With World Book Day on Thursday, 2nd March, and one of Frost’s favourite charity’s competition, the Words for the Wounded Independent Author Book Award, due to close on 11^th March we thought it an idea to look at the help available to self-publishing authors.

While many aspiring authors still strive to take the traditional publication route, one I took years ago and still enjoy, self-publishing has its place, which is why WforW have set up their Award.

There is a ‘but’ though. Increasingly, WforW finds that some books entered are better than others. Yes, the idea has to be good, but so too the structure, editing, and the presentation. This is essential if one is to interest a publishing house, or, is determined to be an Independent Author. You see, your readers deserve a good book, in every sense of the word.

We looked at Reedsy: with registrations for self-published print and ebooks estimated to have grown 375% since 2010, Reedsy gives authors access to editors, designers, marketing experts and ghostwriters for their project. It also offers masterclasses and free courses on all aspects of writing and publishing.

This company makes the process of publishing a book simple and accessible for authors and publishers at any level, by connecting them with leading editors, designers, publicists and marketers through its curated marketplace. Reedsy also provides a suite of tools to assist the publishing process, guiding writers from the first word of their manuscript, right through to typesetting, publishing, distributing and marketing the final book.

So, yes, there are organisations out there to help the independent author. For instance, Frost recently ran a series of A Day in the Life articles about Troubador, a self-publishing organisation. I know several who have worked on their books, and published with them, to their complete satisfaction.

There are independent editors too, but editing is their only brief, they do not necessarily provide a package under one roof.

And what about the New Writers Scheme at the Romantic Novelists’ Association? The scripts are sent to an appropriate reader who provides a report that may include, for example, comments on plotting, characterisation and structure. The organiser will not only assess and advise on a manuscript but advise and support authors whose report on their manuscript indicates that their novel is ready, or almost ready, to be submitted to a publisher and agent.

So, whatever you are writing, there is help out there. Do look around, assess, ask questions. It might just help you become the best that you can be.

www.wordsforthewounded.co.uk

www.reedsy.com

www.romanticnovelistsassociation.org

www.troubador.co.uk

This is the most extraordinary book. It is one for every parent, and perhaps every child, even if they are over 18. Its sub-title is ‘Battling through your child’s eating disorder.’

Tracy Baines writes succinctly and movingly about her daughter, Neile’s, battle with The Bitch as they came to call the internal bully who was ruining Neile’s sense of self-worth. It was a battle they fought – the family and Neile – in a wilderness of fear and panic. Eventually, by hacking at the undergrowth they forged a way through to the light. It wasn’t a quick fix, it was slow, painful with many steps backward, but they found help: from therapists, from support groups, from the right people to be with, but most of all from the new puppy that joined the family.

Eventually Tracy’s family was lucky, they didn’t lose her daughter who is now well, a mother, happily married to a strong sound man. But they did lose that remarkable puppy, Millie, who inexplicably died suddenly and quietly as Neile found herself, as though the puppy knew her job was done.

Walking beside her daughter thoughout these years of despair and worry, Tracy realised that the biggest enemy is fear, the greatest strength is objectivity, (not to mention the family, and also, knowledge) It also revealed to her, her own frailties, her own battle with self-worth, the need to create boundaries herself in order to leave space for her own needs.

This was a road she and her daughter travelled together, but it was also one which drew the family; husband Neil, brother Nick, closer. They all found strength, and found themselves but not until Tracy finally crashed as life imploded around her.

Ultimately it was not just Neile who emerged from this chrysalis state, but Tracy, fully formed, different, ready for the world. It was a state that an alternative therapist used to describe Neile’s condition to Tracy. I feel it described Tracy’s just as much.

So, words of wisdom from Tracy? ‘Take comfort in the fact that you are not alone, that you cannot solve all of the problems all of the time, that you can support your child but you cannot fix them – they have to do that for themselves – and you have to learn to let them, hard as it is. Letting go will revitalise you and give you the energy to cope with whatever comes your way.’

Half this book is about the journey, and then it continues with the practicalities of survival, and hopefully a return to health, with a renewed stronger core.

As Tracy says: sometimes when it looks like things are falling apart they are really falling into place.

It will be the most valuable book you can read this year. Perhaps ever.

Tracy’s articles and short stories have been published all over the world in magazines like Woman’s Weekly, My Weekly, Take A Break, Best and The People’s Friend. A regular speaker at writing festivals, she also judges short story competitions and organises creative writing workshops.

She lives in Dorset with her husband and another, different, but much loved springer spaniel, both of whom are hyperactive and hard work.

For more information about Tracy go to:

www.tracybaines.co.uk

It’s Not About The Food by Tracy Baines: pb £8.99 available on Amazon. Also as an ebook

 Old Red Lion Theatre, 418 St John Street, London EC1V 4NJ

Tuesday 7^th – Saturday 25^th March 2017

This is one for me. I have a charity Words for the Wounded that supports wounded troops and this sounds most interesting.

Althea Theatre (There’s No Place Like) present the world premiere of One Last Thing (For Now), inspired by love letters from times of conflict in different cultures and languages. The production, written and developed over the last two years by Lilac Yosiphon with the ensemble, is a universal look at the language of love, the wounds of war and everything in between.

An officer in Russia cannot bear to tell a woman, far away in Wales, that her husband died. Instead, he writes her love letters pretending to be him. A woman in London awaits a letter that will never come while another skypes love messages to her boyfriend in Afghanistan. A soldier addresses his last letter to a former teacher who refused to join the army. And, at the heart of the play, is a story of a woman giving up her own limbs to make contact with her husband, a recent amputee, in the trenches a hundred years ago.

The play interweaves narratives from WWI in Northern England, WW2 in France and Germany, the civil war in Colombia and stories from contemporary Britain and Israel. The internationally diverse cast play British and non-British characters (regardless of their own nationality) and perform in their native tongue as well as other languages. This international collaboration aims to empower a compassionate and honest cultural exchange.

As a part of the show, and the idea that we can better relate to foreign situations through familiar ones, there will be call out for love letters from the Borough of Islington and one scene in the show will be inspired and devised using one of these local letters.

The play connects different aspects of war (the difficulty to describe the violence involved, the need to maintain an illusion, conscientious objection), reflecting on the different injuries which occur on the front line together with the emotional impact these have to the community at home.

…. War wounds never quite heal, war letters are never quite forgotten; both just get hidden away by old memories and dusty pieces of cloth, waiting to be found…

Performance Dates               Tuesday 7^th – Saturday 25^th March 2017

Tuesday to Saturday, 7.30pm

Saturday and Sunday matinees, 3pm

Twitter                                   @AltheaTheatre, @ORLTheatre, #OLT4Now

Location                                 Old Red Lion Theatre, 418 St John Street, London EC1V 4NJ, www.oldredliontheatre.co.uk. https://theatre503.com/

Box Office                              Tickets are available priced £16 (£12 concessions)

All matinees priced £10

Available from Old Red Lion Theatre Box Office and www.oldredliontheatre.co.uk or 0844 412 4307

**Notes                                      If you have a love letter connected to the borough of Islington   waiting to be found, please contact info@altheatheatre.com as one scene will be inspired by the local community.

And Lorraine Marriner’s poems do just that. Her words have been inspired by the music she grew up with, from Dylan to Costello, by the London Underground’s “Poems on the Underground” and now through her current day job as a librarian in the South Bank’s Saisons Poetry Library where she is surrounded by the words of the world’s poets.

Lorraine did, however, confess to getting “poemed- out on occasions” and going on “poetry retreat in that I make myself have some poetry free days”. Her poems combine comedy and tragedy, the two sides of the human condition, with an everyday normality that is both refreshing and stimulating dealing with the ordinary concerns and situations of life and finding inspiration in family and friends and in the landscape of London. Her answer to whether she is an urban or landscape poet was “Urban, absolutely … the ways of the countryside feel very alien” though living next door to Greenwich Park probably gives her the best of modern city life!

I read her collection Furniture after hearing her read from it and was immediately captivated by an ability to merge complex thoughts, feelings and situations in an accessible framework, almost as though she is telling a story. She is the sort of poet who invites you into to her word world and wants to share the experiences. In Furniture, her first collection, there is a poem called Thursday which is of particular importance to her as it deals with her experiences of the 2005 London bombings. It manages to hold together the everyday and the horrendous as they collide the poem, arranged on the page as a block of text “to look like monument”, is her memorial to the day.

The poem reminded me of the Auden poem, Musee des Beaux Arts, which describes the fall of Icarus as an event that happened on an ordinary day where ordinary lives were being lived. In her latest anthology, There Will Be No More Nonsense, she includes the poem When My Brother Broke which blends a domestic event, the breaking of a favourite doll, with the bigger issues of female image and expectations iced with a gentle layer of wicked humour as one realises the sister has the upper hand.

Recently Interestingly Lorraine has been “dabbling” in screenplays something I can empathise with- poetry, screenplay and play writing both require, I think, an ability to deliver a large picture in a contained space and need to appeal to a visual element.

I am sure, however, that whatever directions her words travel she will continue to pursue her themes with a wry sense of humour and a natural empathy. So if you got a Christmas book token spend it on one or both of her collections.

Deborah has written a fine tribute to the men and women who served in the London Auxiliary Ambulance Service during the war. They faced horrific situations in the London Blitz and risked their own lives to save others and help the wounded to safety.

Young, pretty and brave Australian Lily Brennan joins the Bloomsbury Auxiliary Ambulance Service while living in London. The Bloomsbury branch has a very social mix of volunteers. Lily is partnered with David Levy disliked by many at the station because he is Jewish. Lily and David become close colleagues so when David disappears in mysterious circumstances Lily suspects foul play and is suspicious of her fellow workers.

Lily has had an unhappy love life and is not looking for a new relationship but when she is introduced to Jim, a white Russian RAF pilot, her life begins to change.

Deborah’s book allows readers to feel, smell and realise some of the horrors and destruction dropped on London in 1940 during the months of the German air invasion on London.

Deborah Burrows was bought up and still lives in Perth, Western Australia. As a child she loved watching classic war movies on TV and reading. She studied history at University and also has a post graduate degree from Oxford University and practises law in her spare time. She makes frequent visits to the UK.

Published in paperback by Ebury Press on 23^rd February 2017

Priced £5.99

The jacket of this collection of poetry is jazzy, snazzy but with a sense of darkness, so is this what to expect of the ‘innards’?

God and Lipstick sets the tone. It plays on red lipstick, on numbers, on age, on a past where people were only numbers, without mirrors to see themselves. On release they were gifted a consignment of lipstick.

I happen to know of someone to whom this happened, on release from a German wartime death camp. That lipstick restored humanity to women prisoners.

An interesting poem, with shades of light and dark.

The Ballad of Ek en Jy summons up the South African night, and the disappointment of their lives. This seems to be a theme that repeats. ‘Where is God?’

But Red Lipstick and Revelations is also liberally interspersed with those moments we all know. In Intruder, dead flying ants are found beneath the sill, but how did they enter the pristine house? Indeed, how does anyone or anything enter into our world, which we think  so inviolate?

Silver Surfing: searching google for the one that got away, or just the one who was once important. You find that, like you, he’s aged, and you can release the memory of the glorious youth he once was. You can let go.

I think you’ll enjoy this collection. It’s interesting and thought provoking.

Mother’s Day is coming up. Might be one to consider.

Red Lipstick & Revelations by Jan Moran Neil. pb £7.99 available from Amazon.co.uk

Recently I went to see the national theatre production of The Curious Incident Of The Dog in the Night-time.

I went with my drama class as a school trip. I have to say it is one of the best shows I have ever seen. I don’t want to spoil it too much, but the acting was absolutely brilliant. It is I suppose about autism, though the author of the novel said that it is not specifically a book about that, or any disorder. It is more about being an outsider, and seeing the world in a surprising and revealing way.

That is exactly how the play came across.

The main character is Christopher, aged about fifteen, and I love how the actor portrayed him, and his ‘difficulties’.

The use of physical theatre made the performance unique and it flowed well.

I have read the book and I loved it, I was gripped from the first sentence. Not only was the play gripping but it had elements of comedy, tragedy and suspense. At many points in the play I found myself holding onto my friends arm or hanging off the edge of my seat.

*SPOILER ALERT* my favourite part of the play was when they brought out a puppy at the end, and it was the cutest thing ever.

OK, I have to confess, I have a granny crush on Gary Barlow. Embarrassing and I don’t know why I’m declaring it publicly. It’s ever since I saw him doing his Helmand concert for the troops. Apart from his own performance he was so encouraging and supportive to the fabulous Jonny and the others.

It’s not the sort of ‘let’s throw our knickers crush’ – let’s face it, my sensible M&S ones would drag him to the ground, but I just think he and his music are exceptional.

So of course I tore along to see a preview of the musical THE GIRLS at the Phoenix Theatre on Saturday.

The set was simplicity itself: a moving sky, changing from night to day overhanging a mountain of furniture which in turn became the Yorkshire dales, the flower shop, a kitchen. Robert Jones, the set and costume designer, needs a standing ovation.

Does anyone else though?

We’re all familiar with the story of the Yorkshire WI calendar girls who achieved something extraordinary when the husband of one, Annie in the musical, is diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, and dies.

The girls decided to raise money to replace the uncomfortable sofa in the hospital waiting room by pushing their own boundaries and insecurities – namely stripping off, placing iced buns in appropriate places and producing a nude – not naked- calendar.

Since then, the calendar, and the story told in film and on stage of these sublime women has raised £5million for Bloodwise, which supports worldwide research into blood cancer and supports the patients and families of sufferers of this disease.

So, is there really room for a musical? Can it be as fresh, as funny, as moving?

A resounding yes.

Tim Firth and Gary Barlow who were brought up in the same Cheshire village have produced a absolute gem. The music, the lyrics, the acting, the voices were spot on. I would go as far to say the production is inspirational as these women soldier on, bolstered by no-nonsense friendship, one stooping to the pull the other along, and then another doing the same.

It is funny, poignant, as mothers and children grow into the people they could be. The direction by Tim Firth is tight, the balance of light and shade (sadness and friendship) just about perfect. Or so I thought, but sitting in front of us were some of the real Calendar Girls, resplendent in nifty black frocks each festooned with a large sunflower. This is the flower John, the husband of Annie, had likened to Yorkshire women: blooming in their later years, and always following the sun, whatever life throws at them.

I watched their reaction as much as I watched the performance and managed to catch up with Annie, (actually Angela Baker) in the bar later – where else?

We talked of the production, which she loved for its joy, its poignancy and its music and lyrics, so wonderfully performed. Of course it brought back wrenching memories of her beloved John, but she knew that he would have not only loved it, but have applauded that ‘after all this time, the calendar girls are still raising money for the battle against blood cancer.’

For every ticket sold, the charity, bloodwise.org.uk gains.

THE GIRLS originally opened at The Grand Theatre in Leeds where it received standing ovations at every performance. Will it work as well in London?

Yesterday THE GIRLS brought the house down: cheers and applause from start to finish and a massive standing ovation.

I laughed, cried and left the better for it. On the train home, a young man asked us what we really thought of it, because he and his wife had thought of going but went to something else. ‘Shame’ we cried. So they’re going next week.

Michelle Dotrice is unwell with bronchitis so unable to perform yesterday, but crikey, Judith Street, making her West End debut at the young vibrant age of 67, hacked Jessie beautifully. We wish Michelle well, and an extra bit of applause for Jessie, who stripped off and looked great behind her carefully placed knitting.

I told him indoors. He’s hiding the knitting needles as we speak but I’m off to buy cream buns.

If there’s one show to see this spring this is it.

Go, girls, go, and take the blokes too. They’ll love it.

It opens on 28^th January – 22^nd April at The Phoenix Theatre 110 Charing Cross Road, London. WC2H 0JP;

Tickets available for preview now: ATG online or telephone 0844 8717629

In person from Phoenix Theatre

From 24^th February, tickets for the performance are on sale.

www.bloodwise.org.uk