In less than a day, the polls will close for the booksoffice.com competition to have a short film/promo made about the winning book. The company will then use this to pitch to production companies with the intention of having a full Film or TV series made.
Since the competition opened, The Magic of Deben Market has consistently been in the top eight and recently been confirmed as being in the top five.
However, I am told that the votes are very close with the leader changing place several times in the last few days. Hence, every vote counts. If you have not voted, please consider doing so before 1pm GMT on Friday the 21st of February.
I have a chance, but every vote counts.
All YOU have to do is visit booksoffice.com and register with them as a reader/viewer, confirm the email address, sign back in and hit the ‘voting’ button. Then go to Crime/Thriller/Drama to place your tickets (votes).
Readers/viewers are allotted five votes, which they can place all on one book or spread as they wish.
So please head over to booksoffice.com, register as a reader/viewer and vote for The Magic of Deben Market.
If you haven’t read it, here’s what one reader had to say about it.
Patt O’Neil
‘Who knew that East Anglia had its own version of Peyton Place, a lovely fishing village named Deben Market? David Bowmore did, with his presentation of this quaint little town, its family owned shops, community center like public houses, and seaside charm. Like the aforementioned, made famous by a book, movie, and television series, Deben Market has all the makings for that and much more. He tells of the lives of those who call the place home, weaving their stories in-and-out of each other’s lives like a textile artist until the finished work is a beauty to behold. There are stories of love (with and without commitment), hatred, deceit, determination, pain, joy, mystery, magic, and death. He binds his work with a tale about the town’s most interesting character, so endearing, you’re sorry to see the story end. Even strangers passing through the town feel it’s a special place and leave the better for it. This is not a book for children, but any adult reading it will feel they have been carried away and want to go looking for the magic of Deben Market themselves.
I need your help or to be more specific, I need your votes.
My book, The Magic of Deben Market, is entered into a competition and the winner is chosen by public vote.
The prize is to have a short film/promo made about the winning book that the company will then use to pitch to production companies with the intention of having a full Film or TV series made.
There are less than twenty books in the competition. I have a chance.
All YOU have to do is visit booksoffice.com and register with them as a reader/viewer, visit the projects page and click on Project Alpha 1 to vote.
Readers/viewers are allotted five votes, which they can place all on one book or spread as they wish.
So please head over to booksoffice.com, register as a reader/viewer and vote for The Magic of Deben Market.
If you haven’t read it, here’s what one reader had to say about it.
Steve Carr
‘The magic of the Magic of Deben Market is the spellbinding way that David introduces each scene and the characters with amazing richness of language, detail and nuance. I would find it difficult to believe that David doesn’t know his characters in real life, and doesn’t live in Deben Market. By the end of the book I felt I had just read a non-poetic version of Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology, where every character had come to life to share with me their story, and there are a wide range of them, from the humorous to the haunting.’
Last week, I had the honour of The Magic of Deben Market being reviewed by Daniel Roche of Books and Buds.
Daniel loves books and makes a special point of reviewing independent authors. He gave a beautiful review which he backed up with a five star review on Amazon.
Here’s a snippet of the full review.
Daniel is a passionate reviewer, who is intelligent and entertaining. And he cares a great deal about the writing community. Please follow the link below and take a few minutes to watch the full review and while you’re at it subscribe to Daniel’s channel.
The year started well with my award winning story ‘Sins of The Father’ being chosen to be included in a best of collection from Clarendon House entitled Gold.
Soon after this success I submitted my first drabble to Blood Song Books for their Curses and Cauldrons anthology. It was rejected — it didn’t hit the right tone, or it didn’t convey the meaning well enough. Clearly, I had much to learn; ‘What’s a drabble?’ I hear you cry. In short, a drabble is a complete story of exactly one hundred words. They’re harder than you think. I eventually managed to get one accepted. Since then another fifty have found homes.
Two short stories that I am extremely proud of were accepted by Black Hare Press and Zombie Pirate Publishing. ‘Kruz’ is a futuristic take on the Robinson Crusoe classic and ‘Who Killed Panama Harlan?’ is a crime noir style thriller set post WW2 Britain and I think my best published short story to date. It features a main character who I have since written more stories for – prepare for more tales from Corky in the near future.
I earned my first payment as a writer with the story, ‘I, Dragon’ thanks to DW Brownlaw and PC Darkcliff’s Dragon Bone Soup anthology. This is now available to buy from Amazon. Only recently, I had another story accepted into a paying anthology by Zombie Pirate Publishing – Clockwork Dragons.
In March I entered a competition in The Inner Circle Writers’ magazine and was surprised to find that my story ‘Waiting Room’ garnered enough votes to make it to the second round and then I was even more gobsmacked when the next story, a western called ‘His Mama’s Son’, saw me through to the final. I failed to win, but the the two stories I was up against were impressively brilliant.
Throughout the year, almost a dozen short stories have been accepted into various anthologies or magazines – one for every month of 2019.
Now, I know you’re thinking that’s not much for a whole year’s worth of writing. Well, I have also been working on a collection of short stories featuring my character, Mortimer Marsh – Morty to his friends. He made his first appearance last December in ‘Surfeit of Death’ and then featured in a three-part story in the aforementioned Inner Circle Writers’ magazine. We are about 60,000 words into our journey.
The big news of the year was having my book published by Clarendon House back in June.
‘The Magic of Deben Market’ is a short story collection with all the stories set in the same slightly spooky town. As the reader progresses, they will realise that some characters form part of a larger story until we reach a conclusion.
It has to date received many five-star reviews – each one I am eternally grateful for.
Before the book made its appearance in the world, I had the pleasure of meeting Grant Hudson – the man behind Clarendon House, and a total gent.
Ideas are simmering for a follow-up to Deben Market.
Last Night I heard the joyous news that a story had been accepted into Paradox: The Inner Circles Writers’ Group crime/mystery/thriller anthology. It’s called ‘Corky’s Return’ and features my post war anti-hero, Corky.
Thanks for reading and here’s the list of accepted stories for 2019 and where to find them. 51 drabbles, 22 short shorts and one quasi-novel of 32 connected short stories – Enjoy.
I was left almost speechless after Grant Hudson wrote the following review of my short story collection, an extract of which is below.
The Mystery of ‘The Magic of Deben Market’ – What Makes This Short Story Collection Tick
J. R. R. Tolkien once said, “A story must be told or there’ll be no story, yet it is the untold stories that are most moving.” Part of the power of a good story is the background which is hinted at but never directly revealed. This is a large part of the success of David Bowmore’s collection of short stories, The Magic of Deben Market.
We are introduced to a collection of characters through a series of stories which are at first only connected by a common location: Deben Market, an invented small town on Britain’s east coast. It’s a satisfying enough introduction: the characters are rounded, believable; the dialogue sounds authentic; the setting adds elements of romance. But soon, strange things begin to happen. There’s a strand of tales based around an old fisherman, Moony Moore, for example: we meet him through another character, but pick up his story from different angles throughout the book. Suffice it to say, his story does not evolve as we might have expected — without spoiling anything, I can suggest to you that there is at least one twist in there which is not only surprising but apparently impossible.
Similarly, the other stories begin to take unforeseen turns: we meet very real characters engaged in very real problems, including an overworked chef facing alcoholism, or an unscrupulous and uncaring part-time worker illegally drawing unemployment benefits, but in each case the narrative unfolds in an unanticipated way. What began as a common thread, the seaside town of Deben Market, begins to look less like a convenient narrative tool and more like a living presence, breathing down the necks of its inhabitants. We get clues and hints of greater stories, some of which we only catch the remotest edges; we see suggestions of deeper implications and begin to detect a tapestry of events which lies just outside our comprehension as readers. Probably the most powerful of these occurs towards the end of the book, when characters who have already appeared on the fringes of other tales suddenly take on about as much serious meaning as it’s possible to pack into a short story.
The overall effect, as Tolkien states above, is a moving collection.
Some people may know that I attend a weekly Yoga class. It’s run by Sona Garner - a take-no-prisoners, hard-as-nails former English teacher and member of the Geordie Mafia - joke.
Actually, Shona is a very positive person and an inspirational yoga teacher. Shona has been very supportive of my writing and brought a copy of The Magic of Deben Market last week for me to sign.
Surprisingly, the rest of the group wanted to know more and some even ordered.
Here are a few photos of the lovely ladies getting their signed copies last Friday.
Since The Magic of Deben Market was launched, three weeks ago, it has received five 5-star reviews on Amazon, Goodreads and Lulu. Should any of my subscribers have read it (and assuming you have liked what you read), I would truly appreciate it if you would add to the tally by placing a review on Amazon.
June started with the news that my publisher had finished reading The Magic of Deben Market. He was glowing with praise, so much so that I thought he might have mixed the book up with someone else’s. The cover we had decided on a few months earlier – It is my own creation from the website Canva using one of their free images. Then before you know it, he (the publisher) says the preview is in his hands and that we should meet and have chat. We live relatively close to each other, hence I became the first Clarendon House author to meet the esteemed Grant Hudson.
A few days after our meeting, the book was ready and up on Amazon and Lulu, and folks on Facebook started saying they were ordering and then a few said they were impressed. It is a nerve-wracking thing knowing your work is out there and people are judging it. However, it already has a five star review.
Within a few days The Magic of Deben Market had entered the Top Ten in the French Kindle charts for anthologies – I am truly a best selling author now.
Aside from Deben Market news, Zombie Pirate Publishing also published their eighth collection entitled Full Metal Horror 2, which included my first attempt at horror – ‘The Butcher of Blengarth.’
The ICWG magazine came out with my western story ‘His Mama’s Son’ in a competition with four other very well written tales, each exactly 1,000 words in length. Reader votes will determine the final three.
Dastaan World Magazine also came out, which included my story ‘A Bit of Belief’.
Towards the end of the month, Black Hare Press released their first collection of drabbles – Worlds. A drabble is a story told in exactly 100 words, and I have five included in the anthology. I have had five drabbles included in each of their upcoming collections. It was a fantastic launch campaign, which saw the book reach number one in Australia earning it a ‘Best Seller’ orange badge.
To top it all off, I have submitted at least a half dozen stories to various anthologies and competitions.
Here's an excerpt from my publisher about 'Sins of The Father' - my first story to be accepted anywhere.
"I was first struck by David Bowmore’s writing when reading his story ‘Sins of the Father’ which he submitted for publication to the Clarendon House anthology Vortex in 2018. The story went on to win the most votes from readers and earned David the chance to put together his own collection of tales, recently released as The Magic of Deben Market. It was a deserved opportunity and has resulted in a great collection, but I wanted to try to elucidate for you some of the reasons why I think the story was so successful.
‘Sins of the Father’ begins straightforwardly as a confession tale, effectively asking the reader’s permission to tell it: ‘I will tell you everything, but please let me tell it my own way. I won't leave anything out.’ It’s a subtle thing, I know, but the remark ‘I won’t leave anything out’ is a miniature attention-sucking vacuum: ‘What exactly is it,’ the reader thinks, ‘that might be left out?’ And so we are admitted into the story world, which turns out to be a fascinating glimpse of late-70’s Britain."
To read more, visit the Clarendon House website or click the link below
On the fourth of June last year I had my first story published in Vortex. It did so well in the readers' vote that I received the chance of creating my own collection for Clarendon House.
I was honoured and lost for words, but had very little back catalogue to draw on. So for the past year I have been creating what was to become The Magic of Deben Market.
All the stories are set in the in the same strange town with characters popping up in each other's stories and some cross-over storytelling going on too.
Here's the blurb written by the publisher
The Magic of Deben Market by David Bowmore
"It's rare to find a short story collection of such power as this: adjectives such as 'haunting', 'poignant', 'vivid' and 'rich' come to mind, but these are clichés which fail to capture the enigmatic and dynamic magic locked inside this book. Bowmore weaves a complex tale of interwoven characters around the imaginary coastal town of Deben Market on Britain's east coast, but he does this with such skill that you'll immediately find yourself wanting to read these stories again and again. In effect, the book is a kind of quasi-novel, layered, soul-stirring, utterly gripping - at times, wistful, at times comic, and at other times breathtakingly suspenseful and supremely thrilling. Do yourself a favour: come to Deben Market. The magic may never leave you."
Writing is a lonely old game, making up these characters and worlds, and trying to make them sound believable.
In my small writing world, I never meet anyone at all to do with writing. In fact, outside my household, I barely know anyone who reads books.
So, it was a joy and an honour today when I had the unique pleasure of meeting the one and only Grant Hudson, of Clarendon House Publications. We only live about forty minutes from each other. And with my book ‘The Magic of Deben Market’ soon to be released we thought we should get together and have a chat about marketing and all other sorts of important things like signing contracts.
Like some sort of adventurer on a quest, he packed his bag and set off eastwards, arriving in time for lunch, just after second breakfast.
Grant, my wife Jai and I sat at the dining table and proceeded to spend four hours talking about Doctor Who, the joys of teaching, comic books, our individual experiences of our time in Australia, living in London, reading, and owning more books than it is possible to ever read in a lifetime. We ate sandwiches and drank tea and coffee (not in the same cup). And then started admiring each other’s books, the conversation went something like this
‘Deben Market is masterful.’
‘Thank you, but it wouldn't have been possible without How Stories Really Work.’
(It really wasn't that sycophantic - honest.)
We even signed each other's book. That was weird, seeing my effort bound and looking real. On the cover, the old man was looking me in the eye as if knowing it had all been worth it. What once were only flights of fantasy are now real and tangible. And anyone who reads the book, hopefully, will feel the reality too.
Was marketing discussed? Yes.
But more importantly, I met a thoroughly decent bloke who has a passion for what he is doing and here’s the thing I really want to say - one of my Facebook acquaintances became a real-life friend.
