Back to Life, for the 48th Time

Just a quick one to let you know that our web site has sprungded back to life, and that if you want to do the unthinkable and support us by buying one or three of our books, now would be a perfectly lovely time, and gord bless you one an' all.

Seriously though, I know a few of our friends, authors and other personages of taste and other persuasions have been suggesting that it would be a cool thing to do, only to find that the web site had gone missing.

Timing, one thing I've got is timing.

No rhythm,
but timing.

All the support we've had in the last few weeks really (truly, madly, mainly) has been unexpectedly lovely. So ta, even if you don't buy a book.
It's special.
Really it is.

And speaking of special, so are the following books (all our others are too, but these sprang and springed to mind) in case you are wondering what would be worth a look at in a shufty kind of way:

Novels:
'A Portrait of the Arsonist as a Young Man' by Andrew McGuinness
'Doggone' by Erik Ryman
'Tangled Roots' by Sue Guiney
'River Deep, Mountain High' by Gareth Calway
'The Oven House' by Lynne Rees

Short Story Collections:
'Leading The Dance' by Sarah Salway
'Strangers Waiting' by Sally Spedding
''Consumer-isms in 12 Easy Steps' by Alexandra Kitty

Poetry:
'The Authentic Touch' by James Kirkup
'Unknown Shores' by DM Thomas
'Never-Neverland' by Adele Ward
'Surviving Love' by Kevin Bailey

As a thank you in advance, if you do order any of our books from our web site, every single order will come with another book totally free and with a stamp or printed postal voucher thing on the front. Probably wrapped in cardboard or a Jiffy or something.

Thank you and feel free to turn this into English and spread the word, by blogging twittering, accosting strangers on the tube or via your international radio broadcasts. Taverymuch.

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Various Bits and Bobbins

Just a quick catch-up, on a few things..

Firstly, I was saddened to hear that the poet James Kirkup passed away last month. We had the pleasure of publishing one of his books, a couple of years ago, and to be honest I really wasn't sure what to expect, but he was totally professional and indeed quite lovely to deal with.

I know at this point I should probably try to flog you his book, but I don't think it particularly nice.

Instead then, I've got a couple of copies of the signed edition we did of The Authentic Touch and they can go to the first couple of people to tell me the name of the poem that saw James retire to an exile in Andorra, and saw Mary Whitehouse invoke the blasphemy laws. (Is it just me, or has poetry got quite safe these days?)

For a proper obituary, Click Here.

Secondly, just to confirm that yes, our web site has died a death. We're sorting it out (along with sooo many other things) at the moment, and hopefully it won't be long until it is back.

(It is meant to be a revamped site, but we might have to go back to the golden oldie, we'll see)

Other than that, we are blinking in the light a bit, and hopefully crawling from the swamp and and and...more soon.

What's going on?

Well, I promised to let people know what we are upto and here we are...

Basically, I've gotten bored of hearing myself whine about everything, so grabbing the tiger by the tail, we've decided to get real and try to turn bluechrome into a publisher that we can run, instead of one that will probably end up killing us.

Very worthy, I'm sure you'll agree, and long overdue.

Anyway, to this end, this week we've been in touch with our brilliant authors to let them know the score, and I have to say that the response has been quite humbling. Some of them will be leaving us, and some won't and who-is-who we are working out right now.

Not a good job to have, but there we are. We have tried never to forget that the whole point of bluechrome was to do our best to see things from the perspective of the author, but sometimes the jobs you need to do to keep things going don't fit in with their needs/aims/wants/wishes. And this is very much a time of much needed surgery as far as we go, and despite this they have been pretty cool. So I can only thank them for that.

So, with a bit of luck we will be leaner and meaner and less of a weeeeeener in the coming months. But, like a lot of small presses (independent publishers, I keep forgetting) we can only keep going if people buy the books.

And I have to admit, that quite often I ask myself whether it would really matter to the world of literature if we folded?

And let's face it, probably not, though I do believe that we have some special authors and hope that we've done something decent, that we've brought some 'new voices' through sooner than they would otherwise have been heard from.

Yep we've got some special authors, but then so have Salt, and Cinammon, Parthian and Anvil, EggBox and Elastic, Five Leaves and Flambard, Waywiser and Two Rivers, Roastbooks and Indigo Dreams Press and another hundred small independent publishers that all spend their time and energy doing something just a bit special, that maybe wouldn't get seen if they were concentrating exclusively on the mass market and the bottom line.

And whether they have Arts funding now or not, unless you make the effort to support them here and there with a book, they will gradually disappear. And so will the choice they offer, and the opportunities they provide for authors to write something other than Da Vinci Code and Harry Potter clones. 

So if you are an author, why not buy a book from the publisher before you submit your next manuscript. I'll give you a clue - bluechrome would have made a profit every year since 2002, if everybody that submitted had checked out the books we publish and bought a single copy of any one of them first. This would have meant that we would have published a lot more books, and seen more of the authors that we had to turn down, end up in print. Go figure.

And if you are a reader and like something a bit more challenging, give an indie a chance, you could be in for a nice surprise. I read a review recently, where the writer said that he liked indie publisher books as you got 'the writer's real stuff'. After I stopped feeling a bit queasy, I really liked that as it summed up what we have always wanted bluechrome to offer. Whether it is poetry or short stories, experiments or just plain crazy, indie publishing does that and I hope we have too.

And if it matters even a wee bit, we'll be doing our best to hang in here just as long as we can, hope you'll be nosing around too.

Setting Sail

It's funny in a way,

but after years of trying to keep things afloat
with barely a twig or three
to glue together,
we finally reach a point where we have to address
some grim truths, face up to
the facts we've been avoiding and
sit down to make what in a way is quite
a glorious escapade
of the mind
real.

We reach this point, and
a teeny bit of a glimmer of light hints
that it may well,
when it feels like it
not before,
decide to
- you know -
join in for a while.

We reach that point and
start to smile slightly,
just for a moment,
a hinty smile in fact
but nothing in writing.

And then what happens?
Then you remember the nickname from a good year, and
realise that it was only ever ego that bound
the smiles to the faces.

You were right all along.
Sláinte.

Out of the Smog

Well, it’s been a while, has it not? And in case you didn’t notice, the last couple of months have been eerily quiet in bluechromeland, which I know has worried a few people, panicked some others and had yet more humming Queen songs without really knowing why.

(Another One Bites The Dust, rather than A Kind of Magic, I fear).

So what has been happening?

Well, not a lot in truth, other than I’m afraid I’ve been Proper ill (with a big P) and on top of everything else this has stopped us in our tracks, when we were dragging a gammy leg in the first place.

And I need a new metaphor.

Anyway, for those of you that have been worried – thanks for the messages, I’ll catch-up with you soon –
and for those of you that have been ringing our accountant/distributor/friends at Inpress/mothers, please don’t anymore as it is starting to annoy them,
and they have real work to do.

Well, apart from our mothers,
annoy them all you like.

For our authors especially, I’ll be writing in the next few days to clarify things, and hopefully kill off a few of the wilder rumours. I’m not dead, really I’m not, although there are going to be some fundamental changes in the coming weeks, but not that fundamental hopefully.

So there we are,
still a little breath.

On a brighter note – both DM Thomas ’Unknown Shores’ and Helen Lynch’s ‘The Elephant and the Polish Question’ have received a launch in the last few weeks. More about those soon, but that makes eight books this year so I guess it isn’t all doomy-ridden-gloom.
Not quite.

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A Speculation in Retrospect

I talked about this a while back, but one thing I'm really pleased we are publishing this year is a collection of poems from DM Thomas called Unknown Shores. This isn't new work (that comes later in the year with a second collection which is brilliant), but brings together the 'speculative' poetry Mr T. was writing in the 60s and 70s, when Science Fiction was at its height and everything was brave, wipe clean and exciting.

West Brom had a good team too, and that really does seem like fantasy now.

Anyway, the book is described thus:

"Unknown Shores" contains D.M.Thomas' Science Fiction or 'speculative' poetry gathered for the first time into one volume written mostly in the late 60s and 70s, at a time of feverish technological advance (the 'moon walk' and heart transplants), as well as extreme nuclear threat, these poems were among the first to explore SF themes in verse rather than prose fiction.

Which is really what I was trying to say.

To celebrate the launch of the collection, I am delighted to say that you can now pre-order it from bluechromeland over HERE, and if you do order it before the end of next week, you will also get a FREE copy of Don's first bluechrome poetry collection Not Saying Everything

So to summarise - two books, free p&p in the UK and all for £8.99.

Can't be bad.

Just CLICK HERE and order before the 3rd of April

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Free Book Friday & The Amazing Dancing Horses

Catching up as usual after a wee bit of time away..

Things I missed:

* BCF Reviews saying nice things about Patrick Chapman's brilliant collection of stories The Wow Signal

* BCF Reviews liking Erik Ryman's Doctor Mooze for a second time

* Susie Sue Guiney off on a virtual world tour ( tickets still available at a variety of places..Full Details HERE)

* Free Book Friday - I missed last week and today is Saturday, but that isn't a reason to miss out, so this week - the first couple of people to tell me the book name I was planning to give away but have completely forgotten about, will get it.

I think it was fiction and had a pretty cover with a house on.
Not sure if that helps.
Of course you have to write a review.
Just email your name & address and book title to freebookfriday@bluechrome.co.uk and I'll do the rest.


Actually, we've now given away over 100 books on Free Book Friday, mainly it has to be said, because I have sent more than one book a lot of the time, and so have the distributors, gord bless them. And it has been a bit of a lottery as well at times. A couple of people who have got books have asked what to do with their reviews, so in answer to that - put them on your blog if you have one, or on amazon or email them to me and I'll put them here.

We don't mind. Just write it and let people read it. Its fair on the author, you know? They get excited about all this sort of stuff. I mean, I know it is just a free book to you, but they spend ages writing these things and they care. Really care, what you think.
We love you all, each and every one.
What you think matters.
And it is annoying when you give lots of books away and they just disappear into the heather
Its like ether, but less stimulating.

I think I need to sleep.

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