Hello from the Moose

By Ross A Jamieson • Published 4th May 2016

Bluemoose Books Co-founder Kevin Duffy.

Apparently if newsletters are to work, I have to empathise, get all your reading ducks in a row, and have a story that will have you laughing and weeping into your Sunday roast. And I do. It involves double-barrelled literary agents, the Ivy restaurant in London, and the second son of an Earl of the realm. But more of that later. Relax, I’m not going to go Full disclosure, yet. So breathe out, and read on.

At Bluemoose Books we don’t commission books via pie charts, Venn diagrams and long, long chats with our accountant. (We do have an accountant, but he lives a long, long way away and speaks Venutian). What we do is fall in love with stories: stories that engage and inspire and are beautifully written, when all you want to do, at the end of a crappy day, is disappear into a great book and be transported by words, events, characters and stories. At Bluemoose we have those books in buckets.

And we have had some successes, too. Our authors have been shortlisted for national and international literary prizes: BEASTINGS by Benjamin Myers won the Portico Literature Prize 2015 and PIG IRON the Gordon Burn Prize. KING CROW by Michael Stewart won the Guardian’s Not the Booker and was a World Book Night recommended read. Our latest novel, IF YOU LOOK FOR ME, I AM NOT HERE by Sarayu Srivatsa, when published in India under the title THE LAST PRETENCE was longlisted for the Man Asian Booker.

We’ve sold books to Hollywood and TV stations in the UK. Our books have been translated into Russian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, and Turkish and sold in 42 countries. We have just sold our first book in Greenland. Someone in Nuuk is reading a Bluemoose book, and that makes me smile.

We have achieved this, I think, because we have brilliant editors who spend a great deal of time tweaking and polishing these stories until they shine. Please say hello to our brilliant editors, Lin Webb, Leonora Rustamova, Hetha Jane Duffy, Janet Oosthuizen and Pippa McCarthy. Without their brilliant eyes and minds, we wouldn’t be publishing these great stories.

Happy reading,

Kevin Duffy (Bluemoose Co-founder)

Bluemoose Podcast

Listen to the Bluemoose podcast: Anna Chilvers discusses her fabulous new novel, TAINTED LOVE, and Kevin Duffy, co-founder of Bluemoose Books, talks about the book industry, and how independent publishing is the real deal.

Interview with Sarayu Srivatsa

Read an interview with the Asian Man Booker nominated author of our latest novel, IF YOU LOOK FOR ME, I AM NOT HERE, an enthralling creation set in postcolonial India.

Bluemoose Events

There is no better way to find out what a publisher is all about than by spending time with their authors. See if you are free to pop along to one of our events. If you can’t, sign up to our newsletter and we’ll keep you posted about forthcoming events.

Review of THE SECRET TO NOT DROWNING

Take a look at these reviews of a dark, insightful novel about a controlling, bullying husband, by Colette Snowden.

Forthcoming Fiction

Sign up to our newsletter and be up to speed on this year’s forthcoming titles:

  • TAINTED LOVE by Anna Chilvers (26th May)
  • THE LESS THAN PERFECT LEGEND OF DONNA CREOSOTE by Dan Micklethwaite (28th July)
  • THE CODEX EPIPHANIX by David E Oprava (28th July)
  • THE HANDSWORTH TIMES by Sharon Duggal (27th September)
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