Cherry Potts's Blog

I’m tidying up my other webisite and came across this piece I wrote several years ago, so I thought I’d share it here.

These days I’m a publisher as well as a writer, and when I look back at when I had my first work published I realise I was dreadfully naïve – I thought the books would sell themselves.

After all, I’d written it, and someone liked it enough to publish – my work was done!

Really, not.

Now, three books in, and running my own micro-publishing company for 13 years, and having edited dozens of books, I am wiser and a heck of a lot more cynical.

The statistics on the number of books published every year don’t bear thinking about – how on earth can you get noticed? Especially if you haven’t been snapped up in a bidding war between the big publishing companies who have an army of publicists on their payroll?

You have to be prepared to get into the limelight and tell the world how fantastic and fascinating your writing is, and what a wonderful charming person you are.

I know.  You’d sooner walk across hot coals and sell your child/cat into slavery.

Well, nonetheless, the books don’t sell themselves, and the received wisdom in the publishing world is that your average punter is more interested in the writer than in what they’ve written, so if there is something interesting about you beyond the book you’ve written, or deeply wrapped up with said book, you need to be prepared to talk about it. You need to get out there and meet the public in all their various guises, whether that is in person, touring your work round bookshops and libraries; or setting up a blog, or being interviewed on a radio/TV station or podcast. THIS is how books become word of mouth best-sellers.

I have cast iron evidence. My first book hardly sold at all, because I was too frightened to do the publicity my publisher wanted from me. The second book pretty much sold out because I did it anyway, fear not withstanding… and I ENJOYED it (not a lot, but it was bearable and I discovered I LIKE talking about my writing).

The popular image of the writer, secluded in her attic/ the library with her notebooks, gazing at the view from her window or the riveting ancient text that has inspired her work, is desperately out of date, but some of us (me included) would MUCH rather be doing that, than spending time on socials inviting people to make contact, talking about our work and READ it, and the idea of facing a microphone or camera and having to SPEAK…

How to cope? Why would you want to?

How I did it: I thought about who I needed to be, and in what circumstances I can pull that off, and I wrote myself a character who is the relatively thick-skinned, witty, charming, outgoing person that I can be when I’m really comfortable. Then I put her on, coat-like when I need her. She’s been really useful for my publishing face too.

That doesn’t help with the white noise that hits when I’m asked a (to me) stupid question live on air. What does help is preparation. Interviews are fairly predictable, you will almost always be asked – what do you write/ where do your ideas come from/ what’s this book about? Although you might want to respond – haven’t you read it? Your interviewer is actually trying to help – the viewer/listener/reader hasn’t read your wonderful scintillating work, and the interviewer is getting you to persuade them to do that. If you do get asked something that throws you – say what a good question (flatters the interviewer, gives you time to think) then answer as gracefully as you can, and don’t be afraid to say I hadn’t thought about that, or I don’t know! If your character can enjoy the process, perhaps you will too.

I seem only to post about Brockley Max lately! It is my local arts festival, and run on a complete shoestring by a determined group of volunteers. I’m a late addition to the next fundraising event, Spooky Tales, this Wednesday at the Honor Oak pub, 1 St Germans Road SE23 1RH. (lots of buses stop almost outside or just round the corner) Tickets (£8 + bookingfee) via Eventbrite.

I’m late to the game because I don’t really do much in the way of ‘spooky’, and I thought I’d read all I had at previous Halloween events, but then I remembered the unlikely titled Fish-fish…

Join me, and fellow WooA members, Jane MacLaughlin, Bartle Sawbridge and Neil Lawrence, plus Tutku Barbaros and possibly others who were slow to join in, like me.

recordings from BrockleyMax session of stories and poems about image.

Inspired by the fact that our venue, The Brookmill Pub, was also hosting a photography exhibition, we chose ‘image’ as our theme.

My story, Double Exposure, is about doppelgangers and alternate lives.

and three poems, Great Queen Street, from Joy//Us Poems of Queer Joy ; 20:20, and How Does It End

Many thanks to Robin Green, photographer and audio engineer for these magnificent recordings.

Join me and my fellow WooA writers at BrockleyMax for a free session of stories about image. 2nd June 7.30

Inspired by the fact that our venue, The Brookmill Pub, is also hosting a photography exhibition, we chose ‘image’ as our theme.

My story, Double Exposure, is about doppelgangers and alternate lives.

You can bring along your own piece of flash (max 500 words) on the theme of image to read, or just come along and listen.

Not entirely sure who else is getting involved, but probably: Jane McLaughlin, Bartle Sawbridge, Nicola Rossi and Neil Lawrence.

Writers of our Age

While I wait to read the actual publication contract, Red Hen Press are keeping me happy with the delightful comments from Elizabeth Bradfield, the judge of the Quill Prose Award (the one Mermaid just won!)

What does a bog contain?  Water, layer upon layer of sphagnum, darkness, cold; things preserved in that airless chill beyond what light and air would allow.  So the past burbles into the present, and currents between people and within families haunt the pages of this book.  Something of Sarah Waters’s restrained sense of strange eddies through “The Bog Mermaid,” a disturbance more emotional than narrative.  There are silences here left unspoken, unexplained, but I know they hold truths, and I trust the writer’s restraint, their urging to listen to echoes and, by that, understand the shape of what creates them. The book haunts me. 

What a wonderful cover blurb this would make!

Excited to announce that The Bog Mermaid has won the Quill Prose Award 2022, run by Red Hen Press

There won’t be a publication, we couldn’t agree terms on the contract, but still, a prize is a prize.

Read about the book itself here

Read about searching for the right place to set the book here

Watch a video of me reading an extract at the Writing the Past event for Hither Green Festival 2019 here (yes, it does take a long time to write a novel, doesn’t it!)

I want to thank Muireann, Maria and Paula for the stories and permission to use them, and the woman in the audience at a reading in Brixton for the title.

And Cat, Henry, Katy, Ruth, Jenn’s dad and various others for letting me pick their brains for accuracy and science.

And WooA, especially Neil and Bartle, for listening to the entire thing in 15 minute slots over a couple of years!

Excited to announce that The Bog Mermaid has won the Quill Prose Award 2022, and will be published in 2025 by Red Hen Press

There’s nothing on their website yet, so you’ll have to make do with some posts I made along the way about writing the book.

Read about the book itself here

Read about searching for the right place to set the book here

Watch a video of me reading an extract at the Writing the Past event for Hither Green Festival 2019 here (yes, it does take a long time to write a novel, doesn’t it!)

I want to thank Muireann, Maria and Paula for the stories and permission to use them, and the woman in the audience at a reading in Brixton for the title.

And Cat, Henry, Katy, Ruth, Jenn’s dad and various others for letting me pick their brains for accuracy and science.

And WooA, especially Neil and Bartle, for listening to the entire thing in 15 minute slots over a couple of years!

On Sunday at 12:45 I’m joining Cornwall-based authors, Clare Owen and Jackie Taylor at the Causley Festival, where we will be talking about Cornwall, writing fiction imbued with nature, and the role of seabirds in their writing.

We had flirted with the idea of meeting up somewhere in Cornwall for this, but instead it is online, so anyone can come. Free!

My contribution is to talk about why spiders matter to me, and more generally about publishing writers who live in geographically isolated places. Our individual sections are pre-recorded and then we’ll talk about writing, publishing, the climate crisis, and anything else that grabs us, in a Q& A that the audience is positively encouraged to join in.

The idea behind back in the water as a theme (Brockley Max festival, Writers of Our Age) was getting back to normal life. We still haven’t really, and we didn’t stick to that brief, but water definitely came into it! Two stories from me, Lift Off, which will be featured in FlashFlood 2021 on 26th June, and Greenlanders, which was read at Liars’ League a while back.

I’m joining my WooA mates to read at Brockley Max on 3rd June at 7.30.

Our theme is Back in the Water, a sort of post lockdown dipping of toes into the sea type of idea. We may not be taking either of these ideas literally.

We are staying on line because although WooA (Writers of OUR Age) originated in Brockley, some longstanding members have moved away and it is impractical to get us together in real life.

We think there will be five writers, with five stories, of betweeen 1000 and 1500 words each, but like our theme our plans are fluid.

Come and join us, the water’s lovely!

Tickets are free, and available from Eventbrite. Please book to receive the zoom link.

Hosted by Arachne Press.