Kim Nash - Book Blogger, and Publicity and Social Media Manager

Thank you to Ellie Holmes for this interesting interview with Kim Nash this month. As you will see, Kim is a woman who wears many hats! So, over to Ellie and Kim...

I am delighted to welcome Kim Nash to the RNA Blog's monthly series where we speak to book bloggers, reviewers and magazine editors and get an insight into their world.

Welcome Kim, tell us a little bit about yourself and your blog – Kim The Book Worm.

I am the publicity and social media manager for Bookouture (digital publisher), and a book blogger at Kim The Book Worm. I am also an independent consultant with Arbonne, an online skincare, makeup, and health and wellbeing company. 

As a book blogger I love to read and review women’s fiction and mix it up with crime and psychological thrillers, and I also love a good personal development book too. 

What made you start to review/blog?

I read a book called A Spring Affair by Milly Johnson.  It was about a lady who read an article in a magazine about clutter clearing and she decided to do it to her house.  When she’d done that, she realised that it wasn’t just her house that she wasn’t happy with, it was her life. 

This story really resonated with me and I wrote an email to the author who responded within an hour, which gobsmacked me as I never really expected an answer.  I’ll never forget her words.  She said “You lady, are the reason I write books!” 

I went out and bought all her other books and we kept in touch.  I had the idea to start a blog and she encouraged me to do it and mentioned it to a couple of her author friends who asked me to review their books.  So my Kim The Book Worm blog was born!   That was in February 2011!  So I’ve been a book blogger for nearly 7 years! OMG!

Has your blog ever won or been nominated for any awards?

Last year I won the RNA Media Star of the Year award.  What an honour and a privilege that was!  

What’s your review policy?

I don’t have a particular policy, I just only review books that I like the sound of.  It wouldn’t be fair on an author to review a book in a genre that I don’t like as it wouldn’t be a true reflection of the book.  Now that I’m working full time for a publisher, I don’t have as much time to read and review books as I used to.

Do you ever get to read just for pleasure or will you always write a review after reading a book?

I very rarely read for pleasure and try to review every book I read but I do sometimes forget! Obviously, I always remember if I’m on a blog tour.  And I do try to be very organised!   But with a manic work and home life, sometimes I’m only human and do drop a ball!

I know you are one of the organisers behind regular book blogger/author meet ups.  Can you tell us a little bit about how you became involved in this?

Author Holly Martin and I just decided one day to organise a meet up in London. It was just before Christmas and around 16 people turned up.  Not a bad turn out, so we organised one in Birmingham too.  It was really well attended with around 50 people and we were cramped for space at that one.  We did another London one and around 80 people turned up! Luckily there wasn’t much else on in the bar we met at as we really did take over the whole place! 

So we periodically do events in Birmingham and London.  We haven’t done a London one for a while though as not many people came along to the last one.  Holly has since moved to Devon so we organised an Exeter meet up in the summer this year, which was great and vey well attended and we have organised another event in Exeter for the end of November.

What’s the best thing about going to a book blogger/author meet up?  If members of the RNA want to find out more about a meet up in their area how do they go about that?

For me, it’s about meeting authors and bloggers that you know and love.  You can build really good relationships with people online, and to then meet them in person, is such a joy! I’ve made so many good friends both authors and bloggers that I know I’ll be friends with for life.
 

If anyone fancies coming along to our events, as long as they are an author or a blogger, then we’d love to see you.  We do need a rough idea of numbers so it would be great to hear from you beforehand to confirm whether you are definitely coming.   You can get in touch with Holly or myself to get an invite.

How do you like to spend your time when not working or reading?

I love doing stuff with my ten year old son, whether it be just hanging out or doing something fun.  I also run a book club in Cannock in Staffordshire.  It’s such a lovely group and we’ve made some fabulous friends and we really do love our little book club!  I love going out for meals with friends.  I also do some family travel reviewing and love that too.  I find reading very relaxing, and as I don’t get much other chance to relax, that’s my real sanctuary. 

We often ask agents and publishers what they consider to be the next 'big thing' - what do you hope to see more of in 2018?

I think we have an incredible mix of women’s fiction and psychological thrillers around at the moment and I hope that continues.  Maybe some different lead characters might be nice.  There are so many brilliant female detective-led novels around at the moment, but it would be good to see some different professions in the mix too.  I do like a cosy crime too.  I love a book that makes me feel the emotions of the characters whether that be getting my heart fluttering with gorgeous lead males, my heart pounding with breath-taking suspense or warming my heart with wonderful stories.  Please do keep them coming authors.  

Find out more about Kim via her Social Media links:

Website 

Twitter 

Facebook 

Arbonne 

Thank you for being such a fab guest, Kim and for giving us an interesting insight into your world.

*****

About Ellie

Ellie Holmes writes commercial women’s fiction with her heart in the town and her soul in the country. Ellie’s debut release was The Flower Seller. A member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Alliance of Independent Authors, Ellie’s latest book, White Lies is out now.

Amazon 

Twitter 

Website 

Facebook 

Karen Byrom – Commissioning Fiction Editor - My Weekly

We are delighted to welcome Karen Byrom to the RNA Blog’s monthly series where we speak to book bloggers and reviewers and get an insight into their world. This month we take a small detour to speak to a fiction editor who commissions short stories and is well know to the RNA. Thank you to Ellie Holmes for this most interesting interview.

Welcome Karen, tell us a little bit about yourself and your work at My Weekly

Hello, my name’s Karen Byrom and I am the commissioning fiction editor at My Weekly. I’ve

worked in magazines for over thirty years, having begun my career with D C Thomson straight after graduating from St Andrews with a degree in Ancient History and Latin – which at least ensures I can spell!I live and work in my hometown of Dundee, a city beautifully situated on the firth of Tay, in the most beautiful scenic surroundings. I’m married with one daughter, who married two years ago, and lives nearby.

How long have you been at My Weekly?

I started my journalistic career at D C Thomson back in 1982, on the fiction desk of My Weekly. The fiction editor at the time was Liz Smith, and I remember thinking, “I want her job.” I had to wait 32 years! After eight years on My Weekly, I moved around the different magazines, working on features and fiction on Annabel and People’s Friend before returning to My Weekly for good in 2010, where my main responsibility was the health pages. When Liz announced her retirement in 2015, I seized my chance!

Tell us a little bit about a day in the life of a Commissioning Fiction Editor

As each day is so varied, it’s probably easier to describe my week. I check emails for submissions coming in and news about new books. I read and choose stories for up-coming issues – we don’t hold stock any more, so every story I buy must have an issue date. I send back stories that aren’t right for us, with feedback. I aim to have a six-week turnaround, but that doesn’t always work out, sadly.

I go to work on the bought stories, finding or commissioning artwork – I work closely with the designers on this, and often send artwork out to be enhanced so that it matches the story. Then I sub them lightly before sending them off to our production team. I don’t see them again until the page stage, when I give them a final check over.

Every week I choose archived stories for the website, and publish them myself – that’s quite a lot of work. I do the same for book reviews, author Q&As and giveaways. Then the tweeting begins – I think it’s a great way to build up relationships with writers and publishers and get My Weekly’s name out there.

Every four weeks, we have book reviews in the magazine so I’m constantly skimming books to decide what our readers will enjoy. I try to get to London three or four times a year to meet authors and publishers, and this year I’m off to Devon to take part in a literary festival, which is exciting.

I attend lots of meetings, contributing content ideas for the magazine as a whole, and I write occasional features, particularly travel and royal features. I also attend brainstorming meetings for new publications. At D C Thomson, we really are one big team.

I write fiction, too, for the Specials and The Annual, but tend to do that in my own time.

You must be inundated with books and stories, how do you choose which books and stories to read?

I receive and read around 90 submissions a month. It would be more, but I have a rule that you must have been published before in My Weekly before I’ll consider your story. It seems harsh – and I wish it could be different - but it’s the only way I can cope with the workflow, as I am the fiction desk! I’m constantly streamlining, though, and hope that someday I’ll be able to welcome submissions from everyone.

I wish I could read every book that comes in but I get around six a day! I skim them, then choose the ones I think will interest readers – a mix of romance, historical and detective thrillers. Even then I can’t read them all, but fortunately lots of my colleagues are voracious readers, too, and willing to give me reviews.

Do you have a submission policy for authors to follow?

I do. Short story and serial writers must have been published by My Weekly before, and I have a pool of around 100 such writers. I send out guidelines to them every two months, explaining the length and type of stories I need for upcoming issues.

I also consider approaches from publishers whose authors are keen to write a story for My Weekly. I’ve got some top names that way – Veronica Henry, Victoria Fox, and C.L. Taylor, to name just a few. Liz already had Milly Johnson and Sue Moorcroft on board - they continue to contribute charming stories and serials.

My Weekly is known for its lovely short stories and serials and its specials packed with lots more stories – your wonderfully titled Sunshine Celebration Special is on sale now – how far ahead do you plan what will feature in each edition?

Thank you for the lovely compliment. For the weekly, I have an eight week rolling programme, choosing stories to fill issues up to eight weeks’ ahead. That’s flexible of course – a story may come in that I just have to have, or a publisher may approach me with a fantastic story from a big name author. Or I’ll suddenly realise two stories in the same issue have the same theme! So it can be a juggling act. But once a story is bought, it will be used, even if I have to move it to a 2018 issue…

Specials’ stories are chosen around eight weeks in advance. I choose them to reflect the theme of the Special, and work closely with Specials’ editor Maggie Swinburne to ensure they complement content. She sees to the artwork for these, thank goodness.

If you could give one piece of advice to authors what would it be?

Read, read, read the magazine. In the last 10 years, My Weekly has evolved considerably, to reflect modern trends and attitudes and that’s reflected in the fiction content. While there’s always a place for what we Scots call “couthy” stories, involving old aunts, country cottages and cats, our readers also demand up-to-date stories with empathetic characters and convincing plots.

What are your interests away from work? Do you ever read just to relax?

I love to read – on a Sunday afternoon you’ll find me lying back in the conservatory reading a book

for review. I read on the bus to and from work, at lunchtime, at home in the evenings, with one eye on the TV. The only time I don’t read books is during working hours – I don’t have time!

I have always particularly enjoyed literary and historical fiction, but being fiction editor has forced me to expand my taste, and I find I really enjoy a well-written romance or detective story.

Hilary Mantel, R J Ellory, Neil Gaiman, Anna McPartlin and Joanna Courtney are all high on my list of favourite writers.

Other than that I love yoga and attend three to four classes a week. I also play tennis.

Family is important, too. I spend time with my elderly father – Mum died just 18 months ago – and love to go to yoga classes and shopping with my daughter, or walking with my husband.

We often ask agents and publishers what they consider to be the next 'big thing' - what do you hope to see next?

I hope to be surprised! I’m not too keen on the next “big thing” – too often it leads to a raft of copycat themes, never quite as good as the original. The “unreliable narrator” is a case in point. When it’s done well it works – I’m thinking about Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty and Jane Corry’s My Husband’s Wife – but it is now in danger of becoming a cliché.

I don’t like to invest a lot of emotional energy into a character, only to find she’s been lying to me, if only by omission. Never mind the plot, for me, characters are what make a good book – and, of course, a good short story.

Thank you Karen for such a wonderful insight into your world and a fascinating behind the scenes peak at My Weekly.

Links:

Twitter: @FictionEdKaren

@My_Weekly

My Weekly Facebook

About Ellie:

Ellie Holmes writes commercial women’s fiction with her heart in the town and her soul in the country. Ellie’s debut release was The Flower Seller. A member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Alliance of Independent Authors, Ellie’s latest book, White Lies is out now.

http://Author.to/EllieHolmes   

Festivals and Workshops: Bradford Literature Festival

Welcome to Elaine Roberts with another in her interesting series about literary festivals and workshops.

This month I have interviewed Georgina Lennon and Syima Aslam from the Bradford Literature Festival. Welcome to the RNA blog. 

Can you tell us something about your festival, how it came about and how long its been running?

The Bradford Literature Festival (BLF) is an international festival based in Bradford, the heart of Yorkshire and, the literature hub of the North. Hailed as one of the most inspirational festivals in the UK, BLF is fast becoming a key event in the UK's cultural calendar. Over 10 days, our events celebrate the written and spoken word on the page, stage, screen, and in public forums, offering ideas

Joanna Trollope

to delight, challenge and entertain inclusive, diverse audiences. We are passionate about education; inspiring a love affair with words and boosting literacy is at the heart of all our public and schools’ events. Culture Squared, a community interest company, established to create high quality cultural activity that builds stronger communities through dialogue, cohesion and the promotion of intercultural fluency, runs BLF.

 The festival’s schools’ initiative, which runs alongside the general programme, holds free events for students throughout the Bradford District, engaging with and inspiring more than 7,000 young people in 2016. This programme is designed to foster a love of reading, boost self-belief and confidence, and better equip young people to respect difference and accept others.  In seeking to reach the many communities of Bradford, the festival presents authors and speakers from culturally diverse backgrounds, and it attracts an audience that is 48% BAME.  The audience grew threefold between 2015 and 2016, when over 31,000 people attended events.

The Bradford Literature Festival, in association with Provident Financial Group, returns for its third edition from 30 June until 9 July 2017, celebrating the written and spoken word in all its

Milly Johnson

wonderful forms. With over 300 events packed into iconic venues across 10 days, the festival brings together world-renowned authors and public figures for an intellectual extravaganza, which explores the links between literature, history, science, sport, music and art from around the world. The programme ranges from celebrations of literary heroes such as the Brontës, to a dedicated weekend of comics and manga, with discussions on everything from World affairs to the science of immortality, gender politics and hymen obsessions – at Bradford Literature Festival, no subject is out of bounds.

2017 will also see the return of the festival’s iconic free family day events in Bradford’s City Park, with themes including superheroes, fairy tales, myths & legends, bears and, of course, Harry Potter. With an exciting line up of performances, workshops and film screenings, the festival will take over the city centre creating a literary themed wonderland of fun for all the family.

Who are your main speakers this year?

This year’s festival features an unrivalled range of participants, including authors Germaine Greer, Joanna Trollope, Vivian French, John Boyne, Juno Dawson, Shems Freidlander and A.A Dhand; poets Jackie Kay, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Ben Okri, Lemn Sissay and Anthony Anaxogorou; politicians such as Baroness Syeeda Warsi, Harriet Harman and Rachel Reeves; and international journalists including Jenni Murray, Mona Eltahawy, Christina Lamb, Boyd Tonkin and Gary Younge. BBC Radio 1's Gemma Cairney, YA author Melvyn Burgess, racing car driver and ex host of Top Gear Tiff Needle and Indian Politician Shashi Tharoor.

As our blog is for writers can you tell me how your festival would benefit our members? 

Each year the festival programmes a whole host of events dedicated to ‘The Art of Writing and

Ben Okri

Politics of Publishing’, this is everything from expert panel discussions on particular genres, to writing workshops and insider information from publishers and literary agents. This year the strand will feature industry related events such as ‘The Politics of Indie Publishing,’ ‘Book Bidding Wars’ and ‘Meet the Literary Agent’; workshops such as ‘Opinion Writing’, ‘How Not to Write Bad Sex’, ‘Writing and Thriving in the Digital Age’, and ‘Writing and Publishing Picture Books for Children’; as well as genre focused events which will look at everything from crime writing and journaling to erotic literature. There’s something for all writers at the Bradford Literature Festival, whether they would like practical information to improve their own writing and to help them get published, or to explore new genres and hear from experts who are already thriving in the literary world.

Is there anything to enter (maybe a writing competition), if so could details be provided?

 This is something that the festival will be looking to introduce in 2018, however at the moment we do not run any writing competitions.

How about staying over for the whole event. Where can people stay?

 Combining a visit to the Bradford Literature Festival with a relaxing break is the perfect way to experience all that Bradford has to offer. Whether you want to escape to Brontë Country, experience

Jeanette Winterson

the World Heritage Site of Saltaire, or stay in the centre of Bradford to enjoy the city’s rich heritage, you’ll be spoilt for choice for somewhere to stay in and around Bradford.

We are proud to have the Midland Hotel as the festival’s hotel partner. Dating back to the 1890s, the historic hotel was built by the Midland Railway Company at the height of Bradford’s global influence, and became the natural choice for rich and famous visitors. The hotel’s imposing façade and stunning Victorian interiors have attracted guests such as The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and Laurel & Hardy as well as literary legends such as Bram Stoker. The Midland Hotel offers special rates for festival goers if booking accommodation for nights between 30th June – 09th July. Please mention the festival when making a booking.

There are a vast range of accommodation options in Bradford to suit all different tastes and price ranges. For a full list of hotels and B&B’s please take a look at the Visit Bradford accommodation pages at http://www.visitbradford.com/accommodation/

What does it cost to attend?

The festival is committed to making all its events as inclusive and accessible as possible, which is why our ticket prices remain low and many of our events are free. All our family fun day events are free of charge and open to the public, we also offer a range of free children’s events throughout the festival. Standard ticket prices for range from £6 for the vast majority of events to £10 for multiple line-up events. The only exception is our full day ‘Bronte Heritage Tour’ priced at £35 

We also offer discounted and free tickets to the following groups: registered disabled, over 65s, students, benefits recipients or those living in social housing and refugees.

Do workshops/talks fill up quickly?

Many of our annual events have become extremely popular and as the festival has grown our audience has also increased dramatically, therefore and we would always advise that interested parties book as soon as possible to avoid disappointment.

How much time does it take to organise the festival?

Organising the festival is an intense, year-round process. We often say that it’s impossible to understand until you have lived through a full festival year and seen the amount of work that goes on behind the scenes. We are lucky to have some fantastic sponsors such as our Title Partner, Provident Financial Group, and support from Arts Council England, Bradford MDC and the University of Bradford, without whom it would be impossible to create an event of this scale and quality. We also rely on a dedicated team of volunteers to make the festival happen, our volunteering scheme is currently open for applicants and more information can be found on the festival website.

Dates for this year and next:

30^th June – 9^th July 2017

29^th June – 8^th July 2018

Link to website

www.bradfordlitfest.co.uk

Email for queries

info@bradfordlitfest.co.uk

About Elaine Roberts:

Elaine is a member of the RNA’s New Writers’ Scheme and the SWWJ and is currently working on a family saga. She has sold short stories worldwide and enjoys attending RNA events such as the London chapter and our annual conference. Elaine is a great fan of writing retreats either week long by the sea with friends or one-day retreats with fellow writers in her hometown of Dartford. Elaine runs a writing blog along with writer, Francesca Capaldi Burgess called WriteMindWritePlace.

Thank you for taking the time to talk to the RNA blog. We wish the festival every success.