Articles

Who needs a plan? by Simon Lord

published on 2008-09-04

“For anything longer than Kubla Khan (itself a great unfinished monument to failure to plan ahead) it helps to have some kind of map”. If you don’t know where you are going, it’s easy to get stuck. Simon Lord looks into planning, road building and bridge construction from a literary perspective.

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by Frances Taylor

published on 2008-09-04

Kate Atkinson’s latest offering, ‘When Will There Be Good News?’ has received much critical acclaim since its release on the 14th August this year. The Independent called it “An intricately crafted tale of coincidence and fate, love and longing.” With plenty more evidence of Good News for Atkinson’s writing career, Frances Taylor tracks her journey to become, as The Telegraph warmly describes, “one of the most eccentric of crime writers, and perhaps the sanest.”

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Success comes to those who self-publish by Frances Taylor

published on 2008-09-02

With the revolution of the internet and stories of success from now-accomplished writers, the previously negative perception of self-publishing is now being thoroughly challenged and overruled. Today, the successful self-publisher is becoming a more frequent occurrence and what was once frowned upon as being a last resort is being acknowledged as a viable alternative or stepping stone to a contract with a major publishing house.

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Stripes are in! by Book Badger

published on 2008-08-28

Well…thought I’d introduce myself. I, the Book Badger am the latest edition to the CompletelyNovel team. I’ve just moved into their HQ in Dalston and I am ‘loving it’, as they say. You may think it’s a bit unusual to put a Badger in charge of editorial content for a site like CompletelyNovel. ‘Surely an owl or a squirrel would be more suitable!’, I hear you cry. Well, my friends…neither squirrels nor owls can open doors, let alone use computers – I’m afraid they would have been useless. So, you’ve got me to entertain you, and I will be drawing on my vast knowledge of literature, the latest book-related news and my excellent team of editors to offer some tasty morsels to enhance your reading and writing experience here on CompletelyNovel.

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Short Stories - An endangered species by Ailish Mcalpine-Green

published on 2008-08-28

After a long drought and near-extinction, the Short Story seems to be finally, slowly, clawing its way back into the popular literature market. But how did they become ‘the black sheep of the literary world’ in the first place, and why is now the perfect time for their resurrection? Ailish McAlpine-Green looks into the matter.

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A new look for autumn! by Anna Lewis

published on 2008-08-28

So, CompletelyNovel has changed a little… You can now see what Oli and Jon have been working on over the last few weeks. We hope you like our new look! Have a browse around and let us know what you think. Some of the new features include increased editorial content, the birth of the CompletelyNovel Book Badger and our Book Lists. There may be a few rough edges – please let us know if you come across anything that doesn’t work. You will also see that we’ve changed the book upload process while we make some changes – just get in touch if you have any questions about that. The Badger The latest addition to our team is the CompletelyNovel Book Badger. This fine young creature is going to be alerting our users to the latest news in the book industry, recommending books and offering tips to writers. To help him out we have a keen and talented team of editors who will be contributing to the editorial material. We will also be looking for people to submit guest articles which will appear on the front pages of the website…more news on that soon. Lists, lists, lists I have to admit, I love lists. They mainly revolve around food i.e. my top five cereals to put in the microwave or best fo...

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CompletelyNovel Short Story Competition by Anna Lewis

published on 2008-08-08

To celebrate the release of our website to the public, we are holding a short story competition. The winners, selected by members of the Society of Young Publishers, will appear in our CompletelyNovel Launch Anthology. The theme is ‘And now for something completely different…’. For more information see our competition page So get those pencils sharpened…the deadline is 1st September!

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Review your library books. by Anna Lewis

published on 2008-07-14

You can now review any book on CompletelyNovel…whether it is by a CompletelyNovel writer, or any other published writer. Let people know what you think about the books you have read. Was it a book that everyone should go out and buy right now, and then feign a contagious illness, hole themselves up in their house and not emerge until they have finished it…because it’s that good? Or maybe you’re not quite that enthusiastic. Whatever your thoughts on the book, share them with fellow readers and let them know what to expect. Just click on the book’s front cover, then click the ‘Write a Review’ button on the left-hand sidebar and you can get started. There are also some reviewing tips if you need a hand. The Editorial Review You may also have seen that there is a tab called ‘Editorial Review’ on the individual page dedicated to each book published outside of CompletelyNovel. At the moment, we are pulling this data from Amazon but as you’ll probably notice, this is rather incomplete so we’d like to let you know that we are looking for alternatives that will be more useful!

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Shiny new toys by Oliver Brooks

published on 2008-07-09

Some new features have been added to CompletelyNovel for everyone to play with. Clubs can now be linked directly to books and discussion topics. All books and writers (published outside of CompletelyNovel) now have a simple page so you can find out more about them. We have updated the news feeds so that all the most recent activity on CompletelyNovel relevant to you can now be accessed easily via your my updates page. We hope that with these latest updates, groups of writers can get together to discuss each others’ books and give each other valuable feedback. Other updates include: Better management of profile pages and writers’ books News of website updates…what you are reading right now! Revamped community pages What we are working on next: Printer integration – Soon you will be able to select which printers you want to print your book in different places around the world by simply selecting them. Book Projects – These will enable you to share a book for comment and review before it is finalised. Book cover creator – this is a nifty little feature which will make designing your book cover really easy. Comments for each page of a book – your readers can give you fe...

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