After the Book Fair & Announcing Lotte and Teardrop
Our New Catalogue, The Wonderful Alternative Book Fair and Our New Novels Available to Pre-Order
It’s hard to believe it has been two months since the Alternative Book Fair, and just as hard to believe what a success it was. On the Saturday we had over 500 people visit the Fair and our Publishing Panel broke some form of record for a literary event with 120 people in attendance! But this wasn’t the Fair’s real success. We put together the Alternative Book Fair because we saw a gap. So many writers and readers find publishing an opaque place and earlier that week we had the prestigious London Book Fair which has such potential to bring people together. Unfortunately, with LBF being a trade fair, it’s largely for agents and big publishers and even us smaller publishers, let alone authors, come away feeling a little dejected. Therefore having a space at the Alternative Book Fair to bring together publishers, established authors, aspiring authors, and readers so we could meet each other and talk about the thing we are most passionate about - books! - was a huge win all round. We want to thank everyone who took part and we’re hoping next year we can do something even bigger and even reach people who aren’t able to travel to London. Watch this space!
And since the Fair it has been non-stop at Indie Novella. Available to Pre-Order now from both Waterstones and the Indie Novella website, we’re thrilled to announced the release dates for the first of our incredible new novels, Lotte by Martin Raymond and Teardrop by Sue Amos. Remember, subscribers to Indie Novella will receive their copies at least a month in advance of publication date.
Cover design by award winning cover designer Luke Bird (British Book Awards Designer of the Year Shortlisted 2021, 2023, 2024) Sue Amos’s Teardrop is the winner of the inaugral Watson Little x Indie Novella Prize and has a little bit of everything. Set in 1950s Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, it follows rookie female journalist Jazz Bartelot who joins the crime desk at the Colombo courier and is paired with charming, charismatic reporter Sonny de Roye whose star seems to suddenly be fading as his big stories dry up and he is more associated with late nights at bars and card tables. Teardrop follows Jazz and Sonny as they receive the tip-off of a body being discovered in a newly built reservoir on the country’s east coast. The novel picks up where The Seven Moons of Maali Almeda left off, introducing us to post colonial Sri Lanka culture particularly the bubbling tensions between Singhalese, Tamils and most notably the Eurasian Burghers who were most favoured by their colonial predecessors, and had the most to lose by the exit of the British. And for food lovers the descriptions of Sri Lankan cuisine throughout the novel is a culinary celebration.
Out on 6th September 2024, Teardrop can be pre-ordered from Waterstones or from the Indie Novella website by clicking on these links: Waterstones - Indie Novella
How much harm can you cause while meaning well? As author, Martin Raymond himself describes, the dead are without rights. Lotte is a story about stories – and why we choose to tell and not to tell stories of our lives. In 1933 Charlotte Raymond was committed to Sterling Asylum for what was cited hysteria, and within a matter of days, she was dead. Her story then disappears from history for the next 85 years. The children she left behind do not mention her name and it takes a chance encounter by her grandson, to uncover the story of a woman who history had erased.
Initially, what should have been a rags to riches story, Charlotte escapes poverty to reach the top of Sterling society, but her ambitions are thwarted by a well-meaning husband and societal expectations. Lotte is about grief, loss, and betrayal by those we love, but it is also a story of discovery, rewriting a heinous wrong and returning a voice to those who history have silenced and are no longer here to tell their story themselves.
Indie Novella was delighted to work with the frankly quite brilliant cover designer, Charlotte Daniels (As Young As This, The Crane Wife, Bad Relations) to produce a cover which fits such a powerful story. Out on 1st October 2024, Lotte can be pre-ordered from Waterstones or from the Indie Novella website by clicking on these links: Waterstones - Indie Novella
And to see all the new releases and the stunning collaborations with some of the UK’s most talented cover designers, we are delighted to launch our new catalogue, with our new novels set to come out later this year and available for Pre-Order now. Featuring the incredible authors, Sue Amos, Martin Raymond, Katie Mitchelson, Bernie McQuillan, Tori Beat and Damien Mosley, 2024 promises to be a truly exciting year for publishing at Indie Novella and you can download your copy of the catalogue here:
And lastly, we at Indie Novella are excited to make a very special announcement. As you know our core mission is to make publishing a far more open and accessible place and champion writers of all backgrounds to tell their stories. As the great Patty Smith once said, ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll is a grassroots movement’ - it is about championing stories and art from our communities and ecouraging everyone to be their authentic selves. This is how we define Rock ‘n’ Roll. And as such we’re delighted to unvail our new slightly more Rock ‘n’ Roll logo designed by the incredible book cover designer Samantha Sanderson-Marshall:
