Phoenix, committed to building a publisher with reader’s involment, would love any thoughts, criticisms and suggestions on the adult imprint logo.
Category Archives: The Phoenix Story
Saving the World!
Hugely exciting talk yesterday with RainForest Concern and perhaps ideas to come, so watch this space. In the middle of my battles, jokes were made about polar bears, melting ice caps, and wasted paper, and though a story is a story, actually there was a point to them. It’s why I asked a publisher if some royalties could go to an environmental charity, and naturally I was ignored. So, maybe Phoenix Ark can help build that ark to save the real world, trees, biospheres, animals, and endangered storytellers too! It’s all of us, but ‘Larka, where are you now’? Fell has need of you. Actually, camping on a beach in Uist, on the most staggering evening, and moved by people who had written, trying to dream courage back into life, a seal popped out of the sea to say hello, so maybe I wasn’t so alone. Perhaps it was Rurl himself, and all the characters from my stories, and real readers who love them, can join in. When Phoenix says we can’t take submissions for two years, it’s simply practicality, but it doesn’t mean that letters, ideas and links to home made stuff you find thrilling aren’t very welcome, and can’t find a voice here too. Rainforest Concern has a great website and does an enormous amount of invaluable work around the world. There is a vital, new carbon offset calculator, fascinating little films, and some fun things for kids too, and their link is
Filed under Environment, The Phoenix Story
The howl of the wild
I got my copy of Wolf Print today, the great little magazine from the UK Wolf Conservation Trust. Presenting there was always a thrill. Not only does Toni Shelbourne do fine editorial work, and they have splendid, generous enclosures for the wolves, but their shop and education centre is really well done. In the heart of ordinary farmland, in Berkshire, young and old can touch something of the call of the wild, and if you look at their website they are doing great work around the world. There link is
Filed under Environment, The Phoenix Story
Protected: Changing my mind, and being a ‘rebel’ publisher, by just speaking out and telling the truth.
Enter your password to view comments.
Filed under Non Fiction, The Phoenix Story
Quote of the week
‘All bad art is the result of good intention’ Oscar Wilde, De Profundis
Filed under The Phoenix Story
Headings…
We’re not sure we like the new logo, now fully and ‘professionally’ set in the frame, but we would love to know your thoughts. As, if it interests, we want to create a separate page ‘forum’ for thoughts on Dragon Post, as it unfolds, the whole publisher’s style, and reactions to coming Imprint designs, for Wildcall and Thumbmarks too. Be frank, be critical, be supportive, be whatever you like, though we can’t promise to publish comments. As for different age-range story excerpts up online, The Poet’s Sweatshop is not really for younger readers, though with everything thrown at us nowadays, we believe people mostly read or absorb what they like, and are sure can cope with the meaning of words on a page. In terms of spelling, some don’t realise different spellings in the US and UK. The excerpt from Scream of the White Bears is is in US spelling, other work in British spelling. As for Dragon Post, you must forgive gruff screeds about copyright, below a free story, but it’s standard form and we haven’t worked out the style and size yet! It’s not to put people off, just to make it clear a writer would love to hear from you, but doesn’t want any lines confused, as he works on it. The first little change is that it’s not right an egg-box is delivered from Phoenix Ark. The real publisher is the publisher, the world inside a book, it’s own. So…how about Curly Tail Press? The next instalment rather depends on what the weather’s like in
Filed under Childrens Books, Publishing, The Phoenix Story
Trying things out and winning prizes
Just had an imaginary slap from a friend, and am well rebuked, so I have taken away a previous post, that’s supposed to tell ‘the world’ anything at all. Whatever the hurt, my duty as an author is to my readers, in the books alone. To inspire, reassure, challenge and entertain. Not to air private indignation, or what only sometimes happens in the publishing world. This publisher is trying on its skin, hence the changed and more readable format, I hope, and everyone alive should feel safe, and happy in their own skin. I’m a bit miffed at having to apologise all over the place for things, for instance cancelling a bear book, in the first place, but if I’ve worried readers and they’ve asked others about it, we they should if it upsets, they can contact me here. Please don’t be worried, life is extraordinary, and so too are stories, and we’re all in it together, though often battling too. The warmest wishes and thanks to anyone who has written to the blog, and though this is a site for several writers, childrens and adult, I hope any let down to my fans is compensated for by a new and free adventure. If, in the coming weeks, a suggestion does strongly affect the course of a story, you can win signed copies of two of my novels, with a serialized, spontaneous act of storytelling in
Filed under Childrens Books, The Phoenix Story
Baby dragons in the post!
We’ve been asked by a friend as far afield as Texas how often Dickens, or Conan Doyle, serialized their stories, and we’re afraid we don’t know. Bi-monthly, perhaps, but it’s probably on Wikepedia. But frequency of Dragon Posts depend a lot on you, the reader, and your own hunger for story, and desire to engage directly. As indeed does Phoenix Ark, to build a new, defiant publisher, in the face of much of the pulp thrown out, in the name of culture, story or adventure. We swallow so much of it, because publishers pay for space and knock out competition. As for dragons coming everyone’s way, and your thoughts on a story, you have to be in it to win it, so do join in
Filed under Childrens Books, Publishing, The Phoenix Story
Dragons in Dens and joining the story
Those who know the Brit tv addiction Dragon’s Den, and interested in the baby Phoenix, will be delighted to know that another investor hopped on board today. He was convinced that conventional publishers are shooting themselves in the foot, by their aggression and over control, that drives out the talent in the end. That stories too, one day, will come from the source. Bravo!
Talking of dragons, come and join Phoenix Ark for a brand new adventure, free. If Charles Dickens or Conan Doyle could create stories, as they lived their lives, and hoped to grip the reader as they were serialised, so we hope to as well. Click on DRAGON POST, in the pages on the top right, or if you are just on this page, click Pheonix Ark Blog right at the top, and be the first to join a story, as it unfolds! It is raw, largely unedited, was written and posted immediately, and as a kind of storytelling Masterclass, will only be changed as later bits of the story fall into place. Please send in your approval, horror, worries or suggestions for where you want it to go, although the author can promise nothing about what he finds out on the fiery journey. Or try the link
Filed under Publishing, The Phoenix Story
Branding the call of the wild!?
We’ve been asked about our imprints and the why and the how. You can’t and shouldn’t brand a real writing voice, because that’s a thing to itself, and precisely why I fought such a battle with an American publisher. Jack London’s extraordinary voice, for instance, often revolutionary, passionate and so vivid, would find it hard nowadays to fit into an easy, modern marketing bracket, or the over-control of arrogant editors or over political publishers, at the detriment of its writers, and is why he lives on. But London’s Call of the Wild and White Fang were definate inspirations, intimately entwining the theme of man and real nature, so Phoenix Ark’s Wildcall imprint will look for great stories in the animal and nature fantasy mould, just like the first novel from the founder, Scream of the White Bear.
Wonderful stories for younger readers, like Tube Mouse by Adam Guild, Michelangelo’s Mouse by Mary Stanley, and The Pimples also by David Clement-Davies, will simply come under the Phoenix logo, of course styled for a much yonger audience.
Thumbmarks, Phoenix Ark’s adult imprint, is part of our commitment to publish and encourage great, page turning writers, but also publishing ‘popular’, although quality literary fiction titles, both with a view to modern crime writing, and the fantasy dimension. The Blood Garden, by Dominic Clemens, is a highly original venture, almost into a new genre, with a vampire/detective story.
The coming non-fiction imprint Shine, is dedicated to unusual or crusading non-fiction titles, such as the vital issue of deforestation, but with a passion for story too. As for republishing classics, we’d rather travel in great company, than give in to souless junk.
Filed under Childrens Books, The Phoenix Story
Phoenix Ark's Blog 