I’ve enjoyed a week of Fairs in the past 7 days.  On Thursday 14th, I went to The London Book Fair courtesy of Indonesia, ie I had a free ticket. I wanted to catch up with the team at Matador Publishing http://www.troubador.co.uk/matador and to see another indie publisher Fairlight Books http://www.Fairlightbooks.co.uk .

I remember, from trawling around the Ideal Home Show and the Boat Show, how exhausting these huge exhibitions are.  But I’m a ‘real writer’ now I have a book published and I’ve wanted to go to the Book Fair for a long time. I went with my consultant/editor partner. As well as a welcome coffee and cake, we found the Matador stand with my Ebook Manager on duty and chatted with sales and marketting manager Jonathan White about the benefits to a publisher of attending books fairs.

After a lengthy search we found the Fairlight Books stand but learnt, as I’d feared, they are not at the present publishing short story anthologies. Few publishers do.

Hope is not lost though. I have submitted 3 of my collection to an Indie publisher which has a good presence in the market. How my stories have faired, I learn at the end of this month. Ever optimistic, I am now re-reading the other 7 stories in the collection and do some, probably essential, re-writing.

On a much brighter note, I also went to the private view of the Surrey Art Fair on the evening of Friday 15th where daughter Alice Sheridan had a stand. Do see her website  to learn how she works and see her paintings http://alicesheridan.com/blog/