Little books - written by little people!

Graham Taylor and Fay Weldon

Graham has enjoyed an interesting and varied life so far. From being involved in the promotional side of the Punk Rock scene in London in the 1970’s, to becoming a policeman (not a natural progression), to becoming a vicar (an even more unlikely progression) and from there becoming a number one best selling author! What made Graham initially put pen to paper?

“A frustration with what was being published at the time.” he says. And Graham believed he could do better, a thought that probably many of us have had ourselves.
From this premise Graham wrote “Shadowmancer”, a gripping tale that takes the reader into a world packed full of history, folklore, magic, and smuggling. Faber and Faber paid Graham £3.5 million for the publishing rights to Shadowmancer and his next six books after strong sales from his own self-published books and the film rights were sold for an additional £2.5 million. Shadowmancer went on to be on the top of the British book charts for an amazing 15 weeks. Not bad for a self-published, first time author!

The Times newspaper described his book “Shadowmancer” as “The biggest event in children’s fiction since Harry Potter.”

We are privileged that Graham has agreed to become a director of Grosvenor House Publishing Ltd. and lend his invaluable experiences and knowledge to help new authors to become published including little people!

GP Taylor

Novelist, playwright and screenwriter Fay Weldon was born on 22 September 1931. She was brought up in New Zealand and returned to the United Kingdom when she was ten. She read Economics and Psychology at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, and worked briefly for the Foreign Office in London, then as a journalist, before beginning a successful career as an advertising copywriter. She gave up her career in advertising, and began to write full-time. Her first novel, The Fat Woman's Joke, was published in 1967.
Fay Weldon is a former member of both the Arts Council literary panel and the film and video panel of Greater London Arts. She was Chair of the Judges for the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1983, and received an honorary doctorate from the University of St Andrews in 1990. She was awarded a CBE in 2001. Fay Weldon's work includes over twenty novels, five collections of short stories, several children's books, non-fiction books, magazine articles and a number of plays written for television, radio and the stage, including the pilot episode for the television series Upstairs Downstairs. Much of her fiction explores issues surrounding women's relationships with men, children, parents and each other, including the novels Down Among the Women (1971), Female Friends (1975), Praxis (1978) (shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction), The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (1983), The Cloning of Joanna May (1989), and Wicked Women (1995), which won the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award. Her 1997 novel Big Women was based on the events surrounding the creation of the feminist publishing house Virago. Other novels include Puffball (1980), The President's Child (1982), The Rules of Life (1987), The Hearts and Lives of Men (1987) and Rhode Island Blues (2000), the story of a young woman and her grandmother, an 83-year-old with a strong appetite for life. A new collection of short stories, Nothing to Wear and Nowhere to Hide, was published in September 2002. In her novel, Mantrapped (2004), the heroine wakes up to discover that she is a man.

Fay Weldon lives in London. Her memoir, Auto Da Fay, was published in 2002. Her most recent books are What Makes Women Happy (2006), a book of non-fiction; and The Spa Decameron (2007), about ten women who meet at a health spa and tell the stories of their lives.

We are proud that Fay speaks highly of our Little Books and she recently commented to us that they were, “an excellent way of harnessing the creative energy of young minds. Not only do the children have the fun of writing, they actually see the published result, get feedback and please the parents - not to mention the school piggy bank” How true!

“All of the contributors should be supported and the parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents and family friends who purchase this book will not only help in the necessary funding for the school but will also provide a vital ingredient that your child desperately needs...... encouragement!”

“an excellent way of harnessing the creative energy of young minds. Not only do the children have the fun of writing, they actually see the published result, get feedback and please the parents - not to mention the school piggy bank”

FAY WELDON