Cornerstones Summer Updates
Read on to hear about the start of the Cornerstones Editing Café, a free editing event, the CWA Daggers Prize, and lots of wonderful author news!
Dear all,
We hope you’re enjoying your summer so far! It’s been an exciting month at the Cornerstones HQ – we’ve got lots of news to share with you.
Thanks to all of you who came along to the first Cornerstones Editing Café! It was a great success, and Helen found it especially inspiring. The next one is tomorrow – Friday 29 July at 12-2pm, so do get in touch with us if you’d like to come along and edit your novel. One of the team will be there editing alongside you and can help answer any self-editing questions. Moving forward, we’ll be running the Editing Café on the last Friday of every month at the same time, and you can register your interest by emailing Sarah at sconkerton@cornerstones.co.uk to join!
🖊 We’re thrilled to be hosting our second open day for our Edit Your Novel the Professional Way course. The open day will take place next Tuesday 2 August, 11:30am-1pm via Zoom. You’ll have a chance to meet the tutors, learn about the course, attend a roundtable discussion, ask questions, and more! Our fantastic guest speakers have just been announced on social media, so head over to Twitter or Instagram to see who will be joining us.
If you can’t make it, don’t worry! The event will be recorded, and you can email the team for a recording. We’ll also be live tweeting the session, so you can log in to track the highlights.
🗡 Are you a published crime writer? Do you enjoy reading crime novels? Authors and publishers have until 31 July to nominate titles published in the first half of 2022 for the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) 2023 Dagger awards!
The famed annual Daggers are the oldest awards in the genre and have been synonymous with quality crime writing for over half a century. Past winners of the awards include icons of the genre, including Ruth Rendell, Reginald Hill, John le Carré and Lee Child.
Visit the CWA Daggers - The Crime Writers’ Association website for more information!
🎉 On the subject of crime/thrillers, we’re thrilled to announce two recent Cornerstones alum publications! Both published by Bloodhound Books, MISPER and FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS are out as of last week. CJ Claxton, author of MISPER, kindly shared her writing journey with us:
It started in 2008 when I first used your editorial services. I was, at the time, a rookie writer, making lots of rookie mistakes! Cornerstones guided me to address those issues. A year later they gave me encouragement and invaluable advice with my debut historical fiction. In 2021 I submitted MisPer for the ELEVATE competition and again they gave me some great feedback and encouragement. Cornerstones have been super supportive and held my hand throughout my lengthy writing journey, giving excellent editorial services but also going beyond and above what's required of them. I will be eternally grateful for their help.
A woman’s life spirals out of control as she lives in fear of a faceless predator who may have already committed at least one murder . . . find MISPER online or in all good bookshops!
Can’t get enough of thrillers, or are you writing one yourself? Have a look at Alex Stone’s brand new blog post to find out how she landed a four-book deal with Boldwood Books!
I learned so much from his feedback. Annotated manuscripts with ‘describe this’, ‘more visceral’, and ‘more of this’, bounced back and forth between us. This wasn’t just teaching me theory and techniques, it was practical illustrations applied to my own work.
That’s all from us this month – thank you for reading along! As always, we love hearing about your writing journey, so do let us know what’s new with you and your manuscript. In the meantime, we hope you continue to have a lovely summer.
Very best,
The Cornerstones Team