Caroline Hardaker

Book Publishing: Interview with a poetry editor

What does a book editor do? And could you be helped by having one? It wasn’t too long ago I finished editing my first full-length poetry collection Little Quakes Every Day. As ever, Valley Press sourced the perfect editor to work with me to make the collection the best it can be, from the ordering…

Folk Tales is happening – LIVE

What do you get if you bring together a poet, an animator, a composer, a soprano, a violinist, a theatrical director, and a whole bunch of commissioned tree stumps? Folk Tales – that’s what! Check out the glorious artwork! I’m getting this printed to frame at home. It’s so beautiful. I’ve getting more and more…

How I’m de-tangling my narrative knots

I posted on Twitter recently (do you follow me on Twitter? Here’s the link if you don’t!) about how I’ve been really struggling with concentration lately. Usually, I’m good at compartmentalising life – switching from thing to thing and concentrating on that sole thing at once. But recently… Well… Nope. Not sure whether it’s the…

What happens when you pre-order a book?

It’s time for some EXCELLENT news! Ever thought that one minute something seems like a lifetime away, and the next – it’s on your doorstep? Well, it looks like my first full poetry collection is available for pre-order! I can’t believe it’s officially launched in just a few months. Unreal. Pre-orders help authors and publishers…

Join us – Folk Tales Fundraising Concert

I recently had some awesome news! The librettist work I’ve been doing with composer Charlotte Marlow has recently been programmed for the Tête à Tête Opera Festival in September – a hugely fun festival bursting with really weird music and modern opera. Our song cycle, ‘Folk Tales’, is a staged song cycle for soprano and…

Little Quakes Every Day – cover reveal

It’s time to reveal the cover for my second poetry collection! Get ready… Ta da! We couldn’t decide on a colour for a while, and actually took it to Twitter and a couple of other platforms to see what the public thought and the results were so interesting! Overall it was a close tie between…

Cake and catch-up during Lockdown

Got a cup of something? Tea, or something stronger? Have some cake. I just baked it yesterday. I dropped in too much vanilla essence and had to substitute the self-raising flour… But it’s still good, I promise. Hasn’t this strange period felt like it’s lasted forever? We’ve been in pretty much total lockdown since March,…

Composite Creatures – my debut novel in 2021

The cat is OFFICIALLY out of the bag! I couldn’t be more thrilled to announce that my debut novel, Composite Creatures, will be published by Angry Robot on May 11th 2021. I’ve been keeping my lip buttoned on this one since the beginning of the year, but now that it’s out there in The Bookseller,…

Everything you need to know about using beta readers

I’m getting very close now to the point when I’ll send my current book out to a motley gang of beta readers (you know who you are!), and I have to wait for their feedback. It’s make or break time. I never used to understand how important this part of the process was. I wasn’t…

Doldrums, goose, multiverse, crow

Do you have any favourite words? There must be research out there to say why we love our favourite words so much. Is it the sound, the tingle on the tongue, the memories evoked, or the possibilities unearthed? These are four of my favourites. And they describe my little world perfectly right now. Let me…