{"id":2764,"date":"2016-02-17T22:09:31","date_gmt":"2016-02-17T22:09:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/?p=2764"},"modified":"2016-02-17T22:39:13","modified_gmt":"2016-02-17T22:39:13","slug":"paris-mon-amour-tres-bonnes-nouvelles-pour-mon-ami","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/?p=2764","title":{"rendered":"Paris Mon Amour — Tr\u00e8s Bonnes Nouvelles pour Mon Amie"},"content":{"rendered":"

I hope I’ve not embarrassed myself with my dodgy French title but who cares when there’s some good news to celebrate. This week I learned of another book deal for one of my writing friends\u00a0— this time\u00a0Isabel Costello of The Literary Sofa<\/em>\u00a0blog that’s\u00a0been mentioned a few times in posts on this blog\u00a0\u00a0(it’s linked via the sidebar).<\/p>\n

Isabel announced on The Literary Sofa <\/em>that\u00a0she’s sold her debut novel\u00a0<\/a>Paris Mon Amour<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>to Canelo<\/a>. It will be published on 13th June this year and will be immediately available as an audiobook from Audible, which is fantastic.<\/p>\n

I’ve referred to\u00a0The Literary Sofa <\/em>a number of times from here. It’s often been because Isabel hasn’t been afraid to write the sort of posts that many people want to but haven’t quite dared to themselves. She wrote a wonderfully balanced post on sex in fiction which prompted me to post my own thoughts on here <\/a>and, even more bravely, posted on even more\u00a0taboo subject of rejection by publishers for writers who’ve achieved that prized agent deal\u00a0(referred in this post)<\/a>. Her original post generated a\u00a0phenomenal number of comments, with\u00a0Isabel opening up the floodgates for a discussion by many people in a similar position.<\/p>\n

Having written about the pain of rejection and the effort of maintaining\u00a0motivation to start all over again with a new novel means\u00a0it’s especially great news that Isabel has achieved success so soon afterwards with Paris Mon Amour. \u00a0<\/em>The deal\u00a0also shows how well-placed Isabel’s confidence was in her agent, Diana Beaumont.<\/p>\n

From my perspective, it’s encouraging to see someone achieve a publishing deal who has followed a similar route to my own — attending creative writing classes, conferences like the York Festival of Writing, writing and networking events such as the Word Factory and the potential ego-shredding experience of submitting your work to writing groups.<\/p>\n

Canelo is a digital publisher and Isabel explains what attracted her to them in her post on the\u00a0Literary Sofa<\/em>. She writes about the\u00a0huge amount of support her publishers have for authors and for their enthusiasm for her novel.<\/p>\n

Coincidentally, I went to a great event last weekend organised by the London chapter of the RNA (of which perhaps more in another post) at which\u00a0Lyn Vernham, Managing Director of publisher, Choc-lit<\/a>\u00a0made a really informative presentation on the current state of the fiction market. As might be inferred from the name, Choc-lit aims at what’s called the ‘women’s fiction’ market (a term many people feel is problematic but that’s another blog post) and publishes in\u00a0both in digital and physical format. Lyn’s talk illustrated how the\u00a0distinction between the two is becoming much more fluid and interrelated.<\/p>\n

For example, if a book is bought from a digital platform (i.e. Amazon) then the reader will very often have browsed the first chapter that’s usually available online for free, even if bought physically, so the distinction between the two is becoming much more blurred.<\/p>\n

As with my MMU coursemate Kerry’s success with her recent novel, The Black Country,\u00a0<\/em>I’m really pleased to be able to report on another person know whose work has gone from idea in progress that I’ve heard about to publication. I can also \u00a0vouch for\u00a0Paris Mon Amour\u00a0<\/em>being an excellent read and will look forward to purchasing a copy to see the final version in June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I hope I’ve not embarrassed myself with my dodgy French title but who cares when there’s some good news to celebrate. This week I learned of another book deal for one of my writing friends\u00a0— this time\u00a0Isabel Costello of The Literary Sofa\u00a0blog that’s\u00a0been mentioned a few times in posts on this blog\u00a0\u00a0(it’s linked via the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Paris Mon Amour — Tr\u00e8s Bonnes Nouvelles pour Mon Amie”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[1234,125,28,974,1233,1229,1261,1049],"class_list":["post-2764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-publishing","tag-canelo","tag-creative-writing-classes","tag-feedback","tag-isabel-costello","tag-paris-mon-amour","tag-perseverence","tag-publishing","tag-york-festival-of-writing"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2764"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2770,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2764\/revisions\/2770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}