Improbable Press Blog — Janet Anderton Art

So this year I interviewed a couple fandom and book writers about acting. Or rather, acting out. Fic and fiction writers Verity Burns, Narrelle M Harris, and Jamie Ashbird talked briefly with me about how acting and reading their stories out makes their stories better. ATLIN MERRICK: So you three have written a lot of fic, as well as fiction for Improbable Press in our A Murmuring of Bees, and when I asked you after that about how you went about writing, all three of you surprised me in having a similar opinion on how pretending has helped you be...

I got a good rejection from an agent last week. "Nope, we don't want this script. But try with something else in a couple months." It's great because they liked me enough to encourage, it sucks because they said no. If you're like me, if you're like most writers I know, know this: You're going to get rejected. You're going to get a lot of emails and mails and to-your-face words that say "Sorry, this isn't what we're looking for" and I'm pretty sure at no time is that going to be less than really hard. Hollow-in-the-belly hard. If-I-was-any-good-they-wouldn't-have-said-no-so-I-must-suck hard....

By Kizzia Mildmay I don’t come from a military family, I didn’t grow up on or near an army base, I’ve never served—not even in the Territorial Army—and I doubt if I’d pass basic training due to physically not the best specimen going and, more importantly, being incapable of taking orders without question.   But I am, and have been for a very long time, utterly fascinated by the experiences of the men and women who serve Queen and Country in the British Army and find myself drawn to both reading and writing characters with military experience. This interest is,...

A few years ago, I was bustling about the old homestead, being all domestic (making dinner I expect) while an old episode of Poirot played in the living room. And then I heard a voice speak. It was a warm voice. Kind, deep, caring. Whatever tension was in my body vanished in a rush of affection. I felt safe and infused with a sense of incredible wellbeing and the knowledge that whatever might be wrong in the world would be all right. Naturally, this also confused me. Who the hell was speaking that his voice should reach directly into my...

Aranel Parmadil has been part of the Sherlock Holmes fandom for years, and has recorded nearly one hundred podfics of all sorts of Sherlock fan fiction. Though she's a tremendously busy academic in Wales and England, she shared with Improbable Press how she got into recording the stories she loves, and how she feels about her newest venture: Recording audiobooks for Improbable Press, starting with our first book The Night They Met by Atlin Merrick. Aranel, you are so busy teaching full-time in Wales and short courses at Oxford, how on earth did you get into doing podfics? I needed...