2016 is now drawing to a close and what a year it’s been. Thank
goodness in my little area of publishing things are going a little better than in
the world in general. Perhaps this is a useful reminder that things are never completely
black or white and that there are more than fifty shades of grey.
What we did in 2016
Bridge
House got out its annual anthology, called Baubles this
year. You can read a few extracts here. We managed at
last to get out the Shelagh Delany collection Salford
Stories just in time for Shelagh Delaney Day 2017. A week’s illness in January
2016 set us back months. It just shows how finely balanced everything is for
the small press.
CaféLit on-line continues
to thrive. The
Best of CaféLit 5 came out nice and early in August. A few more cafés
have been added to the Creative Café
Project. We’re always looking for more, so do let us know of any you come
across.
CaféLit and Baubles writers, along with their friends
and family and other writers and connections of Bridge House, CaféLit, Chapeltown,
The Red Telephone and their associates met for a celebration on 3 December at
the Princess
of Wales pub, Primrose Hill. This seems to be the ideal venue but we’re probably
about to outgrow it. Tickets were free but we “sold out”. In any case, we’ve
already booked for next year.
The Red Telephone is open to submission and I’m currently reading
a couple of scripts that are looking promising.
Chapeltown is now accepting collections of flash fiction. There
are currently two in production, one waiting in the wings plus three being
read.
Looking towards 2017
Bridge House’s new annual anthology for 2107 will be Gliterary Tales. So, glittery stories that have a touch of literature
about them. I wonder what that will add to the debate about the difference
between literary and popular fictions? Debz Hobbs Wyatt
will be getting the call for submissions out soon.
Bridge House is also
offering to publish single-author collections. These are for authors we’ve
published before and they may include stories we’ve already published, ones they’ve had published elsewhere and new
ones. We’ll be putting a description out about this soon but we’ve already had some
enquiries.
Bridge House is also
being a bit cheeky and getting a little political. Are we are in danger of getting
our books burnt? Well, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. We’re doing an
extra anthology, Citizens of Nowhere, with
the theme of the global citizen. Oh, I hope we don’t upset Ms May. We’re
commissioning just over half of the work from known authors but there is room
for a few open submissions. Stories can be “one you prepared earlier” or a
brand new one, with a cut-off date of 31 January, though this may very well be
extended. Stories between 1,000 and 4,000 words. Submit to editor at bridgehousepublishing
dot co dot uk.
CafeLit, Chapeltown and
The Red Telephone
are all open for submissions. Check out the details by clicking on the names in
the previous sentence.
Chapeltown is also
excited to be publishing Colin Wyatt’s
Who will be my friend? – a delightful
picture book about friendship and accepting others. Yes, Colin is Debz’s dad.
He is a Disney licensed illustrator and his latest publication is The Jet Set. We feel very honoured
to be publishing him.
I’m also organising
a summer celebration event in Manchester. Watch this space and follow my newsletter.
So, we’re busy and
optimistic about what we can achieve over the next year. We just hope we can
take the world with us.
