“Your manuscript will go on the ‘Slush Pile’ along with hundreds of others. Our main priority is with the authors already on our books.” The words of a Literary Agent who addressed my Creative Writing Group many years ago.
In the past, the traditional route to publication was to send your manuscript to a multitude of Literary Agents and receive repeated rejections. If managed to win over a Literary Agent, they would submit your manuscript to a range of Publishers and you would receive further repeated rejections. Don’t believe me? J.K. Rowling’s ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’ was rejected no fewer than twelve times, with one rejection letter advising Ms Rowling not to quit her day job. Continue reading “A Beginner’s Guide to Self-Publishing a Book & Selling it on Amazon”→
A sleepless night had been a lurid maelstrom of technicolour possibilities; dreams of wibbling on a busy route; being stuck with no option to go back; an exposed move at the top of The Ladder; falling, being inverted by the weight of my rucksack, pulled out of my climbing harness, plummeting head first like the start of the film ‘Cliffhanger’…
The scenic drive to Cortina d’Ampezzo over the dramatic Lagazuoi pass was overshadowed by a growing sense of my impending doom. As soon as we parked and I got out of the car and looked up at our challenge for the day – Via Ferrata Michielli Albino Strobel; 1000m (3000-ft) straight up the sheer, rock wall of Punta Fiames – I felt sick.
I love the Ordnance Survey. I learnt to navigate with OS maps and find them brilliantly detailed. However, Slovenian leisure maps could teach even the OS a thing or two! Detailing all the footpaths and cycle ways with itineraries and elevation diagrams – and grading the river for kayakers, we decided that Slovenian maps are Brilliant!
We caught glimpses of a magical city of spires and terracotta tiles, almost moated by the River Vltava as she nestled into a horseshoe-shaped bend in the river.
We were driving around the ring road looking for parking and worrying, because we had no Czech currency to pay for it!
