Blog

An award-winning film, co-written by Bluemoose author, Socrates Adams, is due to be screened at the Belfast Film Festival in April.

Shot on a budget of £400, Wizard’s Way concerns Julian ‘Windows’ Andrews, the world’s most celebrated player of an old, dated computer game. But when Compusoft delete the game, life for ‘Windows’ and his sidekick Barry Tubbulb will be changed for ever.

Director, Metal Man, said: ‘We hope Wizard’s Way demonstrates that if you have a good idea, some likeable characters and a lot of spare time at the weekends, you can make a feature film without any external support or funding.’

With good fortune, but unbeknown to the writers and directors as to how, they secured the services of Sadie Frost in a cameo role.

Wizard’s Way won Best Comedy Feature at the 2012 London Independent Film Festival, and is the 2013 winner of the Discovery Award at the London Comedy Film Festival.

The film screens at the Belfast Film Festival on April 14th.

Socrates Adams has also written a novel for Bluemoose Books, a humorous punch at today’s celebrity culture. A Modern Family features TV’s most popular car show presenter, who has the perfect job, but not the perfect family, which he watches disintegrate around him, unable to control anything that is not scripted.

Kevin Duffy, of Bluemoose Books, said: ‘A Modern Family looks at how obsessed we are as viewers and readers of celebrity culture, its all-consuming take on who and what we are becoming, and the catastrophic effects it has when we realise all is not well in the orange coloured world of celebrity.’

A Modern Family will be published on 25th July.

One of the great things about publishing books is finding great new talent and in Socrates Adams, I’m convinced we’ve found it. We are publishing A MODERN FAMILY by Socrates in July. His novel looks at how a celebrity TV pundit from a number one ranking show about cars, speed and swarfega, deals with fame and how he lives his life according to the rules of celebrity, or what he deems those rule are whilst his family disintegrates around him. It is very funny, acerbic, poignant and illustrative of what is happening in our celebrity fuelled society. Socrates has also written, along with fellow authors, Joe Stretch and Chris Killen, a film called WIZARD’S WAY, which has just won The Loco’s, the London Comedy Award, for best new film. Socrates also stars in it too. They had the premier at the end of January at The BFI in London. It goes on general release in April.

And so, back to A MODERN FAMILY. A very important aspect of publishing any book is getting the jacket cover spot on. The jacket has to ask a dramatic question and convey to the reader what the book is about. The Bookseller’s Association did a survey a few years back which stated that a book cover has a fifth of a second, 0.2 of a second, to catch the eye of the casual book browser. So, it has to do its job in such a short space of time and stand out amongst all the other hundreds of books on display, it has to be striking. We spend a lot of time with our designers, authors and editors getting what we think are the best possible jacket treatments for our books and we hope we’ve done it again with A MODERN FAMILY. We also like to think our books pass the ‘Strokeability test.’ Our books are never shiny, always matt, and feel good to hold. A book is for life, not just for a Kindle. Once the browser has one of our books in their hands and strokes it, we hope they’ll read the blurb on the back, then turn to page one and … BUY IT.

Socrates is making a film for the launch, which you’ll be able to see nearer publication. It will be funny because Socrates has been called, ‘A 21st Century Alan Partridge but with a beard.’ And well, he is just a funny man. With a beard.

The designer of the jacket, Stuart Brill, used to design for PENGUIN and so he has a legacy of brilliant designs behind him and here for A MODERN FAMILY, he’s come up trumps again with a jacket that I hope you will like.

You know what it’s like, you get very little newspaper publicity for what feels like an eternity, then two articles come along almost at the same time.

Late last year we had something in the Yorkshire Post, basically a round up of what we got up to in 2012. It was a great article and we were very pleased to be featured. That article explained our attempts to muscle in on the “50 Shades of Grey” action by announcing our plans for a biography of Christian Grey. This was picked up by the national press and before you know it we were in the Guardian and the story was re-tweeted several times with international interest.

Publicity like this is really important to a small indie like us. We haven’t got big budgets to promote our books and authors, in fact, let me re-phrase that, we haven’t even got small budgets to promote our books, so free publicity like newspaper articles and our loyal readers talking about us on Twitter and Facebook is vital. Thank you to everyone who follows us and talks about us – you are our marketing department!

A version of this post first appeared in the Yorkshire Post on 28th December.

2012 was a year in which whips and handcuffs played a major role, not merely in trying to secure an overdraft from my bank manager. It was the year of EL James and ‘Fifty Shades of Grey,’ and the role Bluemoose Books played in this worldwide phenomenon.

Publishing is fickle and when the royally related contours of one’s buttocks can secure a £400,000 advance for Pippa Middleton, I decided it wasn’t enough just to publish great stories from here in Hebden Bridge but to jump onto the bandwagon that was ‘erotica.’ So I sent off a press release to The Bookseller magazine and told them Bluemoose Books had secured the worldwide rights to the unauthorised biography of Christian Grey. They published the story and also put it up onto their website. Within an hour I had 19 European publishers asking to buy rights, a literary agent from Warner Bros and Simon and Schuster, one of the biggest publishers in the world wanted to acquire North American rights. The world had gone mad.

One problem, we didn’t have a book. In fact nobody at Moose Towers had read Fifty Shades. Hetha bought it and read it on the train going down to London whilst texting the outline of the story to one of our authors who fired off the first three chapters in an afternoon. The publishers and Hollywood were delighted. Now given the global interest, the print run would be in the 100,000s. We didn’t have the cash; neither did the bank manager who was still trussed up after a previous visit. I contacted a major publisher. Fifteen minutes later I got a phone call from the publisher stating that corporate lawyers from EL James’s publishers Random House in New York plus her agent were sharpening their quills, donning their horse hair wigs, ready to fire off letters to Bluemoose Books ordering me to desist immediately. The litigious vultures were circling. Apparently it was ‘passing off,’ i.e. copyright infringement. My dream of untold wealth had been scuppered and I didn’t even have a royally related backside to fall back on.

However, the reason I re-mortgaged the house in the first place was to publish great stories. This year we have sold rights to three of our books to Russia, Hungary and Bulgaria. FALLING THROUGH CLOUDS by Anna Chilvers came out in Russia this October, and KING CROW by Bradford writer Michael Stewart is published in Russia and Bulgaria next year followed by Hungary in 2014. GABRIEL’S ANGEL by Mark Radcliffe is published in Russia next year too. We had a national review in one of the broadsheets, The Guardian for PIG IRON by Benjamin Myers, a brilliant young writer whose book is being read by Hollywood as I type. It is a truly remarkable story of a traveller who hasn’t travelled; a young man fighting for his surname and his very survival. We are also in negotiations with one of the world’s biggest TV and film producers regarding STOP DON’T READ THIS by Leonora Rustamova and Stephen Clayton’s debut novel THE ART OF BEING DEAD is now a set text on the Leeds Metropolitan University MA English Literature course. All of our titles are now available on KINDLE and the ebook is transforming the industry. Our authors continue to attend book clubs, library events and festivals and although the world didn’t end on 21st December, Bluemoose published a dystopian novel called NOD by Adrian Barnes, a Canadian author being compared to the great John Wyndham.

Books are transformative and here at Bluemoose we’re publishing stories that are travelling across the border into Lancashire, down to London and around the world. We’ve proved you don’t have to be in London to succeed. Dr. Johnson was wrong; I tired of London and found the landscape of Yorkshire far more conducive to publish terrific stories and post deluvian life in Hebden is wonderful.

Good morrow. Have been resting the antlers. A lot has happened since I last posted. KING CROW by Michael Stewart won The Guardian’s NOT THE BOOKER and we have sold the rights to this book and GABRIEL’S ANGEL to Russian Publisher AZBOOKA-ATTICUS, owned by the chap who now owns Waterstone’s, Alexander Mamut. Penguin Books USA are reading KING CROW too, with a view to publish, as are several European publishers. Alistair Sutcliffe, author of THE HARDEST CLIMB was invited to Buckingham Palace and there is now a Bluemoose book inside the throne room. We have full CCTV access and audio contact withing the palace. I will of course keep you updated about royal events before they happen throughout the year. Antler TV will be fully operational by January 1st. WATCH THIS SPACE.

This, and my Republican views has nothing to do with Philips’ recent cardio thoracic difficulties. Several hundred thousand feathered friends, relieved that their festive tormentor spent Boxing day on his back and not armed with several shotguns, will be involved in a celebratory murmaration and fly past of the palace on NEW YEARS EVE. I am now reliable informed that The corgis too had a restful Saturnalia.

Alistair was on MIDWEEK on the 21st December and sales went through the roof on Amazon. 39th bestselling biography and into the top 200 bestselling books too. You can also buy ANTHILLS AND STARS on KINDLE. I’ve got into bed with the ‘A’ beast, and all our titles will be available by electrickery by the end of the year.

We’ve been really lucky this month with coverage of our books and authors in The Big Issue in the North.

In their Shelf Space section they asked some leading authors to recommend their favourite reads. Amongst the authors are two of our very own, Benjamin Myers and Michael Stewart. Both PIG IRON and NOD get a mention in this article.

In the magazine itself there is a Q&A with our Canadian author Adrian Barnes. Why not make a vendor’s day and buy a copy?

Even if you visit this blog irregularly, you will know that I am not one to mince my words when it comes to my thoughts on publishing. I’m also not shy and don’t confine my thoughts to these pages.

Recently, Galley Beggar Press, a new and upcoming independent publisher from Norfolk asked me to write a few words about Bluemoose Books – it turned into a bit of a rant.

In July next year we will be publishing a book called A MODERN FAMILY by writer Socrates Adams Florou. We are excited about working with Socrates and started the editing process this week. I’m sure you’ll hear lots more from us about him and his book in the coming months.

Today Socrates had some amazing news about a film he has co-written with writers Joe Stretch and Chris Killen. He also has a starring role. The film called WIZARD’S WAY follows two friends who play a wizard simulator game. The great news is that the film has just won the LOCO London Discovery Award, an annual prize for a British comedy feature film that does not yet have distribution.

You can follow the action on twitter either @socratesadams or @savewizardsway.