This week at Valley Press, #47: 'Friday Feeling'

Dear readers,

It's Friday – so what is the Valley Press newsletter, traditionally posted on a Sunday evening, doing here? I've decided to move it, permanently; to dedicate some time on a Friday afternoon instead of trying to piece it together outside working hours, over the weekend. You can still read on Sunday if you like!

Last week I confessed the volume of incoming tasks and emails at VP had far exceeded what I could keep up with, and declared they would go undone and unreplied to until I could find some help. So that's been my focus this week, and I'm pleased to report I've found them (or actually, they found me): an 'Assistant Publisher' to share the production and admin work, and a 'Submissions Coordinator' to keep manuscripts moving smoothly, once we re-open to new authors next month.

I'll introduce them to you in future newsletters, once they get their feet under the table and up to speed with the work (which will take a little while, I would think). Make no mistake, this is very good news – a huge relief, in fact! – and is part of the reason I felt able to move the newsletter to a Friday. I honestly think the era of constant delays, missed deadlines and muddling through could be coming to an end. Hooray!

(On a related note: if you're wondering about last year's subs, I'm still hoping to have sent at least one email to everyone by the end of March. We'll continue reading full manuscripts until we've done them all justice.)

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More brilliant news came in this week: both of the short story collections we published last year have been longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize (pretty much the only award for books of this type). Michael Stewart's Mr Jolly and Sue Wilsea's Raw Material will be up against collections from the likes of Susan Hill and Mark Haddon, with the shortlist announced in June and the overall winner in August. The winning author receives £10,000 (and probably sells quite a few books), so wish them luck!

If you'd like to read our entries and judge for yourself, you can have 20% off either (or both) by entering the code STORIED in your 'basket' when shopping on the Valley Press website. Follow the links in the paragraph above to reach the relevant book pages, and click 'preview' once you're there to read some intriguing sample stories.

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Mr Jolly got an airing in Birmingham this week, along with The Boy in the Mirror and Reward for Winter, as Michael, Tom and Di put on an amazing show for some lucky BCU students, lecturers and literature fans in general. I was genuinely blown away by their sets (and the student open-mic was good too!) I don't think I'm ever prouder than at a reading, seeing VP books getting out there into the world.

Here's a photo of the authors, taken just before the event started... as you can see, they meant business. (Confession: I was originally in this photo too, but I didn't get the memo and was grinning widely – looking, as everyone who's seen it has agreed, like a competition winner who borrowed his dad's smart shirt.)

I'll end by recommending a blog post from The Emma Press's Yen-Yen Lu, giving general advice for writers submitting their work; anyone who does that (or is just thinking about it) will gain something from this short article. I've also just heard about a great night of feminist poetry taking place in Oxford on April 8th, featuring our own Kelley Swain and Rowena Knight – details here. Otherwise, that's a full lid; see you next Friday!

All best,
Jamie McGarry, VP Publisher

This week at Valley Press, #43: 'Fully booked'

Dear readers,

Depending on your perspective, I have some good or bad news to start with – as of Friday, I've filled our 2017 'list'. The whiteboard at VP HQ is bulging with exciting forthcoming titles, scheduled between now and November, and I'm looking forward to telling you all about them in the months to come.

However, as I still have a bag of really excellent 2016 submissions that I haven't said 'yes' or 'no' to yet, I've decided to keep the current process going until we've filled the first half of 2018. So if you haven't heard from us, don't give up hope just yet (but don't get too excited either, probably only 1 in 6 of those left in the bag will get an offer of publication).

This means I'll need the email reading group to continue the phenomenal work they've been doing so far – if you'd like to join that, it's definitely not too late, just let me know. It's time I set a hard deadline for this saga to conclude, so here goes: everyone who sent a manuscript to Valley Press in 2016 (and remembered to enclose the official form) will hear from us with a final decision by 31st March. Thanks for your patience!

* * * * 

Looking beyond the next week (when I seem to have eight days worth of work to do), I'm pleased to announce an upcoming Valley Press event happening in Birmingham, on March 22nd. I'll be there with my book stall, and there will be readings from Tom Preston, Di Slaney and Michael Stewart, three fantastic writers at the top of their game.

The event starts at 6.30pm, and the venue is The Woodman, which I'm told is a short walk from major train stations. I don't believe you can book tickets in advance (I'll let you know), but you should be okay just turning up as things stand. It's been organised by the English department at Birmingham City University (hence the image above), so many thanks to them for supporting such a distant enterprise! Hope to see some of you there.

* * * * 

Finally, I promised to share a poem from our next publication, the highly-anticipated Helen Burke Collected Poems, now due at the end of March (along with the subs replies, and the Yorkshire anthology ... no pressure then!) This poem hasn't been published by Valley Press before, but does have a special place in history: it was the first poem I ever read by Helen, way back in 2009. So I'll leave you in her capable hands, and see you next week.

All best,
Jamie McGarry, VP Publisher

---

Recipe for a Poet

by Helen Burke, from Today the Birds Will Sing: Collected Poems

First, take an unusual childhood.
By the age of three, you should be at least be sporting a wooden leg.
By the age of four, you should be dressed completely in wigs,
pseudo-chess pieces and old sailors’ clothes,
preferably without the old sailor being attached.
An eye-glass would also be good.

Your mother should be, unwittingly, a great beauty,
able to paint upside-down in the nude, and take in lodgers
who were once either aristocrats or murderers.
Both would be ideal.
Your father, the seemingly saner one,
should be a Russian Prince, with a liking for cheroots,
balalaikas, and looking mystically out of windows clutching a book.
The book must never be identified. This is crucial.

Don’t panic. You’re halfway there already.

Next, you should have a half-mad sister, who
makes love to passing tradesmen on the dining room table –
well, any table really –
wearing only wellington boots and fishnet tights.
She is called Esmeralda, but only answers to Gert.
Your older brother, well, let’s face it, he can be anything
from an accountant to a taxidermist to a line dancer
(though this last is pushing it).
Older brothers are often irrelevant and he will almost certainly outlive you,
so you are allowed to dislike him. Heartily.

Now, we come to you.
You must die young, and be mad, bad and brilliant.
You should practise some incredibly deep last words, like:
‘Je ne regrette rien’, ‘Et tu, Brutus’ or
‘Okay, I’ll see the doctor now.’
You may have 486 lovers – all of whom will speak well of you,
despite the fact that you treat them like lemmings.
In fact, lemmings have it easy, compared to them.

In your teens, if you make it that far,
you should have a completely committed breakdown.
And I don’t mean one of those half-hearted affairs,
involving therapy and pleasant chit-chat with other loonies,
sorry, doctors. No. No.
No. I mean really throw yourself in at the deep end.
Pamper yourself. Show the others how it’s done.
You must go completely and superbly bonkers.
Here are a few tips, if you’re stuck.

Grow an extra nipple.
Change your hairstyle to resemble an anteater’s.
Wear a cat as an accessory.
Give one of your eyebrows a separate mailing address.
Call yourself by the name of an undiscovered galaxy.
Take to riding a horse in full armour –
even if it’s only to pop down to the local Co-op
for a loaf of bread and a couple of muesli yoghurts.
It’s this sort of attention to detail that people notice.
This is what makes the difference between the fourteen-liner
and the card-carrying sonnet scribbler.

Now we come to death.
You should be travelling somewhere distant
(this could even be out-of-body if you’re short of cash).
Either you receive a sudden snake or anteater bite
(blame it on the hairstyle) –
or your plane’s wind-mobile should fuzz, fur or clog
causing you to make a sudden, unprecipitated, unexpected
and painful crash-landing. Peru is quite popular.
Or Basingstoke. Although obviously pack more sensibly
for Basingstoke.
At any rate, the tribe where you pull up were not anticipating visitors,
and catching them rather on the hop, as you do
(and in the absence of their own Co-op)
they invite you to stay for dinner.
Unfortunately for you, young poet, you are dinner.

And this is how poets are made.

This week at Valley Press: spotlight on 'The Boy in the Mirror'

Dear readers,

Back in September, we published The Boy in the Mirror by Tom Preston; a hugely original memoir about being treated for stage 4 cancer, written in the second person. It's become clear since then (and I had a suspicion at the time) that this is one of the most important books VP has published so far – you might remember one reviewer saying it "should become the go-to recommended reading for the friends and family of a cancer sufferer", which is quite a statement.

Unusually, the book is about to have a second round of publicity: it's been shortlisted for the East Midlands Book Award, as announced yesterday at a festival in Leicester. For our international readers, I should explain: the East Midlands is a region of England between Yorkshire and the south – you could have guessed that much, I suppose – and the award was for literary work by writers who live in that region.

With a prize of £1000 at stake, I hope we'll all have our fingers crossed for Tom when they announce the overall winner in June (date to be confirmed). If you live in that region, keep an eye out for any displays relating to the award in bookshops, and let us know.

There's been another development too, coincidentally at exactly the same time – an audiobook version of The Boy in the Mirror has just been released; the very first Valley Press audiobook, ever. This is the result of months of work, not by us but by an audio production company called Storytec (whose director is called Jaime, and went to the same tiny university as me – lots of coincidences today!) It's been expertly narrated by Alex Wyndham, who you might have seen on TV in Rome, The Crimson Field etc; we did auditions and everything. It's been really exciting to see it all come together.

So: let me do you a deal. You can get 20% off the paperback of The Boy in the Mirror all this week, with the code BOY20; and anyone who buys it using that code will get a free copy of the audiobook – I'll email you a voucher which can be used on Audible.co.uk (I can't do the same internationally, sadly). If you need a little more convincing, you can read the book's first chapter here and listen to it here. It's not for the faint-hearted, obviously, but if you want to be challenged by some non-fiction this week, this is your chance.

I don't want to overstay my welcome, but I can't leave without a last plug for The Wild Gods launch event, which is happening tomorrow (Monday 14th) from 7pm, at the Genesis Cinema on Mile End Road in London. Oh – and this was also the week I started a new series of articles, over at Medium.com, which (when read in full) will work as guidelines for making a living as a self-employed literary publisher. If you don't plan on doing that, it may not be of much interest; but 500 people have read the first part already, so it might be more relevant than I thought...

All best,
Jamie McGarry, VP Publisher

Valley Press celebrates 'greatest ever week'

Dear readers,

It's been a remarkable week at Valley Press – you may want to sit down with a strong drink before reading this blog post.  Done that?  Right, on we go!

Back in July, for the first time in my publishing career, I decided to apply to Arts Council England for a grant to support the growth and development of Valley Press.  Many of my publishing heroes run their businesses with the aid of money distributed by ACE (which is originally from the National Lottery); I'd not previously felt there was any chance of me joining their ranks, but in July I decided it was time to find out for sure.  So I diligently spent a week or so filling out the form, and off it went.

This week I heard my application was successful, and I can now announce Valley Press will be recieving nearly £50,000 of Arts Council funding between today and May 2017.  I know – I didn't see it coming either!  Time to take a sip of that strong drink you sat down with, two paragraphs ago, and enjoy the official, compulsory logo, which you'll be seeing a lot of from now on:

A press release about this can be read here (two, even), and an article from The Bookseller (who broke the news simultaneously with the VP newsletter) here.  What I promised to do with the money was: publish at least twelve books in 2016, from familiar and new authors, and do an absolutely outstanding job on them; take those authors and others on a national tour (like the one we did in 2013, but bigger); construct a new website for Valley Press which works on mobiles and has a shopping basket; and carry out an extremely active search for new writing throughout 2016, to find truly undiscovered writers from every corner of society. So look out for more information on all of that over the next few months.

Moving on now; it was a lively week even before the grant news arrived.  The non-fiction books I told you about last month have gone from strength to strength – Tom Preston's second-person cancer memoir The Boy in the Mirror received a five star review in The Sun (see here), and Tom was interviewed for the most recent edition of The Sunday Times (clipping below, full article here for subscribers).
 

Kris Mole's epic travel adventure Gatecrashing Europe appeared in Brighton paper The Argus (see here), in rather photo-heavy style in the Daily Mail (see here – though approach with caution!) and perhaps most informatively in The Mirror. This kind of national press attention is unprecedented for VP books, really; hopefully a sign of things to come.

Still with me?  There are some great events coming up this week too.  Let me first tell you about three forthcoming readings in Scarborough – see the poster below for details.

There are still a couple of tickets left for Norah's reading, which is happening today (Thursday 24th). We'd love it to be a sell-out, and we'd love to see you there, so give Wardle & Jones a call!  (If you haven't heard of Scarborough's new independent bookshop, by the way, the proprietors wrote a post for this blog which is well worth a read.)

We also have a reading coming up at the weekend, in London, as part of the 'Free Verse' Poetry Book Fair.  Here comes the obligatory poster:

If you're going anywhere near Conway Hall on Saturday, this reading is a must – and there are lots of others on during the day, all free, including one with The Emma Press (outside in the square at 11am).  We have a stall too, come and say hello!  Possibly some congratulations in order...?

By way of a closing note, I'd like to acknowledge that I am just the centre of the web that is Valley Press – it's the wonderful authors who've worked with me over the last seven years, the legions of readers who've bought their books, and all the hard-working freelancers and interns who've actually built VP to the point where it deserved funding.  So a huge, huge thank you to everyone who has supported Valley Press so far.  I think you'll be sticking around to see what happens next!

All the best,
Jamie McGarry (VP Publisher)

New non-fiction from Valley Press

Dear readers,

Though Valley Press is officially a publisher of 'poetry, fiction and non-fiction', we've only rarely touched on that third category – until now. All being well, our next three books will be firmly located in the real world; so I'll give you a thorough briefing on one today, a bit of hype for the second ... and we'll leave the third for next time.

First, a quick story: in 2007, a man named Kris Mole flew one-way to Stockholm with a vow not to return home to England until he had visited every capital city in the mainland European Union. He set himself eight simple rules, most importantly that no money would be spent or handled during the journey, and no credit cards would be used either.

Thus, the great Euro Freebie Challenge began: twenty-three cities to be visited, 6000 miles to be covered, without spending a single penny – to raise money, in fact, for Cancer Research UK. Kris told the story of this trip as it happened in a series of blogs and articles for local and national newspapers; and of course in a book, which he sent to Valley Press.

That was back in 2011, just a few months after I'd decided to become a full-time publisher. This week – four years, two missed deadlines and a dozen editors later – I'm delighted to bring you the full story of Kris' journey, under the title Gatecrashing Europe. As usual, you can read a sample on the book's homepage, and Scarborough-based readers can meet the author on Saturday 15th August, as Kris is doing a book signing from 10am-2pm at our new independent bookshop Wardle & Jones, on Bar Street. (Thanks to proprietor Rachel Wardle for the photo above.)

Can't make the event?  If you order a copy of the book through our website before close-of-business on Friday 14th, I can still make sure Kris signs a personalised copy for you – if he's going to sit around signing books all day, we may as well make the most of it!  Just make sure you request a signature when you order, and let us know who you want it made out to.

The other book I want to mention today is Tom Preston's The Boy in the Mirror, which isn't due out until September 17th, but is already attracting some press attention. Book preview website NetGalley went so far as to call it one of 'the UK's top ten books for September 2015' in this blog post – and who am I to argue with the experts?

The book in question is an astonishingly original take on the 'cancer memoir'; the true story of a 21-year-old's battle with stage 4 advanced aggressive lymphoma, written in the second person, so the events in the book are happening to 'you'.

Those who responded to the request in my May newsletter for feedback on a short non-fiction book can now feel rather smug, having read this one first – and having helped myself and Tom perfect the manuscript, which was quite a challenge as you can imagine. If you missed out on that preview, the first couple of chapters can be read on the book's homepage now. I can promise you, you've never read anything quite like it before.

That's all for now – I've kept things refreshingly brief this time – but I'll be back in September with more news, more books, and more well-intentioned boasting. Enjoy your summer!

All the best,
Jamie McGarry (VP Publisher)