Celebrating my debut novel, Gods of Avalon Road, published in October 2019.
Happy New Year’s Eve! As another decade closes, it’s time to reflect on more than simply a one year journey. Ten years ago I was living in Cambridge with my writer-poet hubby, Joseph Robert. Back in 2009, my publishing journey had just begun: my short story, The Woman and the Stiff, was published in US Ezine Blood Moon Rising in April of that year and my first photographic poetry collection was self-published in June. From 2010 onwards, I published my poetry and fiction widely in magazines and anthologies worldwide as I built up my literary CV with the aim of having longer works accepted by publishers. This paid off when my first poetry collection was accepted by a London Publisher: A Model Archaeologist was launched by Eyewear Publishing in June 2015. I followed this with my second poetry collection, Chemotherapy for the Soul, which was launched by Canadian publisher Fowlpox Press in January 2017.
After a relocation from Cambridge to London for dayjob reasons, I found I was better able to promote my poetry collections through spoken word events. Part of my dayjob involved running creative writing workshops for teenagers in secondary schools across London and providing 1-1 mentoring for gifted and talented young writers and poets. Being connected to other literary types, both young and old, inspired Joseph Robert and I to run our own literary journal to give something back to the publishing community: Bindweed Magazine has been publishing poets and writers from all over the world since April 2016 and is such a success, we have been inundated with a backlog of submissions still to read!
While all this took place, I never lost sight of my main passion: to have a novel accepted for publication. Thankfully this happened after seven years of submitting my literary ms and two years of sending my fantasy ms out into the world of unsolicited slushpile rounds: my fantasy novel, Gods of Avalon Road, was launched by Blossom Spring Publishing in October 2019. Although my literary manuscript is still sailing the slushpile seas, I’m optimistic that it will be accepted for publication eventually. In the meantime, 2020 will hopefully be the year I finish another literary novel WIP and the fantasy sequel to my debut. Hope the new year will be a good one for you too!
Leilanie Stewart 