Sweet Booker news for Salt

Many congrats to my publishers Salt, who are today celebrating their first ever Man Booker Prize longlisting with Alison Moore's forthcoming novel 'The Lighthouse'. This is a great boost for Salt and, I have to say, much deserved - Jen and Chris Hamilton-Emery are a great, hard-working couple, and nice to boot, so I'm thrilled for them. Alison's novel is up against the likes of Will Self, Nicola Barker and Michael Frayn and is out in a couple of months. You can pre-order it now via the Salt website here or via Amazon here. Congratulations, Alison, Nicholas Royle (Alison's agent) and Salt... and fingers crossed for the shortlist!

The Salt Prizes

The lovely people at Salt - publishers of my collection - have just launched three new literary awards called The Salt Prizes. The prizes aim to find the best new writing from around the world with categories available for best single short story, best piece of flash fiction and best poem. The winners will receive a cash prize as well as publication in a new anthology called The Salt Anthology of New Writing (other selected finalists will also be published in the book). The prizes launched on July 1st, with submissions being accepted until the closing date of October 31st. To find out more about the prizes and how to enter click here. This is a great opportunity for all writers no matter what stage of their career they're at, so why not give it a go? If you enter you'll also receive a voucher for 30% off any book in Salt's online shop - even more of an incentive. Good luck!

Edge Hill ceremony

Me with Jen Hamilton-Emery

Many congratulations to Sarah Hall, who won this year's Edge Hill Short Story Prize and Readers' Prize - read all about it here. I had a very nice evening at the ceremony, which took place at the Free Word Centre in London, where I met Sarah as well as fellow shortlistees Zoe Lambert, Rowena Macdonald and Tessa Hadley. It was also lovely to meet my publisher, Jen Hamilton-Emery of Salt, as well as a couple of the judges, Graham Mort and Rhiannon Evans, Edge Hill organisers Ailsa Cox and Carys Bray and chat with writers Elizabeth Baines (a fellow Salt writer who also wrote about the evening here) and Adam Marek, who has a new collection, 'The Stone Thrower', out soon with Comma Press. Sadly, there was no prize or prize money to take home but it was still very nice to have been shortlisted and to take part in the evening.

Memorable Bradbury

I just wanted to pay tribute to the late, great Ray Bradbury, who died earlier this month, by sharing a link to one of his stories - 'The Pedestrian'. This is a story that was read out to us in high school, presumably as part of an English class, more than 20 years ago now. And it's such a memorable tale that it has stayed with me ever since. As for the story, it's very simple - a man out for a solitary walk on a dark, frosty night is stopped by a patrolling police car and interrogated. And that's it. Yet, there is so much more going on here than just that. Judge for yourself by reading it, if you don't already know it. And if lines like this aren't beautiful writing then I don't know what are: 'There was a good crystal frost in the air; it cut the nose and made the lungs blaze like a Christmas tree inside.' Wonderful.

Goodreads

Congratulations to the three people who have each won a copy of my book via the books and reading website Goodreads. Copies will be with you soon - but please be patient as they're travelling from the UK (and you're scattered around the globe). Thanks to the thousand or so people who clicked to try and win a copy.

Edge Hill Prize

Some exciting news: my book has been shortlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize. As is always the way whenever I get any nice news, I was at work - which made concentrating for the rest of the day very, very difficult. Anyway, the announcement was made here, on the Edge Hill website. And I'm very pleased to be part of a list that includes such wonderful writers as Sarah Hall, Tessa Hadley, Zoe Lambert and Rowena Macdonald. As you can see, it's an all-female shortlist but it's also interesting to note the number of northern writers on there as well as all the debut collections. The winners of the main prize and the readers' prize will be announced at a ceremony in London on July 5th - congratulations everyone.

Guest post: A. B. Wells

The lovely and supportive Alison Wells is celebrating the launch of her feel-good space adventure 'Housewife with a Half-Life' today (May 8th). Here's Alison - or A. B. Wells - to tell everyone a little bit more about her book:

A Housewife's answer to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy! In this lively space comedy, Susan Strong and her spaceman guide Fairly Dave dodge entropy hoovers, Geezers with Freezers, the Super Gnome and the Spinner's cataclysmic converter on a mission to retrieve the lost pieces of the housewife's disintegrating self across parallel universes. Can they save us all from Universal Devastation?

Susan Strong is a suburban housewife who is literally disintegrating. When Fairly Dave, a kilt-sporting spaceman arrives through the shower head to warn her, she knows things are serious. When she and her precocious four year old twins, Pluto and Rufus, get sucked through Chilled Foods into another universe it gets even messier. Where household appliances are alive and dangerous, Geezers have Entropy Hoovers and the Spinner's Cataclysmic convertor could rip reality apart, Susan Strong is all that’s holding the world together.

In this madcap, feel-good adventure, Susan and Fairly Dave travel alternate universes to find Susan's many selves, dodge the Geezers and defeat evil memory bankers. From dystopian landscapes and chicken dinners, to Las Vegas and bubble universes, can Susan Strong reintegrate her bits and will it be enough to save us all?

The e-book is available on Kindle on Amazon and Smashwords - a paperback is forthcoming in June.

* What is a housewife to do when she becomes 42? Write a book about life, the universe and everything. A.B.Wells is the mother of four children age 11 and under, three of whom are that particularly alien species called boys. As Alison Wells her more literary writing has been shortlisted in the prestigious Bridport, Fish and Hennessy Awards and she’s been published or is about to be in a wide variety of anthologies and e-zines, including the Higgs Boson Anthology by Year Zero, Metazen, The View from Here, Voices of Angels by Bridgehouse and National Flash Fiction day’s Jawbreakers. She recently won the fiction category of the Big Book of Hope ebook with a flash fiction medley and has a litfic novel The Book of Remembered Possibilities on submission. She blogs for writing.ie in the guest blog: Random Acts of Optimism. One of the as yet unsolved mysteries of the universe is whether the B in A. B. Wells stands for barmy or brilliant. 

In her former life she worked, among other things, as a clerk like Albert Einstein, as a technical writer (and a HR. Manager) and before that studied psychology and communications where, in the college library James Gleick’s book 'Chaos' fell on her head. Her ambitions include a desire to travel to see the Northern Lights and to really travel with Dr Who’s David Tennant in a Tardis. You can find Alison here, on Twitter as @alisonwells and blogging on Head Above Water or you can 'like' A.B. Wells writer on Facebook.