Thank you. Nearly a 100 visits yesterday, which ideally, after a few weeks, would make 700 a week, 35,000 a year, just on current standing.Who knows what we can achieve? After dreaming a publisher into life in London and Uist, that speaks from the heart and for a community of writers, maybe you should tell us how we can make a publishing website come alive, but emails of support from readers have been hugely inspiring.
Category Archives: The Phoenix Story
No Longer The Lonely Phoenix!
Filed under Publishing, The Phoenix Story
Could Shakespeare Spell?!
When pedants, with respect to careful editors of course, jump on my writing head over some sometimes wonky spelling, my immediate reposte is ‘look at Shakespeare’s spelling’. But then of course, with language in such transition, both aurally and in terms of spelling – I remember some schooltime something about ‘the great vowel shift’- perhaps that space before and beyond the OED was vital to a poet. Perhaps it’s something about the Science/’God’ debate too, today’s fracturing and specialisation of consciousness even, that means the return of a mind and voice like that, a psyche like that, is impossible. There is something about the Shakespearian imagination that itself generates language, through story and feeling, which is why we’ve quoted him in The Poet’s Sweatshop. Do forgive us for blog mistakes, it will be properly edited too, but the voice comes first.
Filed under Poetry, Publishing, The Phoenix Story
Indies and Indians
Should Independent publishers, especially wanting to step out of their niche boxes, link up again to try and compete with giants, and create the intelligent muscle to find and back startling authors, cut their overheads and make some real noise? Is that a well tested pipe dream in an industry shuddering over mass competition in digital markets? Very nice to hear from a talented Independent in London on our logo though, who I’ll name and champion if they wink at Phoenix:
“I would say the top left as well, notably because it would stand complete on a spine. Checking Firebird’s logo, it does not seem so close as to cause confusion or accusations of plagiarism.
If it is reminiscent of anything, I would say it has some fascist connotation. But then not all who quote Nietzsche are fascists, of course..!”
We’ve tried to reply in the Logo question, but are currently enormously busy!
Filed under Publishing, The Phoenix Story
PHOENIX ARK PRESS RELEASE
BEST SELLING FANTASY AUTHOR TURNS HIS BACK ON CORPORATE PUBLISHERS: Phoenix Ark MD and established author David Clement-Davies says “It’s time the true value of story, grounded in the protection and nurturing of talented writers, is brought to the forefront in publishing once again. In my experience publishers are too political, hide their strategies far too much from their authors, and follow quick sales, above building talent and finding quality. Publishing is fracturing everywhere, and though keeping an eye on outlets, publishers need to return to the authority of the word, and of the author. Essentially to get right back to basics, with a smaller scale vision that cares both about people, and the tremendous power of story.” Phoenix Ark are building their strategy in the public eye, and creating a talented community in London, who can also agent for each other.
Filed under Childrens Books, Publishing, The Phoenix Story, Young Adult
The Poet’s Sweatshop
Quote of the Week
With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
But come find the right words, in the right order,
Filed under Poetry, The Phoenix Story
In the Pipeline
As you watch this publisher’s story too, please send in ideas, and comments on our logo. The WILDCALL and THUMBMARKS logos, for childrens/fantasy and adult imprints, are being designed now, and will be posted soon. When editors so very close to me could do that in New York, or to my work, but above all to the spirit of the storyteller, one day I hope it will be one in the eye for the machine, and real fairy tales will come true again! I just need a true Tarlar, who happens to know about editing too, but we all live in hope. DCD
Phoenix Ark Press – Building a writer’s publisher
Filed under Adult Fiction, The Phoenix Story, Young Adult
Getting Dolphin Inspired!
It was Scotland that inspired Fire Bringer, and being on Uist, this month, that pure power and passion of wild nature came again, in a sudden surge of shining, moving water, next to a little boat crossing to a blue-white beach for a picnic. After a near disaster the previous day, in the harbour at Eriskay, that launched a rescue helicopter, and with frayed tempers, the boat suddenly came alive and together again, as a pod of seven dolphins joined us. The play and excitement of those brilliant animals, racing the boat, ducking the bow, breaching from the sea, for nearly forty minutes, was the most wonderful thing I’ve touched in months. Then, when we’d waded out to beach the craft, and suggested the kids swim with them, the pod stayed around, ‘showing off’, if human terms are right for such glorious, delicious exuberance. They stayed with us too, as we cooked scallops and drank their health, one summersaulting on his back, to show his flippers and white belly, twice. He looked as if he was laughing. I’m not entirely sure why, sometimes anyway, but dolphins clearly like people, and on the very edge of Western Scotland, like the seal that came to visit, bobbing up like an inquistive rock, when I camped on a beach two nights before, it brought a new inspiration for that Pheonix Ark Imprint – Wildcall!
Filed under Environment, The Phoenix Story
The Story of a Publisher
For those who’ve watched the first steps of a young publisher, perhaps you’ve shared some of the story already. But it’s time to concentrate on the books and authors alone, and the work produced. That’s all a reading public are really interested in, and can be expected to be, perhaps; the value, entertainment or meaning of those. I’ve protected the privacy of the individuals at Abrams and Amulet, though completely unprotected myself by them, while saying loudly what I think of them. Now it’s time to get on with those stories, with just as much love, passion, and sometimes indignation, so please watch this space, and come along with a storyteller’s publisher, built by and for writers and artists. DCD
Filed under Publishing, The Phoenix Story
Authors and publishers – heroes or villains?
“The modern hero…cannot, indeed must not, wait for his community to caste off that slough of pride, fear, rationalized avarice, and sanctified misunderstanding. ‘Live’ Nietsche says, ‘as though the day were here.’ It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse. And so every one of us shares the supreme ordeal – carries the cross of the redeemer – not in the bright moments of his tribes great victories, but in the silences of his personal despair.”
Joseph Campbell – The Hero with a Thousand Faces, quoted in an epigraph to Scream of the White Bears
Do we all think ourselves so heroic in those tribal victories, of wars and strong arming, of mutual fear and aggression, let alone human contempt, the protection of our jobs and pockets of power, or is there something else that unites the world again? Perhaps it just means reaching out in the dark.
Filed under Publishing, The Phoenix Story
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