My website has been shortlisted for the Blog North Awards!
The Blog North Awards “celebrate the best of Northern England’s independent publishing”. This website is on the shortlist for ‘Best Arts and Culture Blog’!
About the Blog North Awards
The Blog North Awards are part of the Manchester Literature Festival and promote blogging and independent writing in the North of England. They used to be for Manchester only, but expanded to cover the entire North of England in 2012. Over five hundred bloggers enter each year.
What’s my website about?
It aims to be one of the best sites on the internet for people interested in reading and writing espionage and alternate history fiction.
The topics I cover are:
- Espionage (and alternate history) novel and movie reviews.
- Creative writing advice.
- Publishing advice.
- Factual espionage stories.
- Alternate history articles.
- I do a bit of art too.
Some of my best posts are How to Start a Story , Writing a Killer Logline and How to Get Your Book Published.
Who am I?
I was born in Manchester, and studied Physics at Durham University. My successful consultancy career enabled me to retire at 35 to an island off Donegal and start writing my novel A Kill in the Morning. Eventually, I returned to Manchester, where I completed an MA in Creative Writing in 2012.
A Kill in the Morning – which was shortlisted for the Terry Pratchett prize and was YouWriteOn book of the year – was published by Transworld in 2014 and has gained excellent reviews.
You can learn more about me on my About Me page.
What’s the Prize?
Well, there’s a question – just the kudos I think, although being able to say my website is the best in the whole of the North of England would be a pretty good prize – even being able to say it’s in the top five is pretty good!
Who chooses the winner?
The judging panel includes novelists Emma Jane Unsworth and Wes Brown, Chris Gribble, of Writers’ Centre Norwich, Chris Meade, of the Institute for the Future of the Book, and Sophie Rochester, of The Literary Platform.
And there was a public vote too.
What Happened Next?
There was a prize-giving on Wednesday 8 October 2014 at ‘The Deaf Institute’ in Manchester. It was a good night, with some great readings from the shortlisted bloggers.
I didn’t win, which was a little disappointing. The joint winners in the ‘Best Arts and Culture Blog’ category were Marc Provins and Emmeline Illustration – congratulations to them, they have excellent sites.
I got this badge for my website too, which was nice:
Thoughts?
If you’d like to discuss anything about my website, please email me. Otherwise, feel free to share the news using the buttons below.
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