Cherry Radford's Blog

Childbirth, Ikea, and submitting a novel to literary agents for representation: things I swore I’d never do again. Particularly the latter; if you’ve read MY POTHOLED PATH TO PUBLICATION, or ONE TO ONES, I’VE HAD A FEW, you know why. And those posts haven’t aged well; dear God, how smug I was, thinking I’d never need to run the agent gauntlet again! But that was before my small friendly publisher decided to stop publishing fiction; unless I could somehow make my new novel into non-fiction – a bit of an ask, for a seventy-year family saga – I was back to square one. Un-agented, un-published and back in the muddier-than-ever submission trenches.

Out came the Writers’ Yearbook, the laptop and the sickening realisation that I was about to lose a sizeable chunk of writing time. Come back faffy postal submissions, all is forgiven. These days, most agents expect you to have Googled their client list, favourite novels, festival interviews, whacky Wish List (airport romance, anyone?) and their submission requirements designed to be just that bit different to that of whoever you last subbed. Honestly, it’s time to bring in some kind of UCAS-like process, rather than this fawning agent-fan fiasco; if they want new clients, how about they open a website and look for us, eh?!

Anyway. The new novel was the thing. I loved it, and wanted to give it the best possible start in life – which unfortunately meant going to the ‘publishing gatekeepers’. Even though, after having gone through this process three times before, I felt a default loathing for these people. Once again, I rejigged the Submissions Spreadsheet of Shame, with its colour code highlighting of yellow for Submitted, orange for Full MS Requested, and a disgusting dark brown for Rejections. And once again, the spreadsheet soon started to look like a pile of poo.

But then the jolly orange Full MS Requests started to arrive. I got cocky and started subbing some of the Big Cheese agents I hadn’t bothered with – and a couple of them also turned (Red Leicester) orange. After a few months, I had 9 (NINE) Full MS requests; writing friends said I had it made, and I began to believe them. But the months started to pass, several agents asked for more time… and Doubt set in.

It was torture trying to get through more than half an hour without tapping the email button on my phone. I unsubscribed from nearly everything – even my darling White Stuff Clothing – to cut down on annoying non-agent-news notifications. There was that time I heard the whang of an email and was convinced, felt it in my bones, that it was going to be good news – only to find it was my son’s phone with a match on Bumble. Then a London number flashed up and I got The Agent Call – except it was an agent chasing up because their full MS request email had somehow bypassed my scrutiny and gone straight to junk mail.

Then the first rejections started to arrive. They were kindly and helpful, and I highlighted the agents in a sad but respectful grey. Maybe I should have coloured them a dawning-on-me pink, because what started to emerge is that I’d written a book they really liked but couldn’t sell. Eventually there was just one agent left on the wall, riddled with indecision, and I put her out of her misery with a little nudge. I submitted the novel to a few independent publishers, but they were similarly nonplussed.

It was very painful, this book bereavement, this need to put a whole world I’d created and lived in for two years in a digital drawer. I literally went through denial, anger and then acceptance – that it didn’t obey the insane but irrefutable marketing laws of genre. There was only one possible cure for me, and here in a nutshell is how I got my agent: I decided to write something new that did.

This coincided with the first lockdown and, missing my Spanish home, I got an idea for an escapist holiday read. But before I flew off with my usual obsessions, I spent a month reading similar books, to get the hang of what interested people who read this genre. The Spanish House was less literary than The Pier, but my heart was soon just as invested in it. With minimal wing-clipping, I soon had a new novel I loved and really believed in.

No Yearbook this time. I only sent ‘invitations to look’ to fifteen agents; anybody who hadn’t shown any interest at all in my beloved The Pier could go hang. Several weren’t looking for this genre or already had too much of it, but there were soon three Full MS requests, including a Big Cheese. Quite quickly this time, I got my answers: Big Cheese saw the novel going in a different direction; the second agent was overburdened, and once she asked about and approved of the agent who’d made me an offer, conceded. The third… was Kiran Kataria at Keane Kataria.

We didn’t have The Call, we had The Zoom – because it was August and I’d moved out to my own Spanish house and, going through the Spanish residency process, wouldn’t be in the UK for a while. Obviously, I’d already Twitter DM’d some of her authors – all of whom were ecstatic about her. But to finally hear somebody talk about the characters of your book as if they’re as real as they are to you, to have someone so believe in your writing that they’re happy and looking forward to working on the story and finding it a home… I’m still pinching myself, to be honest.

Six months on, and Kiran’s been everything I dreamt of in an agent: an insightful and painstaking editor; a calm but no-nonsense soother of my angsty author moments; and then a superb negotiator – of my three-book deal with Aria Fiction (Head of Zeus)! My only worry is she’ll see this and find too many I-don’t-think-this-is-the-word words.

Book sales have soared as people jump into books to escape the pandemic. Love in the Time of Corona. The Non-Traveler’s Wife. A Tale of Two Metres. Even my Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter, initially self-isolating in a lighthouse as it happens, has had an increase in fans. But how are writers coping, now we’re figuring out how to Zoom our day job, helping offspring yanked out of uni, dealing with a series of stress-related ailments we thought we’d grown out of, and worrying about loved ones, finances and loo rolls?

Twitter shows a full spectrum, from writers who now can’t write at all, to those who see little difference between this and the usual authorial lockdown as you try to meet a deadline. I’m closer to the latter extreme, probably helped by the fact that my work-in-progress features another protagonist coming from a state of isolation. If that sounds bleak, I should point out that it’s set in a quiet corner of sunny Andalucía, taking me and the protagonist somewhere no flight other than that of imagination can currently go. I’m never in a rush to return.

Today, however, is the second birthday of The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter, so I’ll be celebrating with a walk down to the sea, cake, the Instagram of a dry-throated interview at my book launch
and a listen to the novel’s Spotify song playlist - starting with Contigo en La Distancia (With You in the Distance) :-/

Keep distant (but friendly) and well!

If you’d like to lockdown with The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter, you can get hold of it online https://mybook.to/lighthousekeeper or directly from Urbane Publications, UK.

The transitional stage of labour has nothing on the final stages of writing a novel. I’m having my fourth (novel), but it’s no easier – or should I say, I’m no easier. I constantly shush my family; you’d think I was writing straight to Audio book. News of visitors coming is met with screams of horror and finger counting of missed writing hours (including those needed to make the home and myself look non-deranged). At least I haven’t been as bad as during the final days of my first novel, when the family had me committed into the hotel down the road. 

So, what’s my problem? It’s taken more than a year to get hear; I should be thrilled. But:

1. The last five chapters always take five times as long as any others 
2. I often have a favourite character dying at this point, and I’d rather not be seen crying about people in my invented world! 
3. It’s scary that I soon won’t be able to keep this baby to myself. Not that I completely have: my partner has been dragged on and under piers, round the RNLI College, through a fifties penny arcade and seen all the photos of my paddle steamer trip. He’s also, over time, been told exactly when sherbet fountains, ‘99’ ice creams, answerphones, Sony Walkmans, pocket calculators, trolley bags and heaven knows what else became available (dates below, fyi).
 
So, how does one finish a novel considerately? I’ve no idea. But you should probably atone somehow, when it’s all over. Unfortunately, I can’t promise it won’t happen again; most unfeasibly, I’ve already been implanted with an idea for the next novel. 

My previous tantrums produced The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter, published by Urbane Publications, and you can get it from good bookshops or online e.g. https://amzn.to/2xQtuXY  

• Sherbet Fountains – 1925
• ‘99’ ice creams – 1930
• Answerphones – 1960
• Pocket calculators – 1971
• Sony Walkmans – 1979
• Trolley bags – 1991 

"A novel is like hacking at the rock face, working away to get the characters, the plot. It takes ages,” the wonderful Penelope Lively wrote. I love this - and the end results of her hacking - but recently I’ve felt there’s something missing from the comparison.
Sculptors can see what they’ve done and what’s still to do at a glance; the novelist’s accumulating efforts are hidden among a weighty or scroll-marathon number of pages. If you’re not careful, you’ll have a lad on a 1965 pier in a shooting gallery that you converted into an amusement arcade back in 1959. A jolly boat trip on the day that was also that of the 1987 Great Storm. An uncle with a big nose he didn’t have ten years ago. Three women called Joan. How in hell do you keep track of it all? By having simultaneous hackings at supporting files, that’s how. Seat-of-your-pantsers will be horrifed, but I thought I’d share mine in case they help anybody.

(Note: I’m currently writing a multi-generational saga. People dealing with two characters over 24 hours - like I should be doing - may want to skip this).

THE CHAPTER SUMMARY
The Three-Act Plan divvied into chapters - constantly changing, but there. I like to believe I know where I’m going. But as I do each chapter, I summarise it so I know where I’ve been. There’s the family tree, then 3 columns: Chapter number and month/year, Cast list with ages, and What Happens (colour-coded by character viewpoint).

It’s a monumental drag, but so is flicking through when you can’t remember exactly when A last saw B. 📆🤔

CHARACTER PROFILES
Those character questionnaires novel-writing books tell you to do before you start - but I keep adding to mine, and think of them like scrap books. I copy-and-paste important dialogue from the novel, adding links to articles about his/her beloved paddle steamer, moon landing, ladybirds etc.🚢🔭🐞

ALL THE NAMES
A spreadsheet of names I’ve used - including those of boats, bands etc. A bit nerdy about an even spreading over the alphabet 🔡🤓

HISTORY FILES
Highlighted calendars of current events, films and pop music to check for each year. Doubles as writing block black hole 🚀 🎥 🎸...🕳

WORD COUNT
A spreadsheet with a running total, but to keep words down. I measure progress in terms of chapters. Speaking of which, I better get back to hacking one out! 🗻⛏📃


My last period of hacking at the rock face resulted in The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter (Urbane Publications), available from Waterstones and other good bookshops, as well as online e.g. at https://amzn.to/2xQtuXY

The leap of faith needed to write a novel has to be as downright daft as the final shot in Finding Your Feet - but without the option of a musically enhanced freeze-frame to stop you falling between canal edge and barge.

Even writing my fourth, I’ve been purposefully not glancing down at the yawning gap between my dawdling MS and a physical book, because lurking in the swirling waters below are the following two familiar questions:

1. WILL ANYBODY WANT TO READ IT? Specifically, who’s going to give a rat’s arse about a seaside pier? Even if you sometimes have top 60s bands playing on it, smash it with waves or set fire to it? 

2. WILL I EVER FINISH IT?    
A few months ago, this second question became impossible to ignore. It turns out there’s a reason why family sagas are chunky or in a series: unless you’re going to reduce some events in your 75-year story to mere bullet points, you just can’t cover it in my usual little 75K words. 

‘Be not afraid of going slowly,’ says a Chinese proverb, ‘be only afraid of standing still.’ Believe me, when something’s going at a rate of 1mm per month, and you then discover there’s going to be several kilometres added to your journey, you’d best be very afraid. 

So, here comes my top tip for getting a novel written. To have a chance of finishing it in my current lifetime, I started making myself WRITE A CHAPTER A WEEK. This game makes me grab writing time whenever I can - no more precious waiting for a whole free morning to get into the zone. Inessentials (laundry, tidying anything) don’t happen until I’ve done the chapter. Tuesday’s Bake Off marks the cake-fuelled half-way point, and I expect to be all done and smug for Saturday’s Strictly. I now feel that, unless I fall into a sinkhole or something, I WILL finish it. I even have a tentative date for that. NaNoWriMo freeks or bestselling cash-cow novelists would be appalled, but other writers might want to give this regime a go. You still don’t know if anyone will want to read it of course, but at least it shortens the gap between you and the barge or canal water. 


My previous leap of faith landed me on a lighthouse. The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter (Urbane Publications) is available from Waterstones and other good bookshops, as well as online e.g. at https://amzn.to/2xQtuXY   

BLURB
After the break-up of her marriage, Imogen escapes to the coast to be alone – and to find out more about her lighthouse keeper father who mysteriously drowned there in 1982.

She starts to see similarities in their lives, especially in the way they both intensely correspond with someone; he had a young female penfriend, she has an actor-musician Twitter friend in Madrid.

Two stories of communication: the hilarious mistakes, the painful misunderstandings, and the miracle – or tragedy – of finding someone out there with whom you have an unforeseen, irresistible connection.


1. The novel has a theme of Communication: our difficulties with it (linguistic, cultural, emotional, physical), but also the miracle – or tragedy – of chance encounters. Which aspect (or scene) of communication difficulty between the characters did you identify with the most?

2. Do you have a similar story of your own about a chance encounter that led to a close friendship or romance?

3. In 1981, Imogen’s lighthouse keeper father wrote: “Writing, talking. If only there was something in between that we could move on to… I don’t know, a sort of small portable telex machine – that would be helpful at this point.”
He wants to text! But does the modern technology available to Imogen and Santi really make their relationship any easier to develop than that between her father and his penfriend?

4. Imogen and Santi’s relationship begins on Twitter. Their friendship hangs in the air between their two separate lives, their paths don’t cross, there are no mutual friends to remind one of the other’s existence; at any time, their connection can disappear without consequence.
How does the story compare to that of any other novels or films in which a relationship starts on social media? What are the pros and cons of starting a relationship this way?

5. Santi thinks: English is hard and slow, but somehow he can say things to this woman without it mattering; it’s like being extravagant abroad with a foreign currency.
One reviewer has suggested that Imogen and Santi’s language difference draws them together more than it keeps them apart. What do you think?

6. Santi and Imogen’s musical connection inspired me to create a Spotify list, matching pieces of music to the chapters in which they occurred in the story. Do you think all novels should have one?

7. Imogen and Santi couldn’t be living in more different settings. How well was a sense of place achieved in Beachy Head and Madrid?

8. How much did Imogen’s discoveries about her lighthouse keeper father’s story affect her decisions about what to do about her feelings for Santi?

9. Who would you like to have seen more (or less!) of in the story?

10. Were you happy with the ending? If not, what would you have liked to have happened?


If you have enjoyed The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter, please let others know by leaving an online review on Amazon, Foyles, Waterstones or Goodreads (or all of them!).

I chat about writing and other passions on my blog (https://blablaland.org/), Twitter (@CherryRad), Instagram (cherry_radford), Facebook (Cherry Radford – Author) and website (http://cherryradford.co.uk/). I would love to hear from you!

You can buy The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter through bookshops or online e.g. here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lighthouse-K...

Compared to a play or concert, a novel can give us three times as many hours of entertainment, at a third or less of the cost. At the end of a show, we spend 5 minutes either clapping politely or stamping and cheering; shouldn’t we do at least as much for a novel we’ve just enjoyed? We can. It’s called writing an Amazon review. 

We can, but only a tiny percentage of us ever do – and even these wonderful people (ahem) let good books go by un-applauded. Why?

“I’ve left it too long, and now can’t think what to write.” (Uh, this is me)
So write less! It’s better than nothing. Guilt: how could I not leave a review for Tony Parker’s Lighthouse? Invaluable research, and I adored it.  [Spends 5 minutes giving it a short but heartfelt 5-star review]

“It was only OK. Nothing wrong with it, just not my thing.”
But it might be someone else’s; they need to know about it. Give 3 stars and get on with it. The writer won’t mind; Amazon works in weird ways, giving a book with fifty 3-star reviews more visibility than one with ten 5-star reviews. I usually save 1 or 2 star reviews for electric blankets, but once in a while I feel the need to share that a hyped-up novel was a massive disappointment. 

“I didn’t buy the book from Amazon.”
It doesn’t matter, you just need to have spent at least £40 through your Amazon account. Nice try.

“I don’t know how.” 
Meaning, “I don’t want to look thick among the blogger/author/pro reviewers.”
Do a refreshingly minimalist one then, or see REVIEW PLAN below.

“NO, I REALLY DON’T KNOW HOW.”
Good grief. OK, here goes:
Click: the book -> Customer Reviews -> Write a Review. 
Click on the stars. Careful – it’s amazing how many people dither here and end up writing a glowing but ONE star review. 
In Write Your Review, say what you liked / didn’t like in anything between 1 sentence or a mini essay (see below). The Headline for Your Review can be a phrase you’ve just used. Press SUBMIT. DONE!

PLAN for the perfect Amazon/Waterstones/Goodreads review (IMHO):
• 1-2 sentence intro. Perhaps what attracted you to the book, and your overall gut reaction. 
• A brief summary of what it’s about, without spoilers (I once had a reviewer give a detailed account of my entire plot AND subplot). Crib from blurb if necessary.
• What you liked and didn’t like – rather than how you ‘just couldn’t put it down’, or – my pet hate – found it ‘a really good read’ (like a bed is a really good sleep). How about the writing? Story? Characters? Setting? You’re not writing a bloody English essay, so not all of these, just whatever sticks out for you.
• Try to remember that the review isn’t about you (so what if you usually read dystopia?) or the author (and how she taught you GCSE English in a decade that she’s now claiming to have been born in). It’s about helping your fellow readers decide whether it’s the book for them. Hopefully widening the readership for the author – who has spent a year or more writing the novel when not at work, mopping up pet/adolescent spillages or doing her multi-profession tax accounts. 
• I like to add little quotes from the book to give people a flavour. For example, reviewing Avril Joy’s Sometimes a River Song, I put ‘Despite the ever-present sense of danger, there are plenty of moments in which ‘my heart felt warm as a new laid chicken egg.’’
• A final comment, perhaps saying who might enjoy it. For example,  ‘even those with just a passing interest in lighthouse keepers – or human beings in general – will find this fascinating, entertaining and moving.’

OK, this kind of review takes a little longer. But sometimes you want to do a standing ovation.

The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter is available (AND REVIEWABLE) at: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lighthouse-K...

Looking at my smug mug on Urbane Publications’ shiny new website, I’m sparing a thought for unpublished writers out there who’d like to stick pins in me. A pitchfork, even. I’ve been lucky, I know. I’m sorry. But it might help you to know that my path to publication has been long, muddy and potholed.
 
The first blow was almost my last: my story was rejected by a pony magazine. Okay, I was ten, but the page of reasons for my rejection -- no doubt intended to be helpful – made me turn to the recorder and then piano, flute...
 
I didn’t write again for about thirty years – by then on my second career, as a post-doc research optometrist at Moorfields Eye Hospital. I still secretly wanted to write a novel, so I took an Open College of the Arts course and started keeping a diary, but couldn’t come up with an idea.
 
Years later, I finally got an inspiration, and after two months of mulling, made a start (in the middle of an international conference). Unbelievably, the novel wrote itself in six months. I was an author after all! Euphoria!
 
Hm. Until I sent Men Dancing off to a literary consultant and was told yes, well done, but now start again with a different novel. Apparently, my female protagonist was too old (at 42, ffs) and unlikeable. An RNA report agreed. After a few sulky days I started re-writing, making her thirty-bloody-nine and a bit nicer. 
 
Then it was time to hit The Writers’ Yearbook, submitting to the three that seemed best suited to my novel. A further ten. The whole effing book. Subs were nearly all postal in those days; my desk became a one-woman sorting office – and soon had a heaped tray of ‘not quite right for us’ letters. Then two agents asked for the full MS and considered it for four months (one sending agonising updates about ‘just having a second/third read’ etc.), but both decided to clear their desks for the holidays and sent painfully synchronised rejection letters a couple of days before Christmas. 
 
It was time to hit the Yearbook pages of lovely little publishers accepting non-agented subs. But they too are swamped with hopefuls, and turned me down. Except a self-pub outfit that also had a ‘conventional’ publishing arm – that they were offering me. I grabbed it with both hands.
 
The company was friendly, the editing light but good. I wasn’t going to be a bestseller – or even a seller at all, other than on Amazon and in the local Waterstones – but at least I was being published. Well, sort of. I had to pay them a fee for having my novel at the London Book Fair. Then for including it in their brochure... Soon, all my royalties were used to pay for this and that – particularly when second novel Flamenco Baby came out. Then the royalties became delayed. No, they stopped. I was so busy researching for a new novel and doing promo for Flamenco Baby in Spain, that I only once queried it. Then they went very quiet… and bust. I never saw any sales figures or royalties for Flamenco Baby. Another self-publishing company valiantly scooped up most of the floundering authors – and then went bust themselves.
 
But hey, I’d finished another novel, so what did I care? I went bounding off to the Winchester Writers’ Festival with The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter and had a glowing response from a commissioning editor who wanted to see it once I was agented, plus two requests for a full MS from agents! Wow! Ah but listen, people: beware the One-to-One bubble (see my post One-to-Ones, I’ve had a few…). One turned it down in 3 days, and the other... well, more than two years on, I’m still waiting to hear. 
 
So, it was back to those lovely indie publishers. One -- over the course of a whole year – was interested, turned it down, invited re-sub after changes, then turned it down again. I splashed out on a literary consultancy report, revised, splashed out on another (Cornerstones & The Literary Consultancy – both recommended). It was a lot better, but still not quite fitting into a genre. Two years had now passed since I’d finished it, and -- worst of all – I wasn’t coming up with any ideas for a new novel. I started to seriously question why I was pouring so much time, heart and money into it all this. 
 
Then a Twitter friend told me to submit to his publisher, Urbane Publications. Thinking they only published Crime, I’d not bothered them with my not-quite-women’s fiction – but I’d been wrong about that. I ordered some of their books and found wonderfully unusual, genre-bending stories; heard about the inclusive way they work with authors... this was where I wanted to be! I re-drafted and submitted. The wait was the most agonising I’d had during the nine years since I started writing. But it was a YES. Oh, the screams. 
 
I’m realistic, there are a lot of books out there and bigger publishers to compete with, but now I’m part of the Urbane family I can get on with what I want to do: read, write (new novel finally on the go), get books out there and support others whose work I admire.
 
My advice: Keep tramping that path, and one day you’ll find the right place to have your smug mug.
 
THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER’S DAUGHTER (Urbane Publications) was published on 5th April, 2018.
 
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lighthouse-K...

New living area, new publishing deal: time to find a new accountant. How do I do that? Maybe the way I picked the solicitors: Googling those in walking distance and selecting on architectural / pink-painted appeal.

But the names of the accountancy firms springing up on the map suggest further filtering is needed. I'm looking at companies called TaxAssist (too on the nose), Advanta (did two letters fall off their signboard?), Breeze (it won't be, for an arithmophobic author), and Savoir Faire (oh bog off). Decided to be a normal person for a moment and call them about fees. I got a lot of piece-of-string answers, including one from an accountant who charges by the hour but had a very unfortunate stutter.

Eventually I spoke to a gem at a company with a flat fee, Victorian stucco, and generous free advice on the phone. Talking to an accountant about the publication of my novel in April 2018, my pre-publication presumptuousness reached a whole new level. But here's my tax tip for the signed author waiting to be published: did you know that expenses for your pre-published writing can be set against non-writing earnings for the same year? Maybe I'm the last to know. But yup, the cost of notebooks, a book about childhood in the 1950s, a ticket for a paddle steamer etc. etc. will be reducing tax for my science research and piano teaching work. Crazy but cracking news. Talk to an accountant!

Tapping on my mobile half asleep one night, I must have hooked up with LinkedIn. The next day, I couldn't believe I'd given in to this smug monster, and quickly reached for a Morning After Unsubscribe. But the trouble is that you have to log on to bog off, SlinkIn to SlinkOut, kiss before leaving - and I couldn't remember my bloody password.

So years passed, with daily Linkvitations in my Inbox reminding me not to wander onto the internet while under the influence of Ovaltine. I fervently hoped it would all somehow go away.

But something’s happened: I’ve now got a Proper Publishing Deal, and need to be on everything. Including LinkedIn, which, Google promises me, will increase my Search Engine Rankings. Since I don't know my current ones - or what the hell these actually are - this will be difficult to prove.  It's also supposed to increase my connections - but I can do that on Twitter, with more fun and less waffle. To be honest, at the moment I'm only really after a few more readers for my blog - and the hopefully swift and simple pacification of scores of unanswered Linked friends.

So after a few hours LockedIn, what can I tell you? Well, it's blue, which is nice. Easier to navigate than Goodreads - but then so is the Strait of Magellan. And... well, nothing really, all the same faces, and the people who I wish were on Twitter aren't in here either. Hackles started to rise with the profile page, which, despite the encouragements (‘Cherry, your Summary is looking good!’) insists on boxing your life into its own peculiar linxpectations. For example, apparently I don't live in Eastbourne but in 'Holywell, E. Sussex' - which is great, but basically just a section of the beach. As for my living in two countries – even though surely this is relevant professionally – no way was this allowed.

But the true horror is the ENDORSING. Visiting pages of people I know and hoping to encourage, I'm soon going: 'WTF? When was she ever a Fiction Writer? He's a Director there? My arse...' Then I see that somebody has endorsed me for Short Stories - something she can't possibly vouch for unless she's had secret and ill-advised access to my 'Cherry - Junior Sch.' box file. Or maybe this is actually her suggestion, after trying one of my novels. Who knows what people are trying to say on here? Or what they do when they're off it. There are some great posts (presumably also available elsewhere), but it mostly feels a bit pushy and shouty. I know, I know, I'll give it a little longer – and please, tell me I’m wrong - but at the moment it feels like one hook up too many.