Bob Fowke, YouCaxton’s Managing Editor, will be hosting a workshop on self-publishing in Stafford Public Library on 13th May, 7.00-9.00 pm. With him will be Shirley McLellan of Perfect Proof, our associate editor.

This will be an opportunity to learn about all aspects of self-publishing from completing your manuscript to decisions about design and layout, through to publication and the final print-ready files. There will be a series of short presentations with plenty of opportunity for questions. If you have written a book or you are in the process of writing one, do come along.

Topics to be covered:

1. Editing and why it matters. 2. Preparing the manuscript and thinking about the niche, 3. Design, layout and print-ready files, 4. Printing, publication and ISBNs, 6. Distribution through Amazon, online sales, and bookshops, 7. eBooks, 8. Pricing your book.

Free. To reserve a place please contact:
email: Stafford.library@staffordshire.gov.uk or telephone 01785 278351.

Bob Fowke, YouCaxton’s Managing Editor, will be giving a  talk entitled Opium & Pagodas Aspects of life in 18th Century India at the Church Barn, Bishop’s Castle, Sunday 23rd February at 2.00 pm,  admission free.

In July 1775, Maharaja Nuncomar and Joseph Fowke were tried in Calcutta for conspiracy against Governor Warren Hastings. Nuncomar was hanged for a parallel offence; Joseph got off with a fine of fifty rupees. Two years later, Philip Francis, Hastings’s chief opponent on the Council and a friend of Joseph, was caught in flagrante with a ladder beneath the bedroom of beautiful Mrs Grand, who went on to marry Prince Tallyrand while he was foreign minister to Napoleon. Two years after that, Francis challenged Hastings to a duel but neither man knew how to shoot a pistol and Francis was wounded but survived. In the meantime, Joseph gambled away his second fortune and sailed for home, having sold his Stradivarius cello and complaining about the new-fangled music of Haydn.

Life for British residents in Calcutta in the late eighteenth century was incestuous but colourful. Bob Fowke explores some aspects of this exotic world in his illustrated talk.

Joanne McShane will be reading from her new novel, Honora and Arthur, the last Plantagenets, at the Border Bean café, in Kington on the mid-Wales border, on Wednesday 20th November at 3.00 pm. The book is a meticulously researched, fictionalised account of the life of Honora Grenville who married Arthur Plantagent during the reign of Henry VIII.

Bob Fowke, Managing Editor at You Caxton, will be  talking about Robert Clive and Shropshire on Wednesday 14 November, 3.15 pm, at Shrewsbury Museum.

Robert Clive is perhaps Shropshire’s most famous son after Darwin. He was clever, absurdly brave and absurdly rich and suffered from bouts of depression. Bob Fowke pieces together the story of his long and colourful association with Shropshire and examines the importance of ‘county’ or ‘country’ in eighteenth-century life.

Clive was born at Styche Hall, the impoverished family home near Market Drayton, and it was there that he first displayed his ‘martial disposition’. On his return from India in 1760, aged thirty-four and already famous, he returned to Shropshire, rented Condover Hall and became MP for Shrewsbury. The following year, he bought Walcot Hall near Bishop’s Castle where he installed his younger brother William as MP. Later he bought Oakley Park near Ludlow where his widow Margaret continued to live after his death.

Clive’s story started in Shropshire and it ended there. He died in London, at his house in Berkley Square, probably having committed suicide, but his body was returned to Shropshire secretly and buried at dusk in an unmarked grave in Moreton Saye Church near Market Drayton.

The Self-Publishing Expo of the Shrewsbury Festival of Literature is being held this year, on the 25th November 11am-2pm, at the University Centre, the former Borough Council building in Frankwell. Bob Fowke, Managing Editor of YouCaxton Publications, will be master of ceremonies. A number of publishing experts and some successfully self-published authors will be speaking and will be available to take questions.

‘You’ve Written a Book, Now What? Routes to Publication: an Information Day’ was a day-long workshop held at the Bleddfa Centre in Powis on Sunday 22 October. It was chaired by Caroline Sanderson, writer and associate editor of the Bookseller. Around forty writers attended and there was a series of talks and discussions by published authors, publishers, a literary agent and from YouCaxton, represented by Bob Fowke our editor. It was a very productive day and especially interesting in that it spanned the gap between traditional trade publishing, independent publishing and self-publishing. Bleddfa will be holding more workshops in the future.

Colin Sharp, author of Button Gwinnett, Failed Merchant, Plantation Owner, Mountebank, Opportunist Politician and Founding Father, published by YouCaxton, will be talking on ‘Button Gwinnett and the American Declaration of Independence’ at St Mary & Corpus Christi Church, Down Hatherley, on Sunday 3 September at 3.00 pm as part of the Gloucester History Festival. Colin will be asking how a Gloucestershire man became the second signatory on the American Declaration of Independence and his talk will feature local historians and members of the Gwinnett family. He will also describe how Button’s parents’ tomb in Down Hatherley churchyard was recently restored.

www.gloucesterhistoryfestival.co.uk

In the Shadow of Knucklas Castle by Kate Maclean, published by YouCaxton, is being launched at the Gallery of Fine Art in Knighton, Shropshire, on 22 June at 6.00 pm. The  originals of the paintings reproduced in the book will be exhibited and also some pottery decorated with images of Arthur and Guinevere.