editing stories, compiling them in an attractive fashion and even designing my own front cover and artwork. Honestly, this was an ambitious project for somebody who has ZERO experience in this field, and I never expected it to be this good. You really should see my first attempts, especially of a front cover and an article. It’s laughable but understandable – I was a beginner, and I still am. However, I have learned a lot of new skills, and I know how to create a magazine. That’s something.

Anyway, my boyfriend happens to know someone who owns a printing shop, and he has kindly printed off the pages (single, not as they’d appear in the final product) on some gorgeous paper. Not only that, but he has actually gone to the trouble of pointing out some errors and marking them on the paper, which makes my life so much easier. I really did need the perspective of the person printing it, because the worst problems were probably going to be in the formatting, the thing I understood the least. So, lucky for me, I didn’t even have to ask!

Here are some pictures:

 

The pictures don’t do it justice! I wish I could photgraph every single page, but that’d just be insane. I can’t wait to blog once it’s finished, printed and stapled as a proper magazine!

Now, this is a student project and not the real deal. But honestly, this has taught me what’s really possible – what I’m actually capable of. If I wanted to make Urban Limbo into a real thing later on then I don’t see why I couldn’t, not from a practicality perspective. Money, of course, would be the issue – but even still, there’s no reason why this couldn’t turn into an online magazine. I personally really believe in this as a concept, and hopefully the examiners will see that in my work.

If I was to do this for real, things would be very different though. Here’s some things I’d do differently:

• Pay proper artists for illustrations and front covers. I couldn’t this time and the art department at uni didn’t reply to me, so this time around I had to make my own. I didn’t do a bad job at a basic level, but presentation is everything; if I could get some decent digital art I know this thing could really pop.
• There would be no donated stories. I know that goes without saying, but I do wish could’ve gotten real submissions for this. Thankfull my classmates and some other writers contributed for free so I could express my skills as an editor, but realistically these stories wouldn’t be put together, and most of them wouldn’t really have a place in the mag. Two of the stories take place outside of cities; one of them in a forest, for Christ’s sake, LOL. It involved a car, though, so I could scrape by. The point is it didn’t matter this time (it’s all good in the critique) but in reality the content would meet the brief.
• I would have an online presence to generate profits along with selling advertising. I’d have flash-fiction sections on the webite and an active blog. I’d also have artwork submissions and street photography to keep people coming back, and I’d make the magazine available for download as a PDF at a one-off fee or as a subscription. Obviously I’d love for it to be print, but with the current economic state I know this isn’t likely, even as a dream. Just look at what happened to Murky Depths for example.

I could go on forever, honestly. I had high expectations for this (a  little too high in the beginning) but ultimately I think I’ve done my best and, once it’s all submitted as the final product, I think I’ll be proud of what I achieved.

Everybody has to start somewhere, don’t they?

Tags: Art, black static, creative writing, editing, Horror, literary magazine, magazine, Murky Depths, Publishing, student, student magazine, submissions, urban limbo

Sean Bean Drag Queen

As a Sean Bean enthusiast and president of the “I’d Bang Beanie” society, I nearly leapt out of my seat when I saw this! Beanie is to appear in the third episode of a four-parter BBC show called Accused, from the man who brought us Cracker (Coltrane, Tomlinson) as none other than…A DRAG QUEEN.

THIS IS AMAZING. And what’s more is I can’t believe how good he looks as a tranny! Oh, boys and girls, this was a welcome distraction from stressing about cock-ups at uni and stupid deadlines.

I’ve discussed this with a friend and we both agreed that if Sean Bean was a tutor, he’d give us all firsts and take us down the pub. Then afterwards he’d say “C’mon lass” and whisk me off to be his 5th wife, and years later we’d have Beanie babies with Sharpe hairdos, and he’d dress like Ned Stark every day. Yep, heaven.

Oh, and A Game Of Thrones season 2 starts this Sunday! Unfortunately Starky won’t be in it, but he’ll be in aaaaall our hearts I’m sure.

So without further ado, I’ll illustrate this post with the most amazing pics to ever grace the internet: Bean in drag. (I didn’t need much excuse for procrastination. What do you reckon his dress size is? 006? Bwahahaaa!)

 

Tags: A game of thrones, Accused, BBC, men in drag, Ned Stark, sean bean, sean bean drag queen, Sharpe, transgender

Gary McMahon Interview

So as you can see I’ve been away from my blog for a while, and that’s because I’ve been working very hard for uni to get my final projects finished to a good standard. Deadlines are looming and, with my graduation happening on 20th July 2012, you can imagine how nervous I’m feeling.

Anyway, my independent project (arts version of a dissertation, complete with essay etc) is a prototype of an urban horror magazine, using donated stories for me to experiment as an editor. I had a brilliant time learning how to design, edit and create my very first magazine, and once it’s printed I’ll put up pictures for all to see.

Author Gary McMahon kindly agreed to an interview for inclusion in the magazine, but as it’s a class project and not a real magazine that you can go and buy or view for free, I thought it’d be a bit of a waste if I didn’t share the interview here:

9 Questions For Gary McMahon

Q: The second novel in your Concrete Grove series (Silent Voices) is coming out soon. Do you view a series as a single story, or is each book its own complete entity?

A: “Each of the Concrete Grove novels can be read as a stand-alone story, but together they form an overall story – like a triptych, if I’m allowed to be a pretentious arse. I was really inspired by Jimmy McGovern’s TV show ‘The Street’ where each week featured a different story set on the same street. Characters would drift in and out of episodes, and everything was linked by the location, but each one was a seperate tale unto itself.”

Q: You’ve got a couple of series on the go right now: the Thomas Usher books and The Concrete Grove. What’s it like focusing on two different storylines which mix multiple sub-genres of horror? Do you have a preference for writing one or the other?

A: “To be honest, it was really difficult at first. I wrote The Concrete Grove immediately after Dead Bad Things (the second Usher novel) and things got a bit fraught. The Usher books are set in Leeds, the Grove books are set in Northumberland. I think at one point in The Concrete Grove I mention a hospital in Leeds (or is it the other way around?). Nobody noticed, but they will if they read this…”

Q: Many writers have insecurity issues with their own writing, doubting whether they are good enough to ever break through into the published world. Obviously you’ve already managed that, but did you (or do you still) have any particular approaches to keeping your morale up when that inner critic pipes up?

A: “I’m stubborn. Always have been. I have frequent bouts of self-doubt, but I just keep on writing, keep on trying to develop my craft. At the end of the day, this is all that really matters. Everything else is peripheral to the business of writing stories. So, no matter what happens, I just try to keep writing.”

Q:  The novella “The Harm” was the first piece of your writing that I read, and you’ve published other novella-length works and many short stories. Was that by design?

A: “I started off as a short story writer because that’s all I knew. I never dreamed that I’d be able to write a full novel. I had no idea about publishing – how it worked, how to get an agent, all that stuff – so just kept writing my stories and submitting them to little magazines and anthologies. At some point, I got noticed by bigger editors and by that time I’d already built up a reputation in the field.”

Q: I’ve noticed you have a fascination with urban horror (and what a coincidence too!). Does the current economic climate influence your work?

A: “God, yes. My recent work examines a lot of what’s happening in the current economic climate. We can’t escape it; the results of what’s going on are everywhere. I just choose to couch my questions in terms of horror, crime and fantasy fiction, rather than political debate. I grew up on a council estate in the northeast, so these are stories I know well. Much of what I write about in the Concrete Grove novels is based on stuff that I’ve exerienced and people I’ve known in my life.”

Q: The whole crime/horror thing is a difficult combination to get right, but I thought the balance was spot-on in Pretty Little Dead Things. Did you have any doubts about all the elements coming together smoothly?

A: “I have doubts about everything. Always. Again, I just kept on writing, and hoped that whatever the hell it was I was trying to do worked out okay. It’s like an act of faith. You just have to jump in and believe that you have the talent to make it work. I’ve always liked books that mix up genres and break a few established rules, so it just felt natural to me that I do the same.”

Q: The rise of e-books is something we’ve all come to accept now, but I want to know this: what’s your opinion of self-publishing on Amazon Kindle? A recent success story saw Amanda Hocking become a millionaire from self-publishing books that were rejected by literary agencies. Is that a good message for writers considering the Kindle publishing route?

A: “I’m still very dubious about the ebook revolution. There’s a lot of bad fiction out there, and a lot of people are talking a lot of crap about sales figures. For every Amanda Hocking there’s another 50,000 sad saps pimping their poorly written, barely edited for free on Smashwords. For now, I’m sticking with the traditional publishing template. That way, at least I get an advance.”

Q: If one of your books was made into a movie/TV series, which would it be and who could you imagine directing it?

A: “Maybe Pretty Little Dead Things, with Tim Roth as Thomas Usher. Directed by Paddy Consadine. I’d want Peter Mullan in there somewhere, too, because he’s great.”

Q: What’s the best advice you have for novice writers?

A: “The only advice I have is this: persist. Never give up. Just keep at it, and hope that one day somebody notices what you’re doing. But even if they don’t, keep on writing anyway. Writers write. Everyone else just talks about writing and thinks it’ll make them rich and famous. The deluded fools…”

Tags: 9 questions, amanda hocking, author interview, fiction, Gary McMahon, Horror, kindle, Literature, Publishing, self-publishing, switched, urban limbo, Writing

Kindle Publishing

Since hearing about the unbelievable success of Amanda Hocking‘s self-published novels, I’ve been eagerly researching this crazy new trend that’s built up since Kindle launched.

Don’t worry – I’m not planning to self-publish on the Kindle. But I am highly interested in such an awesome success story, especially since traditional publishers rejected her manuscripts time and time again. After taking matters into her own hands and selling them herself on Kindle and Smashwords as ebooks, they became bestsellers. She wrote 17 novels that got nowhere traditionally, and now she’s a millionaire.

Makes you sick, right? Of course. It’s like winning the friggin’ lottery. If you wanna know more about her story, or indeed her stories, Google her. There’s a load of news articles about it.

Anyway, my intrigue led me to sampling some of her stories and visiting the Kindle boards to check out how many other self-publishing “authors” there are flogging their shizz on Kindle. Turns out there’s fucking loads of them. So, after checking those out too, on the nifty little “search inside” feature, what do I think?

I think we need traditional publishers.

Look, no offence Amanda – the sample to My Blood Approves, apart from that being a crummy title, was OK. As YA goes I guess it was pretty good, at least in that fast-paced kind of way. I wouldn’t say it was original or particularly well written, but whatever. Other people clearly loved it.

I also tried reading Hocking’s Hollowland because it was free on Kindle, and the writing really, really lacked substance. There was no detail, the characters were two dimensional (so 2d that I can’t remember their names or even imagine their personality) and the plot, setting and story itself was a Zombie break-out cliché.

But you know what? It’s not even that which I have the biggest problem with. It’s the fact that there are spelling errors and faults everywhere, never mind the other stuff. That, in a book people supposedly have paid for, isn’t right at all. Hopefully it’ll stay free to buy from now on, though I’ve read that they’re becoming graphic novels – perhaps a wiser platform for that kind of story.

As for the Trylle series, the books that are making it big right now, I couldn’t say. The story doesn’t appeal to me at all because that kind of series usually doesn’t, not unless I happen upon the books by chance and they become a guilty pleasure (or an on-toilet book) But still, it appears that she finally wrote something deserving of being published, even if the publishers didn’t see it at the time. Good for her, really – she should be proud.

I understand how hard it is to proof-read an entire novel, I do. I really do. But that’s what we have editors for, isn’t it? But even if you paid an editor (because you aren’t going traditional) you still can’t buy a rich, organic, realist story, can you? Of course you can’t.

The cover art was typically YA with the girl on front with lots of shiny hair, and looked very professional, yes. But what was inside didn’t match up to the packaging – not one bit. That’s the problem with these brilliant freelance artists – they need to make money too.

This is why we need publishers.  It’s about quality control. It’s not just about spelling and grammar, but about the books themselves, if you can call them that.

Did you know some people are buying quality covers, and charging full novel prices for a piece that’s less than 10k in length? Christ, even for a 50k novel, that’s ridiculous – especially when the reason these manuscripts were rejected (assuming they even tried) was probably because they were sub-standard, nevermind the rest.

The fact that anyone even bothers to read them is a charitable deed to you, the writer, surely? Why charge full price for a sub-standard novel, or novella? You can’t slap a pretty picture on it to hide the words. Have you forgotten what a novel actually consists of at its core? Words, dude, words.

I understand their reasons. I’ve thought of it myself: what am I going to do if the book I spent all my energy on over a long period of time is deemed worthless? The answer, and the final option, is rather alluring – take it into your own hands and put it up as an ebook. I don’t blame anyone for wanting to do this – even rubbish books take a lot of time, effort and love to write. That’s just how it is.

Anyway, back to the Kindle boards. I clicked signatures and was taken to their “novels” and, my God, they were awful. I wasn’t impressed. Even the ones with professional looking covers were crap inside. Is it fair that this stuff clogs up the Kindle book store? Is it fair that I search the store on my lovely little Kindle, look at a book, and get disheartened when I see that it’s a self-published jobby with a load of fake 5* reviews?

No, it bloody isn’t. Us readers rely on publishers to take only the best to print, and even if a book or a particular genre is not to our liking, we can at least rest assured that it’s been picked for some basic saleability reasons – some basic quality reasons.

There are always exceptions, I know that. There are some high-selling self-published books that genuinely deserve the recognition they got -and I’m sure people like Amanda Hocking belong in this category in their own special way. There are also some terrible books out there, published and agented by the best of the best, which have no business being on those shelves.

But the fact still remains that 90% of this stuff is going to be rubbish, and it’s stuffing up the Kindle store. If there’s some button I can press to filter this stuff out, I’d be grateful if someone could tell me.

Anyway, I’ve had my experience of that…World now, and I’m no longer envious of all these people who are bypassing/avoiding the sheer agony of  receiving rejection after rejection from agents and publishers.

I can see now that I would rather learn from the experience and move on to write something else -however heartbreaking that is- than let people pay good money for something that just isn’t good enough for them.

After all, if it’s not good enough for your audience, then why the heck is it good enough for you? Where’s the pride in that?

Then again, I don’t think a success like Amanda Hocking really has to care about that particular dilemma anymore. She doesn’t even have to listen to this kind of debate anymore – not now she has coins in her ears. (No but seriously, to Amanda Hocking: good on you. You’ve achieved your dream and made a lot of people regret not publishing you first.)

This article by Anthony Horowitz has been circling Facebook, and I agree with pretty much everything he has to say. I think the point I’m trying to make is one that’s pretty much universally agreed upon, unless you’re the one who self-published, and it’s debated about all the time within the industry. It’s kind of a no-brainer.

But the real point for me, I think, is that I needed to dispel that burning desire I had to get something of mine out there, the likes of which lured me over to the dark side of poor quality, very, very crappy novels.

It’s not like I genuinely considered it, but it did make me jealous of these people. It is a brave thing to do on one hand, and very cowardly on the other. I think I just had to look under the bought and paid for cover art to see the cheap reality of it for myself.

Tags: amanda hocking, anthony horowitz, ebook, kindle, Literature, self-publishing, Trylle series, young adult

Thoughts

When I look at how far I’ve come, I realise I should be proud of myself.

I’m a successful third year, published, with my first novel eagerly awaiting feedback.

Sometimes I look at the little small-press places where my work’s been featured, and I think: Christ, Ash, is that the best you could do? But I’m forgetting that I’m turning 21 in a month, and I started sending out my work when I was 17 – 18. I got my first acceptance pretty young – and coming from an indie place or not, that’s impressive. A lot of people work hard and never find that kind of encouragement – they never get that first acceptance that makes them think: “Hey, maybe I can do this after all.”

Not to mention what I’m now capable of, of course. I’ve written and edited my first book. I couldn’t have even contemplated that at one point, and when I first started to, I produced work which isn’t even a 10th of the quality my work is at now. That’s not to say I’ve written something ground-breaking, of course – my beta readers and experiences with sending out to agents will answer that question, let’s face it. But it does mean I’ve improved immensley over the last few years, and I can’t keep ignoring that.

I can’t keep re-reading old lines and mocking them just to make myself feel better. I can’t keep acting like I’ve no right to start small, and to be proud of those small acheivements. It’s not fair on myself, is it?

It’s OK, though. I know every writer goes through this – even when they’re best sellers. It’s a good thing. If a day ever comes when you don’t believe you should be trying harder, aiming higher – then my friend, that’s the day you well and truly suck. We’re our own worst critics, but those critics are necessary.

I hope one day I get to look back at my first stories and laugh. But equally, I hope I can look back on all the work I’ve done since, just like a timeline, and beam with pride at my improvements and achievements since, and recognise how those silly first stories were the beginning of the most important journey of my life.

Still…Thank God I used a pen name.

Tags: anthology, Literature, Publishing, Short Stories, thoughts, Writing

“Drinkipoos” with Quercus

So last night I arrived at a packed bar in Shoreditch Highstreet with Matt feeling kind of nervous. He’d received an invite to a writers and bloggers shindig organised by Quercus Books and I, who have actually done a placement with them before, was coming along as his +1.

You can imagine what was going through my mind. I won’t bore you with the details, but it was along the lines of: “Oh fuck nobody will remember me and we’ll be trying to sneak out unnoticed within 10 minutes of arriving”. Well, I needn’t have worried! As soon as we walked in we were greeted by the lovely Kathryn from the rights department (who actually had me packing books up on my first day) and was soon joined by the equally lovely Nicolla, assistant editor for Jo Fletcher. It turns out that they certainly hadn’t forgotten me and, amazingly, they’d known Matt and I were a couple and were counting on us coming together.

How lovely is that? All my fears were just blown away. I realised I was in for a lovely evening of chit-chat with some really lovely people – nothing more sinister than that. When Kathryn said she’d been reading our blogs, though, my heart did do a little leap. You see, this was a party for bloggers, right? Well Matt’s blog actually has a vague point to it, where as mine is full of rambling rubbish like this. Well, thank God i’d earned my place by being one of their work experience peeps!

We spent the evening chatting to Tom Fletcher, Mark from My Favourite Books, and of course the Quercus team. There was a free bar, nibbles and even a big goody-bag of books for Matt to take away. Given that Nicola had given me lots of freebies on my placement I had no right to be jealous of that, but, damnit…I kinda was. There were some awesome looking books in that bag!

As usual Quercus were so generous that every little detail made it a really delightful evening. Oh, and I may have dropped a few massive hints that I’d love to be put forward for their internship scheme whenever they think about launching it. You can bet I’ll definitely be in touch about that!

Tags: jo fletcher books, Literature, mason and taylor, my favourite books, Publishing, quercus books, tom fletcher

Student Magazine Project – REMINDER – I need your stuff!

My name is Ashleigh, and I’m organising a student project for my final year at Middlesex University, studying Creative and Media Writing. I plan on putting together a mock-up of a horror fiction magazine with an urban theme, where stories will undergo a selection process and my editing.
In order to present my editing abilities in this project, I need about 5 stories to demonstrate my tastes as an editor.
The final item will be produced in about 10-15 copies. I’m unable to pay, but will provide contributors with a free copy of the finished item in the mail.

Email me at Urbanlimbo@live.co.uk with your submissions/queries and I’ll get back to you asap.

I also need other content, such as film/book reviews, and details of this can be found in the post BELOW. Thanks!

Tags: call for submissions, dissertation, horror fiction, literary magazine, Short Stories, University, urban limbo