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19 August 2013 - What's new

19 August 2013
  • This week has brought the debut of a new star-in-the-making - or should she be described as having leapt straight to stardom? Samantha Shannon, whose first novel The Bone Season is published in the US and the UK this week, seems like an ordinary kind of superstar. News Revew reports.
  • Closing on 30 August, the Manchester Metropolitan University Poetry and Fiction Prizes 2013 are for poetry and a short story and each offers a prize of £10,000.  They are open to all.
  • We have some interesting links this week - although perhaps rather a lot about Amazon, some of which will surprise you!  Seth Godin on Why Vilifying Amazon Makes No SenseDon't tell me the truth about Amazon and Ether for Authors: How Clear a View of Publishing Do We Have?
  • 'When I was at primary school my father gave me a broken alarm clock and I used to take it apart and put it back together again. When I think of a plot I think of its components, which can be characters or incidents. The important thing is never to force a component into a place where it will not fit...' Keigo Higashimo, author of The Devotion of Suspect X, in The Times, quoted in our Comment column.
  • ‘With the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I can despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare when I measure my mind against his.' George Bernard Shaw in our Writers' Quotes.