Pages

Friday, August 31, 2012

Visiting Collected Works Bookshop

Collected Works, in the Melbourne CBD, is my very favourite bookshop. I don't go there as often as I did because family commitments mostly keep me away when it's open and, to be honest, I know I'm going to overspend. It calls itself a "poetry and ideas" bookshop. Well, you can get poetry there, and philosophy books. You can also get history, mythology, classics, biographies ( I have so many bios of Tolkien and C.S Lewis that I really have to wrench myself away from the most recent.) You can find classic horror fiction by H.P. Lovecraft and by others you wouldn't have thought would write the stuff. Did you know that Rudyard Kipling wrote ghost stories? Well, I didn't, till I found them there. And children's writer Edith Nesbit, the author of Five Children And It wrote some pretty scary horror fiction. Robert E.Howard's works lurk there. Classic SF also is there, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells - and one day I found Russell Blackford's early novel Haunting Of The Witch King, published by Paul Collins back in the days when he and his then-partner Rowena Corey were running Corey And Collins and a secondhand bookshop called Autumn Leaves. Kris, the jovial bookshop owner, had no idea how it had got there, but let me have it for free. They also stock Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine.

Yesterday I got away from work earlier than I usually do and decided that as it had been months I would go there just for a few minutes. One of our students is interested in reading Oscar Wilde's novella "The Canterville Ghost". I hoped Kris might have it standalone or maybe in a small collection. He only had a thick works of Wilde, but it was so inexpensive for what it was, I bought it anyway. And then we wandered past my favourite shelves, and he had halved the price of a book I have had my eye on for some time,  The Vikings And The Victorians: inventing the old north in Victorian Britain, about how the Victorians got all mushy and dewy-eyed about the Vikings and actually invented the word. I also spotted Lord Raglan's The Hero, which was a part of my research while I was writing my Honours thesis back at uni. This guy was writing in the 1930s. He says that if it isn't backed up by writing it probably isn't history and spends the first couple of chapters  arguing his case, with examples of faked genealogies that couldn't possibly be genuine for reasons such as the way Normans did their naming which don't mesh with people's beliefs about, say, ancestors who came over with the Conqueror. He feels about local traditions the way Indiana Jones does in the scene where he tells his students that local folklore has ruined a lot of archaeological sites. And folklore, he believes, is based on ritual.

What a spoilsport, but fun so far. I am just starting the chapter about Robin Hood.

More of this later. If you happen to be in Melbourne and want to visit this wonderful shop, it's on the first floor of the Nicholas Building which gets the occasional write up in the papers for being so bohemian with a colony of writers there. It's on the corner of Swanston Street and Flinders Lane, opposite St Paul's Cathedral.

And again I have overspent!

Saturday, August 25, 2012

Off To The Festival!

I've been attending the Melbourne Writers' Festival for many years. It used to be wonderful. You could buy ten tickets in advance cheaper than individually and if you were, as I am, a member of the Australian Society of Authors, it was even cheaper. So I took a chance and tried out authors and sessions I might not otherwise try and probably bought books I read once and that then gathered dust on my shelves, but still, it was fun. And there was plenty going on in the evenings, including children's and YA writers I wanted to hear. And there were Harry Potter readings and trivia quizzes when that was the flavour of the month. Science fiction and fantasy writers were around in the evenings and on weekends; I can recall a very strong disagreement between Robert Jordan and Ben Bova during one panel. And China Mieville telling  us how wonderful he was,as opposed to, say, that overrated J.R.R Tolkien... ;-) ( If people are still reading YOUR books in sixty years, Mr M, you can talk then, I thought).  And Tara Moss saying that she had been considering writing science fiction, but prefers a genre where you have to do research- yes, she said that! If I hadn't been sitting next to her publisher, to whom I was still hoping to sell a book, I would have asked her, at question time, just how much SF she has read and what makes her think it doesn't need research. And crime fiction sessions galore, along with true crime panels. Them was the days!

Now you can mostly only hear the children's writers during the daytime, when I'm at work; I did take a class once, but we really had neither time nor money to hear more than one speaker. (It would be nice if I got a chance to be on a panel myself, but don't get me started on this! Grrr...)

In fact, most of the writers I want to hear are on during the day time these days. So my attendance at the Festival has gone down to two or three sessions a year. I was very lucky, in 2010, to hear Kim Stanley Robinson on the weekend, but he was in the country to speak at Aussiecon and if I hadn't been sick with whooping cough I could have heard him anyway. There was a session on crime fiction yesterday I wanted to attend but I got into town too late due to family commitments and there was nothing on between five and eight PM apart from a couple of launches that didn't interest me and one sold-out session.

So these days I mostly just turn up, see what's on and hope there will be something for me. Today I have to attend a child's birthday party, but I will head into town after brekkie, buy the gift and see what's on. Late this afternoon there's a Twelfth Planet launch where I believe Kerry Greenwood and Margo Lanagan will be, so hopefully I can excuse myself from the birthday in time to go to that. If anyone in Melbourne is reading this, why not come along and say hi?

Thursday, August 23, 2012

Book Week In The Library

I had to celebrate Book Week somehow. There isn't the money to get in guest speakers or  people to run workshops. I'm alone two days a week and my technician was sick on the day I hoped to decorate the library.

But I can do a trivia quiz and I run one during Book Week every year. And as the theme this year was Champions Read and I couldn't find a single photo of an athlete or sports player with a book in hand, I found some of my more obliging students and got them to pose with books during their PE period, then put them up on a podium with medals around their necks and books in hand. I printed out and laminated the photos and put them up in the lbrary. Two students helped me to prepare a trivia quiz, which I ran in the library today at lunchtime. Two of my colleagues helped by taking up and marking the answer sheets - I couldn't have done it alone, as there were twenty-seven students competing! Last time I only gt sixteen, so it was nice.

They enjoyed the event, especially when I had extra questions for chocolate frogs( I also gave frogs to all competitors and Mars Bars  to the winners).Alas, someone walked out with two of the Mars Bars, so I was short of prizes - I think some kids just don't get that there is no more of it to replace the ones they took, They just see the chocolate there and help themselves. The winners were good about it, being my foundation book clubbers, who will be gone soon, dammit, and nobody went without chocolate of  some description, so really, it was a successful event. I will probably do another one for Halloween, on a paranormal theme.

Sunday, August 19, 2012

Wolfborn Lands In The Library of Congress!

Here's the link to the record of my book, proving to me that it has arrived! YAY!

Library of Congress record here.

I even know that it was catalogued by a lovely teacher librarian called Judy, who is now 
cataloguing children's and YA books for America's answer to our National Library.
 It's nice to have it personalised that way. 

If you're a US reader who enjoys medieval fantasy, you can buy it in hard copy from October 1, in all good bookshops.

Saturday, August 18, 2012

Shadowfell By Juliet Marillier. Sydney: Pan Macmillan,2012


In Alban, a land loosely based on Scotland, fifteen year old Neryn and her father are on the run. Here, anyone with a hint of magical ability who isn't working for the king is condemned to death or a mind wipe by the official sorcerers. They have already lost the rest of their family and now Neryn is in danger, due to her ability to communicate with, and call, the Good Folk, what we think of as the Faerie. One night loses her everything she has left, when her father gambles her away and dies in a raid by the king's men.

Now she is travelling with Flint, a mysterious young man who has his own troubles and may be working for the king - or spying on him. Neryn doesn't know and isn't sure she can take a chance; if she gets it wrong, not only will she be turned into a mindless king's servant, but she will be used to destroy any resistance to his tyranny...

I like what the author has done with the characters. Neryn could easily have been a whining heroine, but puts aside her own troubles for the safety of others, especially the Good Folk who have become her friends in the course of her journey, sacrificing her own safety when she must and finding sympathy even for ghosts with whom she has no connection. For their part, the Good Folk are by no means minor gods, creatures of mischief or Tolkienesque elves, appearing as various kinds of creatures, rather like Arthur Rackham's fairies. They have their own troubles and emotions and reason for being as they are. They disagree with each other as to whether or not they should trust and help Neryn, who may or may not be a Caller who can save Alban. Each of them has a separate personality.

There is some good world building here; it has a Scottish feel, but this isn't Scotland as we know it. The characters aren't nobles or princesses, either; Neryn is the daughter of a peasant family. In this world magic can turn up in any family. And Neryn's magic can be based on something as simple as a nursery rhyme.

If you enjoy Juliet Marillier's fiction, this YA novel won't disappoint.

Monday, August 13, 2012

What I Did At The E-Literacy Conference (from my other blog)

First published in our staff newsletter March 23 2012

Back in March I had the privilege of attending what may be the best conference I have ever done, run by the School Library Association of Victoria. I am still getting my head around all the wonderfully useful information I received and the notes I took; I have been downloading teaching apps on my iPad and started following teacher-librarians i met there on Twitter, though that's blocked on our school network. Pity - it's a useful tool. (And I encountered and started following a tech-loving ESL teacher in Canada, who shares information in his tweets).


Attendees were encouraged to use their devices – laptops, phones and iPads. I had my iPad with me and I was able to go online in the conference’s wifi connection. As the speakers shared their web sites and software information with us, I went on-line, checked and bookmarked some sites we can use in teaching. We were able to tweet on the conference’s special Twitter session; some used it to take notes, others for comments on the session. I came away with a couple of new followers and teachers I am now following.


We had a demonstration from Mill Park Secondary College, a school which had been part of a program that enabled students to use various bits of software and hardware to produce a science presentation that went way beyond the usual PowerPoint. There were also speakers from VCAA.


Dr Ross Todd of Rutgers University in New Jersey was our keynote speaker. Dr Todd had done a survey of New York school libraries and chosen twelve that had the most positive attitude towards their libraries and library professionals, considered part of the curriculum team to improve student outcomes. These were schools like ours, with very little money. They were prepared to put it into their libraries and the teacher-librarians running them. (Actually, the sentence he used was "the schools where the principal had the guts to invest in their libraries did the best". That didn't go into my school report, I'm adding it here.)

His talk was very inspiring, as was the entire day, and I rushed off to check out all those new sites. I've used some since then and run PDs using them.













Saturday, August 11, 2012

Going There Because Of Books

Today I'm going to the Windsor Hotel in Melbourne to meet the family for one of their famous High Teas. This will be my fifth time - once I went with my friend Natalie, who stays at the hotel when she's in Melbourne, because it's where they put you up when you come from interstate to speak at the Melbourne Writers' Festival and she'd decided to spoil herself after that treat she'd had once. The other times it has been to celebrate something, usually to do with publication( today we're celebrating Wolfborn's trip to the US).

But I got the idea of going there in the first place because of Kerry Greenwood's Phryne Fisher novels. It's where Phryne stays when she first arrives in Australia and where she takes Julia Chivers for tea when looking for Julia's missing friend in Murder In Montparnasse.  It just sounded like such a classy thing to do. The price of afternoon tea there is horribly expensive, but I worked for it and once in a while I can take out family and friends if I want, to be happy with me.

I also went for lunch at the Queenscliff Hotel after reading Kerry Greenwood's  Flying Too High , which ends there. In the book, Phryne solves a case just outside Queenscliff, rescuing a kidnapped child and taking the girl, her family and friends to the hotel to recover and have breakfast. The place sounded gorgeous and as I was staying at Sorrento on my holidays, I caught the Queenscliff ferry and went. You could get your meal cheaper if you ate on the veranda than in the pub, but that was fine with me; I sat gazing out at the sea as I ate a wonderful meal. The hotel is beautiful, with stained glass all over the place and I think there are tours. I have promised myself to stay there one weekend.

Then there are some overseas jaunts. When I was in England, of course I made pilgrimage to Stratford On Avon to see places where Shakespeare had been, but I remember how thrilled I was,passing the local Tourist Information Office, to see a small plaque informing passers that this had been the house where Judith Shakespeare had lived with her husband. Imagine it - a historic building being casually used for an office! It was everywhere in England, of course. Five hundred year old pubs, for example.

In London I walked along Charing Cross Road, once famous for its bookshops and one bookshop in particular. Passing number 84, I was relieved to see it was still selling something nice- records.

My friend Maureen Kincaid Speller, who was walking with me, smiled, reading my thoughts. "I think Frank would approve, or wouldn't mind, anyway." (Frank was the bookshop's manager when Helene Hanff was ordering books from her home in the US).

I wanted to visit " merry Carlisle" which got a mention in the medieval ballads, such as Adam Bell, but it was on the border and there really wasn't time. I did make it to Nottingham on the weekend of the Goose Fair, a centuries-old event in early October, because I had heard about it in a song. Buses were laid on to go there every few minutes. Not much was happening there - all the rides were child sized - but the fairgrounds were lined with fortune teller stalls and Mum and I had our first taste of chip butties, chip sandwiches, which we've made at home since then. We did, of course, visit Sherwood Forest and the Major Oak, six hundred years old. Not quite old enough for a Robin Hood connection, but still a historic tree.

One day I went to Oxford to visit my friend Margaret Draper, who worked there. On my first trip to England Margaret had taken me to see the Eagle and Child pub where the Inklings met, and I hoped to find it again. Margaret didn't turn up; she later explained she had been stuck in a meeting at work and these were the days before mobile phones. After waiting an hour, I decided that as I was there anyway I would simply plunge into the streets of Oxford and see what I found. And what I found was very much book related. Christ Church College was where Alice Liddell's father worked in the days when Lewis Carroll wrote her into his fiction. Across the road was Alice's Old Sheep Shop, an Alice-themed shop which was the original shop used as the basis for Tenniel's illustration in Through The Looking Glass.

 I went to Bath because of Jane Austen and it felt as if she or her characters might still walk along the Regency Streets. It was also a good place to start from to visit Glastonbury with its Arthurian connections. We couldn't stay long, alas, due to limited bus timetables, but did manage to get to the ruins of the monastery which made good tourist money in the Middle Ages by telling everyone they'd found King Arthur's bones. Of course that was mainly so people would stop believing he was coming back, but if it got tourist silver, why not?

Shrewsbury, on the border of England and Wales, was where we went to celebrate Ellis Peters' wonderful Brother Cadfael. My mother hadn't read the books at the time, though she read the lot when we got home. I was delighted to see that the author had described the streets so well that I could find my way around. The layout was still the same. We went to the church where Brother Cadfael had prayed with the other monks in the novels, and met one of the parishioners outside as I was taking photos.

After some joking round about being a fan, he pointed out some places mentioned in the novels.

Shrewsbury, which was a gorgeous little town with plenty of historic buildings, was doing nicely out of Brother Cadfael in those days, though the church itself needed some serious renovation, with hoes in the roof and such. Outside it had aVictorian look, but inside there were still medieval tombs.

As it's nearly time to get up, I will stop here, before I get to New Zealand and Lord Of The Rings. I'll keep that for another time.

Bookish Things Today

This afternoon, after saying goodbye to my mother, I took the train out to Notions Unlimited Bookshop in Chelsea, where I haven't been since the grand opening. It was pouring as I stepped off the train, so just as well I had my big umbrella, but the shop was cosy and I found a game of Dungeons and Dragons happening in the comfy chair area in the middle. The gamers were friendly and happy to chat with me; they even offered me a piece of freshly made cheese cake as we talked. I browsed in the small press shelves, where they had a bunch of books from Australia's various spec fic publishers. Not everything, but a good variety. I finally picked up a copy of Tansy Rayner Roberts' Love And Romanpunk and the new collection by Margo Lanagan.

 And then I REALLY overspent by acquiring A Feast Of Ice And Fire - a Game of Thrones cookbook! If you remember all those yummy-sounding dishes the characters are always eating in the series, you can now cook them. The authors went off and researched medieval  foods and cooked them, adapting them for modern cooks and to go with the novels, though they have some medieval and modern versions side by side. There's an introduction by George R.R. Martin, admitting he can't cook, but saying how delighted he was when these fans, Chelsea Monroe-Cassel and Sariann Lehrer, started bringing baskets of goodies to his book signings. I also learned from this intro that they had a blog, The Inn At The Crossroads, where all this stuff is discussed, so of course I had to go and find it and bookmark it, it as so very good. Here's the link, do check it out.

I was about to go drool over my new purchases when my brother Maurice rang to say that he was dropping off my nephew, his son Max, at the Astor to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show and was I still interested in coming? So I put everything away ad went home for a quick meal and browse before heading for the cinema with its famous cat, Marzipan.(Maurice was thrilled when she came to him in the foyer and sat on his lap - I got a photo or two).

I have finally received my review copy of Rhiannon Hart's Blood Storm and also got sent a book called Throne Of Glass by Saah J. Maas, which apparently started off as an on-line effort, but sold to Bloomsbury. We'll see how both go, and I will also be interviewing Rhiannon when I've read the book.

Friday, August 10, 2012

Wolfborn In The Library of Congress

Yesterday I got an email from a librarian at the Library of Congress, the US version of our own National Library, which has a deposit collection of everything published in the country. She just wanted to confirm that I was the author of The Sea's Secret, which they had a record for, and a bunch of non-fiction books she had seen listed online. I confirmed it for her - she must have been wondering what all those non-fiction and children's chapter books had to do with a YA werewolf fantasy. :-)

Thing is, this is, for me, a confirmation of the fact that my werewolf knight and his friends and enemies are really, really going overseas at last! There's nothing like a deposit collection record to say that, yes, your book has been printed and published in that country. I have asked the lady to let me know when the record is up, because it should be possible to access, as you can access the records of the National Library here. If it is, I'll post a link here.

(Sue does an excited Snoopy dance)


Thursday, August 09, 2012

Doing Star Trek: A Virtual Author Visit To Perth

Wednesday I paid my very first virtual author visit. I have always wanted to do things like in Star Trek, where they were doing Skype calls in the 60s! ;-) And we'd been talking about virtual author visits on Twitter.

I work at a school in Melbourne and the class I visited was in Perth, across the country and  two hours behind us. It required a LOT of organisation on both sides, but especially on the host school's part and I have to say, Anthony gave it.

Anthony is an ASIM writer whose wonderful story "The Wine Endures" I plucked out of the slush pool as my selection for ASIM's 50th issue. We have kept in touch since then and he has started his own blog. And one day we were talking about author visits and he said if I ever came to Perth I would be welcome to visit his school and I said innocently that I'd be happy to do a virtual visit by the wonders of Skype and next thing I knew he'd begun rushing around to arrange it. On my side I had to consult with the computer techs at my school to make sure it was possible. Our wonderful head tech Vien assured me it was. He offered to set me up with a webcam and headphones; at that point I decided to bring in my own laptop, which has a built-in webcam and doesn't need headphones. For one thing, Vien had enough work on his plate without rushing around to my campus to set me up. For another thing, I wanted a computer I knew I could trust.

Anthony had been using my blog posts in his lessons to Year 8, so his students already knew who I was. He asked the library to get in some copies of my novel and I promised a couple of copies of Crime Time if he'd put me in touch with his library. (That still hasn't happened, but hopefully soon).

He arranged with his school's techs to be there in case of connection problems. He booked the big screen area so he could get in a lot of students. He asked me to talk to them about fairy tales and werewolves and read from my book.

We did a trial run last week, on my insistence, and I'm glad we did. The connection in the staff room was fine, but woeful in the library, where I hoped to do my visit. I consulted Vien and Tam, another tech, and our info tech teacher, and was advised to use an ethernet cable, which I could connect in my office and which was more reliable than wifi. Leaving nothing to chance, I bought a new ethernet cable. Mine was about ready to be replaced anyway.

So the great day arrived. We were due to start 10.45 my time, two hours earlier Perth time. We ended up starting a bit later due to technical hiccups on their end, but finally we began. Anthony's students are all girls - possibly a religious-based school judging by the uniforms.  I waved at them. They waved back. Anthony introduced me and I began my talk. To them, he is Mr Phillips and I had to remember to call him that. I told them that I, too, was a Year 8 teacher and a library teacher and was pleased to meet them. I waffled on for a while about the things Anthony had requested, including that the wolf in Red Riding Hood was probably meant to be a werewolf - how else could he possibly pose as Grandma?

But I like interaction. This is a lot harder when you're way over the other side of the country than when you can throw book marks at the audience and invite members up to assist you. Still, there were questions. After a short time I paused to invite a question and next thing I knew they were coming thick and fast and lasted pretty much till the end of the session, when we squeezed in a short reading, not from Wolfborn but from Crime Time("hands up those who'd like a crime story?" and a huge number of hands shot up).

During the event, I was interrupted several times, once by the office lady, who didn't know I was doing this(my fault, I should have told her) and wanted me to go look for someone. I had to explain I was talking to a Year 8 in Perth and couldn't get up. Sometimes it was by students needing computers and  keys to the computer lab. I called them over and introduced them to my audience before giving them what they wanted, without, of course, getting up. Two of them were Brittany and Paige, two of the girls I met for Claudia Gray earlier this year.

It was hilarious!

Thinking about it afterwards,  I realised how much could have gone wrong if Anthony hadn't been such a professional in his organisation of the event. I have no doubt there are writers out there with horror stories about virtual visits.

I also had my own private agenda. I thought if it ran smoothly, perhaps I might try a relationship between his class and mine. It's something to discuss for the future.

Meanwhile, I hope the students enjoyed it as much as I did!


Saturday, August 04, 2012

Book Week Coming... ( from my other blog)


...and I still haven't read all the books and the winner will probably be one I haven't read. The shortlisted books are mostly out anyway, which I suppose is a good thing, though it meant I couldn't use them on Friday afternoon, of which more presently.

My friend Sharon Hayes, who hosted us a week ago, emailed me some photos of my students with Isobelle Carmody. I printed one of them out. There was a lot of red-eye and Braydon looked like a demon child out of The Omen. I did fix the red- eye on both photos, using iPhoto, but not till Thursday night and in one of them, the demon-Braydon stayed demonic! Is there something we don't know about him?(g)

 Braydon didn't turn up to book club, where I showed the photos to his friends, and later came to ask me,"Miss, is it true I look weird in the photos?" I told him yes and he wanted a look and then he wanted the photos as they were! Seems he likes looking scary.;-)

Anyway, at the book club meeting on Thursday we discussed Book Week. No real plans for the week beyond the usual trivia quiz ( and Braydon said later he wanted a Readathon, perhaps a bit late to arrange, but we could have readings at lunchtime or I could film them reading aloud from favourite books). But as the theme is "Champions Read" I asked them who would be okay with being photographed for a library display doing sport while reading a book. My class were finishing the week with PE so it was a perfect opportunity. Most of the shortlist books were out, so I decided just to get a pile of books they could choose from. Natasha suggested a podium with readers holding books and wearing gold, silver and bronze medals, a great idea if we can get something to pretend is a podium. I will check tomorrow with the woodwork teacher, whom I am pretty sure has a step somewhere, and there are a couple of library steps to shelve books from. I will have to find some way to fake the medals, perhaps get the students to make them in cardboard. Dylan and Kristen suggested table tennis tables with readers playing but holding books ( Kristen wanted to slump over the table with her book).

Friday afternoon I took my camera out to the basketball courts where 8B were throwing frisbees ( it was a lovely sunny afternoon) and Natasha, Karyn and Braydon happily posed with frisbees and books. Ann-Marie and Nusaiba thought it looked like fun and joined us. Nusaiba did ask if she could hide her face behind her book lest someone laughed at her, but I pointed out that with her headscarf people would recognise her anyway. She had to concede that and agreed not to hide.

Hopefully this year we will have a good Book Week.



Friday, August 03, 2012

Want A US Agent? Look what I found!


Received at the ASIM Inquiries email the other day. We're still discussing how we can get this information out to people; this is a big-name agency with some top clients. It's the real deal, and I wish they'd been actively looking for clients back when I was desperately trying to get an agent. If RHA hadn't already made arrangements for the US release of Wolfborn, I'd be checking them out myself. Never mind, next time. I do have a novel going, but it's in frst draft mode and no one gets to see it till I've done a lot more work on it. But I know a lot of writers read this blog, so here is the information and good luck!


"We’re writing to introduce you to The Ethan Ellenberg Literary Agency and to let you know we are actively seeking clients in the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres. We are a full service agency, representing writers at every stage of their career.
The agencQy opened in 1984 and has always had an interest in both genres.  We’re privileged to represent a number of top talents in science fiction and fantasy such as John Scalzi, Karen Miller, Sharon Shinn, Gail Z. Martin, Ian Douglas/Bill Keith, Kay Kenyon, Mel Odom, and the recently signed James Cambias for whom we just sold his first novel.  We are also proud to represent the estate of Gandalf Grand Master Award winning author Andre Norton.
Our success in this area is not confined to the adult market, either.  The agency has negotiated publication deals for young adult fantasies by Karen Miller, Mel Odom, Sharon Shinn, and Ed Willet as well.
We are a very active, successful seller of translation rights with agents in all foreign markets and a track record of approximately fifty new licenses per year. We also successfully license film rights, audio-book rights, e-book rights and rights for publication in the United Kingdom.
The ideal submission for us is an introductory letter, synopsis and the first three chapters of manuscript. We welcome electronic submissions to fantasy@ethanellenberg.com. We also welcome submission by mail with a self-addressed, stamped envelope for response. Please check our website (www.ethanellenberg.com) and follow the submission guidelines carefully.
We remain upbeat, active and committed to the highest standards of professional conduct and representation. We are members in good standing of the Association of Author’s Representatives and consistently receive high marks from all the top professional writers’ organizations. We look forward to your submission.
Sincerely,
Ethan Ellenberg, President Evan Gregory, Associate Agent"