Spotlight on the 2023 Writers' Prize Shortlisted Novelists

Happy 2024!

We’re delighted to be kicking off the year with a spotlight on our Book Edit Writers’ Prize Shortlisted Novelists.

For the next few weeks, we’ll be featuring the work of these writers, with a link to a reading from their shortlisted entry. We hope you enjoy them as much as we have!

First up, we have Bianca Aye and Grayson Anderson.

Bianca Aye is a British-Burmese (or Myanmarese) writer, raised on eighties action films and whodunits in the North of England. She has lived in London for the past decade, and in 2022 she attended the HarperCollins Author Academy for fiction. When she isn’t writing YA Fantasy or contemporary RomComs, Bianca takes long walks to fix plot-holes and creates wonderful disasters in the kitchen. Contact Bianca on: https://www.instagram.com/bmayewrites/

https://www.tiktok.com/@bianca.767

The City of Stolen Ether  

Maya, a mixed-race teen, returns to a secret, magical London to investigate her grandmother’s mysterious death. She sneaks around its underworld until a notorious crime syndicate starts hunting her. Accompanied by a motley crew of allies (and a boy she hates), Maya infiltrates an elite, dangerous magical school, and uncovers a sinister conspiracy. To expose the truth, she devises a scheme. But with enemies everywhere, one misstep could make her the syndicate’s next victim, or their new favourite weapon.

Grayson Anderson is a British born Jamaican author and poet. Raised in South London, he has spent most of his life writing. His catalogue of work contains songs, poetry, a science fiction trilogy, and an opinion-based non-fiction book relating to the idiosyncrasies of gender in society. He considers himself a student of humanity, culture, and nature. He can be contacted on twitter: Grayson Anderson@Capprona or email: Grayson.anderson.e006@gmail.com.

Wayne’s Night Out

Gavin, his brother, Wayne, and their two friends have pre-wedding night drinks in their old haunts around South London. All four are hiding key elements of their life. Shame. Despair. Infidelity. And in Wayne’s case, doubt. This night, each of the four are forced to face their dilemmas whilst in the face of their peers. None more so than Wayne. His choices have ramifications that affect them all. This is the first in a tetralogy.  

Congratulations, Bianca and Grayson! We hope you enjoyed their readings as much as we did.

Next week, we’ll hear from two more shortlisted writers so watch this space!

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Katharine Light’s Path to Publication

When I was a young girl, my dad used to make me little books of paper and I would love to write in them. In my teens these became stories I wrote for my younger sister about a girl who falls in love with the bass player of a pop group. Absolutely not based on John Taylor from Duran Duran.

Author Katharine Light, photo by Alexandra Vanotti

Later on I tried my hand at writing a Mills & Boons. At around 50,000 words it was great practice, but not quite the right genre. When my children were small, I did a year long creative writing course with the Open University. Two years later I did the advanced version. Then, working full-time and a busy family life meant I kept writing only sporadically until 2018 when I started The Novel Studio at City, University of London. It was a brilliant year with excellent tutors in Emma Claire Sweeney, Rebekah Lattin-Rawstrone and Kirstan Hawkins. Fourteen of us completed the course, meeting twice a week and sharing our lives through writing. They are a very supportive and talented bunch.

At the end of the year, I had interest from three agents, and signed with one at A M Heath. This is it, I (naively) thought, on my way to publication… Sadly, during lockdown, having worked on this first novel, Like Me, (the agent’s suggestions definitely improved it), she said she wasn’t the right person to take it forward. This was followed by a dispiriting lack of response from several agents she recommended, as well as the two who had previously shown interest.

Throughout the pandemic, the Novel Studio cohort kept in touch, via a WhatsApp group. Before covid, about half of us carried on meeting in person, and carried over onto Zoom. Fellow alumnus Laurence Kershook published The Broygus in March 2022, and fellow alumna Lara Haworth’s book Monumenta will be published by Canongate in 2024.

On publication, I bought Laurence’s book in paperback and was very impressed. It’s a high quality, professionally produced book, as well as a terrific read, and I began to think maybe I could do that too. Independent publishing seeks to emulate the traditional publishing route, with a professional book edit from the wonderfully talented Emily Pedder, Founder of The Book Edit, and a great book cover from designer Simon Avery. Caroline Goldsmith of Goldsmith Publishing Consultancy ensured the manuscript was print and eBook ready, and Philippa Makepeace created the website. My advice is to surround yourself with people who know that they’re doing!

There was one major hiccough. The book has always been on the long side, and when it was first uploaded to www.kdp.amazon.com, although author royalties sounded generous, the print costs on the paperback version were so high, they were almost entirely swallowed up. After a drastic re-think, I cut fifty pages of the book, and added those onto the beginning of book two, which has now become two books. The manuscript for book two has just gone to the editor. The hope is to publish both that and book three in 2024.

There was a point at which I began to feel that the traditional publishing route was becoming less and less likely. Now I’m in my fifties, I developed a sense of urgency, fostered by reading Harry Bingham, founder of Jericho Writers, who is enthusiastic about indy publishing. It has been wonderful to hold the actual book in my hand. We held in person launches where I live in London, and in Altrincham, the fictional Millingham of the series. Lots of kind and lovely people came. As the book is about a group of teenage friends who meet up again twenty years later in their late thirties, the events have been the perfect excuse to reconnect with old friends from the past. As we said, life is now imitating art. We’re doing the fictional reunion for real, just many years later…

Katharine’s debut novel, Like Me

Katharine Light’s debut novel, Like Me, was published in autumn 2023. For more about Katharine visit her website.

And if you would like to find out more about how we could help with your book, have a look at our range of editing services here. Or drop us an email at info@thebookedit.co.uk.