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Bluemoose author, Socrates Adams, has been named Young Bookseller of the Year at The Bookseller Industry Awards, which took place at the Hilton, Park Lane, London, on Monday.

The award acknowledges the talents of the rising stars of the bookselling world. Its criteria focuses on an ability to create imaginative displays, to engage with customers via social media, using the internet as a tool to promote the printed book, as well as customer service and an in-depth knowledge of books.

On receiving the award, Adams, said: ‘I feel totally shocked and utterly delighted to win the award. I sincerely wish I could share it with everyone at Blackwell’s Manchester.’

Adams is based at Blackwell’s University Bookshop in Manchester, where he began work as a temporary bookseller. He has gone on to manage the Business Centre, which works closely with university departments, the NHS, and many other institutions and businesses.

Sue Chapman, the accounts manager at Blackwell’s Manchester, is full of praise for their star bookseller: ‘Socrates is prepared to tackle anything. He’s popular with both staff and customers, and although he may sometimes have a dodgy taste in music, [he] is a pleasure to work alongside.’

The Bookseller described Adams as a ‘passionate bookseller and target-driven salesman – and he is a published author and award-winning filmmaker to boot.’

Adams’s next novel, A Modern Family, will be published in July by Bluemoose Books. Award-winning novelist, Jenn Ashworth, said: ‘A Modern Family is filled with wry observation, ruthless satire and, underneath it all, a real warmth. It is scathing, truthful and hilariously, painfully funny.’

The multi-talented Adams has also co-written, and starred in, an award-winning film, called Wizard’s Way. The film 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. You can watch the trailer for the film below.

“A Modern Family is filled with wry observation, ruthless satire and, underneath it all, a real warmth. It is scathing, truthful and hilariously, painfully funny.”

Award-winning novelist Jenn Ashworth on Socrates Adams’ novel, A MODERN FAMILY.

By ROSS JAMIESON

First, there is the thrill of being shortlisted. Then, months of media speculation teasing hopes and fears, toying with a career’s turning point. Then, at long last, having finalised the acceptance speech – just in case – pleased it balances enough modesty with enough confidence to be credible, the envelope rips open, a few painfully silent seconds ensue, and a brave smile masks the disappointment. Missing out on your first book gong must be an emotional blow.

Tom Hunter, the Clarke Award director, chats with Adrian Barnes during the award ceremony at the Royal Society, London, on 1st May 2013.

And yet, while book award shortlists are dominated by London’s corporate publishers, the journey of a debut novel – published by an independent in the North – making it onto the shortlist of a prestigious book prize, is itself a cause for celebration. More importantly, it might also be part of an emerging, welcome trend, of book prizes once again recognising the quality of independent publishing. The signs are promising.

When Canadian novelist, Adrian Barnes – who is originally from Blackpool – learnt his novel, Nod, had been shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, Britain’s most highly-regarded science fiction book prize, it triggered a remarkable and uncanny memory: ‘Arthur C. Clarke was an early hero of mine. I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey as a tiny, tiny kid, and it blew my tiny, tiny mind. Then I went out and read every book he ever wrote. He’s deep in my DNA.’ It was the start of a lifelong love of science fiction.

Barnes’s achievement is no mean feat. He shrugged off a record 82 titles to get onto the Clarke shortlist. He has received much critical acclaim, and his writing has been likened to that of JG Ballard, John Wyndham and Anthony Burgess. Sam Jordison, books journalist at the Guardian, said: ‘Adrian’s clearly someone to watch, having got so far, so fast, with his first book.’

But Barnes is particularly delighted to be associated with a prize whose inaugural winner, in 1987, was fellow Canadian novelist, Margaret Atwood: ‘For me, Atwood is one of those people from all of history you’d choose for a dinner party.’

However, despite the praise, Barnes doubts Nod would have been published at all, had it not been for an independent publisher: ‘Nod has a big concept that corporate publishing might find appealing, but it’s also a fairly quirky story. My previous experience trying to get published was of agents and editors being very positive about my writing, but ‘marketing’ being reluctant for various reasons.’

You can almost hear the sigh of relief, when Barnes goes on to say: ‘I’ve heard horror stories of writers having had their novels mangled by bigger houses.’

It is a sad but common complaint about modern corporate publishing, of marketing and accounts departments usurping and controlling editorial decisions. Publishing has become an incredibly conservative environment, where mainstream publishers are generally terrified of taking editorial and financial risks, churning out, instead, tried-and-tested story templates. Publishers rarely invest in up-and-coming talent anymore, resulting – somewhat predictably – in a scarcity of new and original voices. It is all about image, how that image can shift units, and how quickly those units can be shifted.

With this in mind, it is interesting to note Barnes’s reaction, when asked if he agrees with the consensus that Nod has pushed the boundaries of science fiction: ‘No. One of the great things about science fiction is that it has no boundaries. So there’s nothing to push. Just an infinite universe of possibility.’ It is almost too ridiculous to point out, without a hint of tragic irony, that this simple sentiment, and the liberating premise it offers writers, is utterly alien to modern publishing.

And yet, somehow, corporate publishers have dominated book prizes for years. However, three independents – And Other Stories, Myrmidon and Salt – made the 2012 Booker shortlist. This year, as mentioned, Bluemoose Books, of Hebden Bridge, were shortlisted for the Clarke Award for Nod. And several of the larger independents – granted, it is often difficult to know where to draw the line between the corporates and the larger indies – have featured on various shortlists in recent years, too. Could it be that the vacuum left behind by the corporate publishers, while they wage war over a tedious literary middle ground, is starting to be re-occupied by the independents? It is a tantalising prospect for all those who have stuck to their publishing principles over recent decades, in an industry seemingly hell-bent on mangling the power of the written word.

The exposure has its benefits too, as Kevin Duffy, of Bluemoose Books, explains: ‘As a small independent, we don’t have the marketing heft of the major publishers, and to be shortlisted for a major prize like the Clarke Award means Bluemoose and Nod will reach a much bigger audience – put us in the shop window for a while. It has done just that.’

Indeed, the publicity surrounding Nod has resulted in the sale of foreign rights in Europe, and a major Hollywood film company is currently reading the book. But, for Duffy, the pleasure of this success stems from the very core of the novel itself: its words, its values, and its vision – in short, its literary worth:

‘When you first read a book like Nod, and get very excited because the writing and story is brain-freezingly brilliant, you just want as many people as possible to share that with you. Getting shortlisted for the Clarke Award means many more readers get to hear about Nod, see the shortlisted books, talk about fiction and the value of wonderful writers who illuminate and explain our world with their stories. The best recommendation for books is word-of-mouth; and the Clarke Award does this brilliantly, by bringing a community together to discuss books, focusing our minds on what lies ahead.’

I doubt the same pleasure is to be gained from upweighting, analysing unit sales, and measuring one’s KPIs.

Duffy’s is an optimistic, yet plausible, vision of the future of books, of what books should be, and of how we should engage with them – a lost world reclaimed from the ‘market’. And with the power of social media to put us in touch with like-minded readers, the discussions in book communities could and should be bigger and better than ever before. Its social reach, its ability to give a valid voice to all readers, rather than the few selected to comment, is democratically empowering.

A curious battlefront exists, dividing book marketers from genuine lovers of literature. Publishing is a pretty straightforward affair, but it has been battered for years by business theory and jargon. It is a toxic relationship. Time will tell if we really will see a return to a publishing industry of independent words, ideas and voices. But, in the meantime, independents, press on.

Adrian Barnes graduated with an MA in Creative Writing from Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) in 2008. The outcome of his studies? Yep, that’s right – NOD.

The following is taken from an interview with Adrian by student journalist, Neil Harrison, for Humanity Hallows, a blog about the Humanities Faculty at MMU. You can read the article in its entirety here. [Updated July 2014 - the original article is no longer available]

Asked whether he was a writer before receiving his Master’s Degree in 2008, Adrian laughs, “Not in the ‘published, having-a-book-out kind of way!’ I’ve always written, and always been an avid reader but the reason I took the [MA] course was to become a teacher. I needed that qualification in order to do that and in Canada, with a family and other commitments, it can be quite difficult to do, so the online course made sense.”

As part of the MA, students are required to have completed a novel and in Adrian’s case, that novel was Nod. When asked about his approach to writing, the author, who clearly has more than one string to his bow–being a teacher of creative writing and also the proprietor of the Rossland Telegraph media outlet– says,

“I write fairly quickly, I can have [a first draft] written in around three weeks … I’m bragging a little there … but I re-write forever.”

The novel itself is an exploration of the consequences of lack of sleep on a mass scale. As well as the award nomination, it has gone on to receive critical acclaim, with The Guardian describing the book as “outstanding.” The premise seems inspired in its simplicity, so just how did it occur to him?

“I often have difficulty sleeping myself, right at the moment, for instance, due to the travelling. I think what interests me most of all is the way that tiredness, loss of sleep, can begin to affect the strongest relationships, even in a family setting. There’s a very thin veneer there when you begin to think about it; how would society continue to function? They say you can only survive for six days without sleep before going mad.”

Where, then, does Nod sit within the science fiction genre? Adrian largely dismisses the notion that the book is his journey down the much wandered ‘zombie’ path. It is, however, an apocalyptic scenario set “just a little into the future,” says the writer.

“I would describe the book as being in that sub-genre of science fiction, speculative fiction. It’s very much a ‘what would happen if…’ kind of scenario, in much the same way that Cormack McCarthy’s The Road is, for instance.”

Concurrent to the theme of insomnia, there is an etymological aspect to the book, hinted at in the title itself. The Land of Nod, whilst being an almost comforting notion for most who aspire to drift off to it, is in actual fact the biblical place of exiled torment for Cain—banished for the crime of slaying his brother Abel—which is described in The Book of Genesis in the Old Testament. Not such a comforting notion. Adrian says,

“I am fascinated with medieval words and their meanings, which have often come to take on different forms through the centuries. The principle character is an etymologist and the dual aspects of certain words, certain notions, begin to take shape and bear relevance as the events of the story unfold.”

As well as promoting Nod, Adrian is currently working on other projects; both fiction and non-fiction, and there has been interest from movie companies in the United States, eager to see his debut novel adapted for the big screen. Clearly, Adrian Barnes is a name to look out for in the future.

Neil Harrison is studying Social History at Manchester Metropolitan University. He is an aspiring journalist and a terrible guitar player. Read his blog LooseRiver and follow him on Twitter @LooseRiver.

Leeds’ Waterstones don't think much to being ‘completely out of the literary world’ either.

Read more in the Guardian.

Michael Stewart, the critically acclaimed Bluemoose novelist, has written the script for this Friday’s Afternoon Drama on BBC Radio 4.

The play, Dead Man’s Suit, is a black comedy about a loner who, having bought a suit from a charity shop, secures a powerful job and finds women take an interest in him for the first time. Does the suit possess some sort of supernatural power? Or is it something more sinister?

Stewart is a former winner of the Alfred Bradley Bursary Award, which is run in partnership with Radio Drama North and BBC writers room, to encourage and develop new writing in the North. The bursary was set up to commemorate the life and work of the distinguished BBC radio drama producer.

Dead Man’s Suit is Stewart’s third Afternoon Drama. His two previous plays were Excluded and Castaway.

The Guardian described Stewart as a ‘poetic writer … good at capturing moments of beauty.’ His début novel, King Crow, won the Guardian’s Not the Booker prize in 2001.

Dead Man’s Suit airs this Friday (3rd May) at 2.15pm on Radio 4.

Adrian Barnes talks to Ross Jamieson about his debut novel, Nod, which has been shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

RJ: To be shortlisted for an award with your debut novel is impressive, but, as I understand it, to be shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award is very special for you. Why?

AB: Two reasons, I guess. First, Arthur C. Clarke was an early hero of mine. I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey as a tiny, tiny, kid and it blew my tiny, tiny mind. Then I went out and read every book he ever wrote. So he’s deep in my DNA. Another kick to being nominated for this award has to do with the fact that the first winner was Canada’s Margaret Atwood for her great novel, The Handmaid’s Tale. Very exciting for any Canadian to be in such company. Atwood is one of those ‘people from all of history you’d choose for a dinner party’ people for me.

RJ: You have beaten stiff competition to make it onto the shortlist; the Guardian called Nod ‘outstanding’; and your writing has been likened to that of great writers, such as Margaret Atwood, JG Ballard, John Wyndham and Anthony Burgess. Do you feel as though you have ‘arrived’?

AB: Those are great names to have in the same sentence as mine and I’m a fan of all those writers, but it all still feels a little fictional to me. I’m not quite convinced it’s really happening. Seriously, though, I don’t think I’ll ever arrive anywhere. I’m much more interested in being in transit. I like to keep moving!

RJ: What is Nod about, and what inspired you to write it?

AB: Nod is about an insomnia epidemic that brings the world as we know it to a very sudden end. It struck me at some point that insomnia is a great metaphor for the way in which most of us live our lives—too overloaded with information and static. It’s one of those things that’s so obvious it’s hard to believe no one else wrote the novel first. I coupled that idea with my love of strange old words and began to imagine what would happen if the medieval and the magical began to overlap with the modern.

RJ: Are you an insomniac?

AB: At times. It comes and goes. Usually is comes when I get too busy! So Nod is a kind of medicine I’ve prescribed for myself. If the book has a message it’s ‘slow down and shut up’, which is something I’m working on in my life.

RJ: Critics have been very complimentary about Nod, with some suggesting you have pushed the boundaries of the science fiction genre. Would you agree with that?

AB: No. One of the great things about science fiction is that it has no boundaries. So there’s nothing to push. Just an infinite universe of possibility. We live in a time when things are changing so rapidly that there’s very little present—it’s mostly all future. And so we generate literature that attempts to aid us in choosing between various imminent tomorrows. Utopias push us toward certain destinations while dystopias like Nod try to wave us away from others.

RJ: Looking at the Clarke Award shortlist, it is very noticeable that Bluemoose Books is the only independent publisher to make it on there. Today’s mainstream publishing industry is very fearful of risk, both in financial terms and in taking on unknown authors. Do you think a mainstream publisher would have published Nod?

AB: Probably not. Nod has a ‘big concept’ that corporate publishing might find appealing but it’s also a fairly quirky story. My previous experience trying to get published was of agents and editors being very positive about my writing but ‘marketing’ being reluctant for various reasons. The great thing about my publisher, Kevin Duffy, was that he simply read the book, liked it, and asked to publish it. My jaw almost fell off. To think it could be that simple.

So when Kevin made the offer I just accepted on the strength of that simplicity. I haven’t been disappointed. Nod has consistently been treated with care and respect by the folks at Bluemoose whereas I’ve heard horror stories of writers having had their novels mangled by bigger houses.

RJ: I understand you will be flying to London from Vancouver to attend the Clarke Award ceremony, which takes place on 1st May. Have you already written and memorised your acceptance speech? If not – be honest – have you at least been acting out the scenario in your head?

AB: Now you’re making me nervous! No, the bald, bland truth is that I haven’t even thought about it. It doesn’t even seem real that I’m nominated, let alone that I might win. Jeez. But I’m a blabbermouth by trade, so if it comes down to it I’m sure I’ll manage to cobble a few words together.

RJ: What can Adrian Barnes’s growing readership look forward to reading next?

AB: I have a second novel, Neverhasbeen, which is set to come out with Bluemoose next spring. It’s about the intersection of personal and global crises in a tragicomic setting. I wouldn’t call it science fiction, though it does take place about two weeks in the future—in a world that’s screwed about one and a half turns more tightly than ours. Beyond that, I’m currently working on a project that’s probably more surrealism than science fiction—a comic novel about a guy whose life slowly turns into a Dickens novel.

The winner of the Clarke Award will be announced at the Royal Society, London, on Wednesday 1st May.

The following feature appeared on the Guardian’s The Northerner blog. It was written by Ross Jamieson, the Bluemoose online editor, in reaction to Granta magazine editor’s comments that Leeds is ‘completely out of the literary world.’

It was supposed to be a day to showcase Britain’s fresh crop of literary talent. A golden opportunity to celebrate our cultural diversity; raise a cheer for gender equality; marvel at how far we have come; and show the world a liberal democracy at work. It was the day Granta announced the 2013 Best of Young British Novelists. Then the editor said something…

It reads, at first, like a slip of the tongue; a tongue whose owner probably hopes no-one notices, but who is not too concerned should anyone do so. It is a split-second blip. The public mask momentarily slips off… And yet, rereading it, over and again, it still reads as a slip and a blip, but is embarrassingly revealing, incredibly offensive, and casts a gloomy cloud over everything we were just celebrating.

The problem arose when John Freeman, Granta’s American editor, commented on Sunjeev Sahota’s inclusion on the list: ‘[Sahota] had never read a novel until he was 18 – until he bought Midnight’s Children at Heathrow. He studied maths, he works in marketing and finance; he lives in Leeds, completely out of the literary world.’

By highlighting everything that is un-literary about Sahota’s background, Freeman was attempting to make all the more remarkable his literary achievements. The problem with this strategy is that Freeman would inevitably sound pompous and snobbish: in childhood and adolescence, Sahota was poorly-read; maths, with its love of numbers, is alien to the craftsmanship of the wordsmith; he works in marketing and finance, whatever they are; and he was so culturally uncouth he even bought a modern classic from – of all the blasphemously un-literary of places – an airport.

And then, the slip, the blip, the quote’s venomous tail: ‘he lives in Leeds, completely out of the literary world.’

Surely Freeman was just being clumsy. He does not really mean that Leeds is completely out of the literary world. Perhaps he means, Leeds, completely out of the literary world, is not an international centre of publishing, like London? Perhaps.

The more I read it, the clearer it says: Leeds is un-literary, it does not register on the literary landscape, and it is remarkable that anyone from Leeds could possibly produce anything literary at all. Sahota is an outsider, who has been welcomed, initiated and accepted into the literary world. And that is the crux. Freeman’s words ooze insular imagery – of within and without – the literary circle. It is the view from literature’s headquarters.

I am not sure what the likes of Alan Bennett, Tony Harrison, David Peace (from the 2003 Granta list), et al. would make of Freeman’s slip, but I am quite sure that a logical, rational definition of ‘literary world’ would be anywhere where people read. And yes, people in the North can, and do, read. But Leeds, completely out of the literary world, might as well be a dark and dusty crater on the far side of the moon.

There is nothing new about London-centric literary snobbery. But there is something deeply troubling about an organisation which, when declaring the brilliance of British literature’s multiculturalism, its progressiveness, its ability to reflect society, goes on to exclude others in a crass, tribal comment.

The Granta list has, for the first time, a majority-female contingent, and is breathtakingly diverse and truly global, an honest reflection of British history and how far we have come in striving towards equality. It is not perfect, but it is progress. Indeed, from within the walls of the literary world, Freeman said: ‘the novel has a bold, brilliant future in Britain.’ Presumably, being completely out of the literary world, this truism excludes Leeds. And it does make me wonder from what distance other northern towns and cities orbit the literary world. Pluto’s relationship to the sun might be comparable. After all, Pluto isn’t even a proper planet.

And yet, not far from Leeds – just a sheep’s hop over hill and dale – nestled in the Calder Valley, is a little town called Hebden Bridge. Remarkably, this far out of the literary world, a publisher is based here. Recently ditching chalk and slate in favour of the most modern and technological of reading devices, paper, Bluemoose Books appears to be doing something right. Lurking in this far-flung outpost, it might come as a surprise to learn that Bluemoose has gone international. They signed the Canadian novelist, Adrian Barnes, whose debut novel Nod has been shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, Britain’s most prestigious science fiction book prize. Bluemoose is the only independent publisher to make it onto the shortlist. It is an impressive achievement.

The publishing premise at Bluemoose appears simple, but successful. As Barnes says: ‘My previous experience trying to get published was of agents and editors being very positive about my writing, but ‘marketing’ being reluctant for various reasons. The great thing about [Bluemoose] was that [they] simply read the book, liked it, and asked to publish it. My jaw almost fell off. To think it could be that simple.

‘So when [Bluemoose] made the offer I just accepted on the strength of that simplicity. I haven’t been disappointed. Nod has consistently been treated with care and respect by the folks at Bluemoose, whereas I’ve heard horror stories of writers having had their novels mangled by bigger houses.’

It is a refreshing approach to publishing, in sharp contrast to the formulaic and predictable output from within the literary world. Kevin Duffy, co-founder of Bluemoose Books, explains: ‘The champagne and peanut trailers of Hampstead and Highgate are always trying to discover the new great hope, and it is this insular and myopic metropolitan view of what literature is, or should be, that blinkers what is published and reviewed. When big money advances are thrown at wunderkinds and celebrities, usually unearned, then the literary ringmasters have to keep spinning in order that those writers they’ve heavily backed keep getting their gongs and the media attention that follows. J B Priestley had it nailed, when he said, “There is something shameful about praise, that soft southern trick.”’

We live in an age where organisations pump out and project their desired image – images which carry messages that cannot realistically carry the opinions and beliefs of all those who do the pumping and projecting. Be careful what you say; you might reveal what you really think. But if that is the future of publishing, then perhaps Bluemoose will do better to stay completely out of the literary world. The view looks good from their northern literary outpost.