The real Virginia Woolf?

Loren Kantor has completed another woodcut of a famous author: this time Virginia Woolf. (For Loren's portrait of Hemingway, click here.)

To my eye, this woodcut makes the troubled lady look more peaceful and beautiful than most photographic images of her. Nice work.

Loren's woodcuts are available for sale via his web site.

I was never a great enthusiast for Mrs Woolf's novels, but Orlando made a wonderful film.

More Guides for Writers

You will be thrilled, indifferent, or mildly interested to know that I have now completed all seven volumes in my guides for writers series.

The previous post described number 5. Number 6 in the series is on Literary Agents:

And number 7 is on Career Planning.

More to the point, perhaps, there is now an Omnibus Edition, containing all seven of the guides, this time arranged in a more logical order (I hope) than the one in which they were written. By buying the Omnibus Edition you will save yourself half the cost of buying all seven separately.

All are available from whichever branch of Amazon you favour, and only from there, in Kindle format.

A Writer's Guide to Traditional Publishing

Just a brief note to let you know that the fifth in my series of Writer's Guides is now available. Title: A Writer's Guide to Traditional Publishing.

Here's the blurb:

This is a book which will tell you all you need to know about traditional publishing.

Publishing is a business which goes back over 500 years, and if you’re going to succeed as a writer you need to know how the business has developed and changed over that time. Otherwise you can make serious mistakes, with long-lasting effects.

The aims of this book are therefore as follows:

(i) To provide you with a short history of publishing, from the beginning of the trade in the late fifteenth century to the present day;

(ii) To enable you to understand how likely – or unlikely – it is that you will be able to interest a traditional publisher in your work;

(iii) To enable you make informed and realistic decisions on what sort of books to write, and how much time and effort you might sensibly devote to that work;

(iv) And, finally, to show you that there are now more ways than one to make your work available to the reading public.

A Writer’s Guide to Traditional Publishing is the fifth in Michael Allen’s series of practical, down-to-earth guides for writers; the previous ones deal with emotion, viewpoint, style, and success. This one will be most relevant to those who write fiction, whether short stories or novels – but non-fiction writers will also find it useful.

Michael Allen’s first novel was published over fifty years ago (1963). He is the author of numerous other novels and short stories (some written under pen-names) which have variously been published in hardback, paperback, and ebook editions, in the UK, USA, France and Denmark. He has also run two small publishing companies.

Just for the record, all the Writer's Guides have now been reduced in price to 99 cents, which is about 77 pence in the UK.