Good news: Gill McEvoy (author of our out-of-print Uncertain Days and in-print Sampler) won first prize in the Havant Literary Festival Competition. Hurray!
Not only that — there have been some brilliant autumn days this week and even this morning the sun is shining and the rowan outside my window is turning red. I’m one third of the way through the subscriber mailshot and desperately hoping the postal services will get the bits and pieces to people. All subscribers are getting a free sample PoemCard as well as flyers for the new publications: everyday festival (Rose Cooke), Salaams (Sally Festing, Shadow (Alison Brackenbury) and No Panic Here (Mark Halliday). This time they’re a kind of suite of pamphlets, all with cream covers but different inside flyleafs. And some lovely cover designs. Mark Halliday’s is a sort of man-meets-ketchup, self-inside-self portrait, which really fits the poems (you’ve got to read them).
The short list of stories from the competition has gone to Janice Galloway: watch out for list appearing on site.
If I can just get to the end of my British Writers essay – sort of thing you can’t skimp on – I’ll tie up Sphinx 11, a lot of which is already done and do the scheduling for next year. I’m hoping to do at least three more pamphlets this year – a tall order – actually more than three. Oh dear. The manuscripts from my July reading window are patiently sitting in a box under the settee in the conservatory (that’s so that none of the leaks in the roof can possibly get to them). Any not bumped back to their authors are still in the box for positive reasons. However, there are too many to work with, so about two-thirds must go – should get to that within next four weeks…
And most important of all: I have to do the accounts or the whole shebang will go bust and I will get an enormous tax bill for actually losing loads of money. Must not let that happen! Just now the balance of the books is, let us say, delicate.
