Ten Reasons Why you Should Read Crimelines (and come to the launch)

1.  It is unique.  There exists nowhere else in the world another book of short crime fiction aimed at young adults by MA writers at MMU!
2. It looks fabulous - it is a thing of beauty with 21 original illustrations from art students at MMU
3. The stories in it are from our most talented writers.
4. Read it to find out why the MMU Creative Writing MA is the best!
5. The stories are wide-ranging from the comic to the scary and sad - something for everyone!
6. Every single one of these writers will go on to do amazing things in the literary world and you will be able to say you read their first published work.
7. It has been edited, proof-read, published and marketed by the very wonderful Iris Feindt and myself, her lovely assistant.
8. We have worked our rocks off.
9. Two very famous writers, N.M. Browne and Martyn Bedford are singularly impressed with this book - see cover quotes.
10. It is ludicrously good value at £8.99 and available from amazon.
come to the launch on Saturday, 5th July, 12.00 pm at the John Rylands Library, Deansgate, Manchester.

Better than sex

Ah what can I say about my new book? It has the smell of summer leaves or ripe corn and the touch of silk, the finest spun silk slipping though your fingers.  To touch it is to be reminded of all those childhood mornings when you woke up happy, just because the sky was blue and the wide, wide world was calling.  Visually it is a thing of beauty, and also truth, successfully combining the look of parchment, priceless manuscripts treasured and pored over by philosophers and scholars of long ago, with the jeweled artifice of exotic dynasties...
Did I mention that it's out tomorrow?
Also that you can read about it in the Independent 26th June 2014!

world domination stats up 0.000000000001% this week!

This is because I have put my bio on goodreads and the amazon site author central.  As my favourite mentee Iris has said, I have turned into a marketing machine!

of course, all good plans for world domination begin with alcohol and cake.  So I've managed that & am now feeling very optimistic about this project...

Ok - so copies of my new book have arrived, look amazing and smell even better!  Now I have to decide what to do with them.  Of course, getting rid of free copies is never a problem.  There is Amazing Anna, for instance, who read the whole book for me in its earlier and much longer form, believed in it & comforted me when I was ready to lie down in the middle of the East Lancs Road at rush hour, and read it all over again in its present form - she definitely deserves a copy.  As does Ian-next-door-but-one, who resolved my many computing crises, my son who also read it for me, the aforementioned librarian who will promote it on her Time to Read website, a colleague who is going to interview me in the Manchester Children's Book Festival etc etc.  See what I mean?
Obviously I will have to order more copies.  While ploughing on through points 1 - 10 of my world domination plan.
Current world domination rating 568411702 934970.
Somewhere behind Obama and Putin.
While waiting for me to clamber into the no.1 spot, you might like to check out www.myindependentbookshop/livimichael
This is a project developed by Penguin/Random House in which authors are invited to create their own virtual bookshop, put their favourite books in it and review them.  I thought this was a great idea - see what you think.

Hello everyone.  Starting to blog again - mainly about my new book.  Because it's been a long time since I published in the adult field and everything has changed.  Specifically how books are publicised and distributed.  Looks like the author has to do more work.  So.  As some people will know, I have written many books.  This is not unusual in itself.  What is more unusual is that I actually seem to be less famous now than before I started writing. This is partly my own fault for opting out of everything in order to write Succession. When I wrote the first version of my novel and couldn't place it I developed  a 58-point plan for the regeneration of my career.  Subtitled: What to Do When You are Down and Out of the Publishing World in London.  Admittedly only points 11 and 12 actually worked i.e. writing it again and sending it to someone else - but I learned a lot in the process!  Now I have a new 58 point plan which I will publish as I work my way through it, with the intention of seeing just what, if anything is actually effective.
Watch this space...

Test Blog

Test blog to see if this gets through to facebook like a nice, well behaved blog...