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Editorial Consultancy Service

 Submitting  –  Feedback  –  Editors  –    Fees  –  Testimonials

Fish offers a full Editorial Consultancy Service, providing writers with feedback on their current work in progress or completed manuscript. We offer consultancy on all genres and forms including the novel or novella, chapbooks, short story and poetry collections and narrative non-fiction manuscripts such as memoir and biography.

This service provides a flexible one-to-one opportunity to work  with an experienced editor in order to get the very best out of your writing. The same editor will remain with an author throughout the entire editing process providing guidance on specific or general aspects of the work as required. 

We also offer assistance for authors and poets who are intending to submit their work to an agent or publisher i.e. help with compiling a cover/query letter and accompanying synopsis.

N. B. If you require feedback on a shorter piece of work e.g. a Short Story (5,000 words or less), a Memoir (4,000 words or less), a Flash Fiction (500 words or less), or Poem (400 words or less), please see Critique Service. 
For guidance through the process of writing a body of work e.g a novel or collection, please see Mentoring Service.

 

 

Submitting Manuscripts

Our general submission guidelines are:-

Contact editorial@fishpublishing.com to discuss you particular requirements.

Submissions to the Editorial Consultancy Service is usually via email.

Submissions should include the following:

A synopsis of the entire project (350 words max) including whether the manuscript is complete or if only sample chapters are being submitted. The synopsis should include:

  • Genre
  • Structure/plot outline 
  • Character outline 
  • Intended audience
  • Word count (estimate if it is unfinished)
  • Outline of any specific areas on which you would like the editor to comment

If you are submitting a collection of short stories or poems, a synopsis is not necessary however mention of any overarching theme or subject matter would be helpful.

Personal cheques in your own currency should be made payable to ‘Fish Publishing’. Postal Orders are accepted from Ireland and the UK.

For more information please email editorial@fishpublishing.com

 

Editorial Consultancy Service Feedback – what you can expect

  • To what extent has the writer achieved what was intended?
  • Overall comment on the standard of the work and what needs to be done to bring it to a publishable standard, e.g. Is the beginning engaging? Does the story hold the reader’s attention throughout?
  • Is the structure clear?, i.e. Are the component parts integrated?
  • Is there superfluous material? If so, what can be cut without losing the overall impact?
  • Is the writing convincing?, i.e. Is the language and style original? Is the prose fluent, accessible, clear? If it is obscure or challenging – does this work ? If strongly influenced by other writers – does this work?
  • Is the plot well developed?, i.e. If the plot relies on tension is this handled effectively?
  • How strong is the characterisation? This is especially important if the novel is primarily character driven rather than plot driven.
  • Is the dialogue realistic? Is it easy to follow?If written in dialect or intended to evoke accent, how well has this been done and is it still intelligible to those unfamiliar with the accent?
  • Does the ending work?
  • Comments on the freshness and originality of the work both in and outside the chosen genre.

 

 

Fees: Editorial Consultancy Service

  • Book Proposal Assessment for Publication – Agent query letter, sample extract (10,000 words) and one page-synopsis – £230
  • First Chapter (or first 5,000 words) + 350 word Synopsis – £105
  • Up to 10,000 words + synopsis – £185
  • Up to 25,000 words + synopsis – £245
  • Over 25,000 words.+ synopsis – £245 + £25 per additional 5,000 words
  • Poetry and flash chapbooks and pamphlets – please email editorial@fishpublishing.com

*Above 100,000 words, Authors are invited to discuss the level of editorial support they require, so that a price based on total word count and editorial service level can be agreed.

Please note that prices are in sterling.
For all initial enquiries and for a price quotation on the work you require, contact the Editorial Consultancy Service via email: editorial@fishpublishing.com.

 

 

EditorsEditorial Consultancy Service

NOVEL, MEMOIR, SHORT STORY: Mary-Jane Holmes.

A Forward Prize nominee and Hawthornden Fellow, Mary-Jane has won the Live Canon Poetry Pamphlet Prize 2020, Bath Novella-in-Flash Prize 2020, the Bridport Poetry prize, Reflex Fiction and Mslexia Flash prize as well as the Bedford Poetry competition. She has also been shortlisted for the Beverley International Prize for Literature and longlisted for the UK National Poetry Prize. Mary-Jane’s poetry collection Heliotrope with Matches and Magnifying Glass is published by Pindrop Press. Her award-winning pamphlet Dihedral is published by Live Canon Press and her novella Don’t Tell the Bees, is published by Ad Hoc Fiction. Her Lockdown poem ‘Letter from Baldersdale’ joins 20 other poems in the National Poetry Archive on their 20th anniversary. Her newest collection of Flash Fiction will be published by V press in 2021.

Her work appears in a variety of publications including Magma, Modern Poetry in Translation, Mslexia,  The Lonely Crowd, Prole The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Tishman Review, Barren, Spelk, Cabinet of Heed, Firewords, Flashback Fiction, Fictive Dream, and in anthologies including Best Small Fictions 2014/16/18/20  and Best Microfictions 2020.

She has an MA (Distinction) in Creative Writing from Kellogg College, Oxford and has been awarded an Arts and Humanities Research Council studentship to complete a PhD in poetry and translation at Newcastle University. UK

 

POETRY: Adam Wyeth was born in Sussex, England, in 1978 and has lived in County Cork, Ireland, since 2000. His critically acclaimed debut collection of poetry, Silent Music (Salmon Poetry, 2011) was highly commended by the Forward Poetry Prize. His collection of essays, The Hidden World of Poetry: Unravelling Celtic mythology in Contemporary Irish Poetry, which includes many poems by leading Irish poets, was published by Salmon in 2013.

Adam was a runner-up in the 2006 Arvon International Poetry Competition, a prize-winner in the 2009 Fish International Poetry Competition, commended in the 2012 Ballymaloe International Poetry Competition, and shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, 2013. His work appears in The Forward Book of Poetry 2012 (Faber, 2011), The Best of Irish Poetry 2010 (Southword, 2010), Landing Places: Immigrant Poets in Ireland(Dedalus Press, 2010) and Something Beginning with P (2004).

He has made two films on poetry, A Life in the Day of Desmond O’Grady, first screened at The Cork Film Festival, 2004; and a full length feature, Soundeye: Cork International Poetry Festival, 2005. Wyeth’s debut play Hang Up, produced by Broken Crow, has been staged at many festivals, including the Electric Picnic and the Galway Theatre festival. A member of Poetry Ireland’s Writers in Schools Scheme, Wyeth has been a creative writing workshop facilitator for ten years and has held workshops at many literary festivals all over Ireland.

 

 

 

Testimonials: Editorial Consultancy Service

. . . you were encouraging and helpful over recent years and I wanted to tell you that at last I’ve had a novel accepted.
Christine Holmes, UK

The Critique was excellent.  It was positive and affirming with plenty of very perceptive advice.  What gave me most satisfaction was that the editor really understood what I was trying to do.  Even if no one else ever reads this particular work, your editor’s sympathetic and constructive response has made the effort so far very worthwhile.  I look forward to further contact with Fish Publishing.
Jim O’Leary, Ireland 

I deeply appreciate the value of the constructive, positive ideas given. It has worked well.  Many thanks.  I am now tightening manuscript throughout to submit to publishers.
Hazel Menehira, New Zealand 

Golddust is all I can say!  Loved your comments, I see what you mean and am doing all you suggest. Thank you so much for your constructive, encouraging remarks
Laura Graham, Siena

I found the detailed Critique of my synopsis and first chapter immensely helpful and astonishingly insightful.  Despite the fact that this was a 5,000-word submission you seem to have an almost uncanny grasp of the way the characters develop.
Sion Scott-Wilson, Singapore 

I have finally worked my way through the critique your company recently forwarded, and wanted you to know how much I appreciate your editor’s wading through these eighteen chapters. The critique was both comprehensive and helpful. I agreed with and incorporated nearly every suggestion offered.
Although I only sent the first half of the novel for critique, the feedback was thorough enough that I felt sufficiently confident to send queries to several agents and publishers. If they aren’t interested, it won’t be because of Fish Publishing. Good job. 
Pat Shagoury, USA

Fish Books

Fish Anthology 2024

Fish Anthology 2024

Vivid, astute, gripping, evocative. These stories utterly transported me. – Sarah Hall (Short Story)

In the landscape of emotion and folly, Flash writers are a fearless lot – these stories prove it. – Michelle Elvy (Flash Fiction)

… combining the personal and particular with the universal, each touching in surprising ways … experiences that burn deep, that need to be told. – Sean Lusk (Memoir)

Strong poems. First place is a poem I wish I’d written! – Billy Collins (Poetry)


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Fish Anthology 2023

Fish Anthology 2023

… a showcase of disquiet, tension, subversion and surprise …
so many skilled pieces … gem-like, compressed and glinting, little worlds in entirety that refracted life and ideas … What a joy!
– Sarah Hall

… memoirs pinpointing precise
feelings of loss and longing and desire.
– Sean Lusk

What a pleasure to watch these poets’ minds at work, guiding us this way and that.
– Billy Collins


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Fish Anthology 2022

‘… delightful, lively send-up … A vivid imagination is at play here, and a fine frenzy is the result.’ – Billy Collins
‘… laying frames of scenic detail to compose a lyric collage … enticing … resonates compellingly. … explosive off-screen drama arises through subtly-selected detail. Sharp, clever, economical, tongue-in-cheek.’ – Tracey Slaughter


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Fish Anthology 2021

Fish Anthology 2021

Brave stories of danger and heart and sincerity.
Some risk everything outright, some are desperately quiet, but their intensity lies in what is unsaid and off the page.
These are brilliant pieces from bright, new voices.
A thrill to read.
~ Emily Ruskovich


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Fish Anthology 2020

Fish Anthology 2020

I could see great stretches of imagination. I saw experimentation. I saw novelty with voice and style. I saw sentences that embraced both meaning and music. ~ Colum McCann


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Fish Anthology 2019

These glorious pieces have spun across the globe – pit-stopping in Japan, the Aussie outback, Vancouver, Paris, Amsterdam and our own Hibernian shores – traversing times past, present and imagined future as deftly as they mine the secret tunnels of the human heart. Enjoy the cavalcade. – Mia Gallagher


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Fish Anthology 2019

Fish Anthology 2018

The standard is high, in terms of the emotional impact these writers managed to wring from just a few pages. – Billy O’Callaghan

Loop-de-loopy, fizz, and dazzle … unique and compelling—compressed, expansive, and surprising. – Sherrie Flick

Every page oozes with a sense of place and time. – Marti Leimbach

Energetic, dense with detail … engages us in the act of seeing, reminds us that attention is itself a form of praise. – Ellen Bass


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Fish Anthology 2017

Fish Anthology 2017

Dead Souls has the magic surplus of meaning that characterises fine examples of the form – Neel Mukherjee
I was looking for terrific writing of course – something Fish attracts in spades, and I was richly rewarded right across the spectrum – Vanessa Gebbie
Really excellent – skilfully woven – Chris Stewart
Remarkable – Jo Shapcott


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Fish Anthology 2016

The practitioners of the art of brevity and super-brevity whose work is in this book have mastered the skills and distilled and double-distilled their work like the finest whiskey.


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Sunrise Sunset by Tina Pisco

Sunrise Sunset

€12  (incl. p&p)   Sunrise Sunset by Tina Pisco Read Irish Times review by Claire Looby Surreal, sad, zany, funny, Tina Pisco’s stories are drawn from gritty experience as much as the swirling clouds of the imagination.  An astute, empathetic, sometimes savage observer, she brings her characters to life. They dance themselves onto the pages, […]


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Fish Anthology 2015

Fish Anthology 2015

How do we transform personal experience of pain into literature? How do we create and then chisel away at those images of others, of loss, of suffering, of unspeakable helplessness so that they become works of art that aim for a shared humanity? The pieces selected here seem to prompt all these questions and the best of them offer some great answers.
– Carmen Bugan.


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Fish Anthology 2014

Fish Anthology 2014

What a high standard all round – of craft, imagination and originality: and what a wide range of feeling and vision.
Ruth Padel

I was struck by how funny many of the stories are, several of them joyously so – they are madcap and eccentric and great fun. Others – despite restrained and elegant prose – managed to be devastating. All of them are the work of writers with talent.
Claire Kilroy


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Fish Anthology 2013

Fish Anthology 2013

The writing comes first, the bottom line comes last. And sandwiched between is an eye for the innovative, the inventive and the extraordinary.


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Fish Anthology 2012

A new collection from around the globe: innovative, exciting, invigorating work from the writers and poets who will be making waves for some time to come. David Mitchell, Michael Collins, David Shields and Billy Collins selected the stories, flash fiction, memoirs and poems in this anthology.


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Fish Anthology 2011

Reading the one page stories I was a little dazzled, and disappointed that I couldn’t give the prize to everybody. It’s such a tight format, every word must count, every punctuation mark. ‘The Long Wet Grass’ is a masterly bit of story telling … I still can’t get it out of my mind.
– Chris Stewart


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Fish Anthology 2010

The perfectly achieved story transcends the limitations of space with profundity and insight. What I look for in fiction, of whatever length, is authenticity and intensity of feeling. I demand to be moved, to be transported, to be introduced into other lives. The stories I have selected for this anthology have managed this. – Ronan Bennett, Short Story Judge.


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Fish Anthology 2009 – Ten Pint Ted

I sing those who are published here – they have done a very fine job. It is difficult to create from dust, which is what writers do. It is an honour to have read your work. – Colum McCann


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Fish Anthology 2008 – Harlem River Blues

The entries into this year’s Fish Short Story Prize were universally strong. From these the judges have selected winners, we believe, of exceptional virtue. – Carlo Gebler


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Fish Anthology 2007

I was amazed and delighted at the range and quality of these stories. Every one of them was interesting, well-written, beautifully crafted and, as a short-story must, every one of them focused my attention on that very curtailed tableau which a short-story necessarily sets before us. – Michael Collins


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Fish Anthology 2006 – Grandmother, Girl, Wolf and Other Stories

These stories voice all that is vibrant about the form. – Gerard Donovan. Very short stories pack a poetic punch. Each of these holds its own surprise, or two. Dive into these seemingly small worlds. You’ll come up anew. – Angela Jane Fountas


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All the King’s Horses – Anthology of Historical Short Stories

Each of the pieces here has been chosen for its excellence. They are a delightfully varied assortment. More than usual for an anthology, this is a compendium of all the different ways that fiction can succeed. I invite you to turn to ‘All the King’s Horses’. The past is here. Begin.
– Michel Faber


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Fish Anthology 2005 – The Mountains of Mars and Other Stories

Literary anthologies, especially of new work, act as a kind of indicator to a society’s concerns. This Short Story collection, such a sharp and useful enterprise, goes beyond that. Its internationality demonstrates how our concerns are held in common across the globe. – Frank Delaney


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Fish Anthology 2004 – Spoonface and Other Stories

From the daily routine of a career in ‘Spoonface’, to the powerful, recurring image of a freezer in ‘Shadow Lives’. It was the remarkable focus on the ordinary that made these Fish short stories such a pleasure to read. – Hugo Hamilton


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Feathers & Cigarettes

In a world where twenty screens of bullshit seem to be revolving without respite … there is nothing that can surpass the ‘explosion of art’ and its obstinate insistence on making sense of things. These dedicated scribes, as though some secret society, heroically, humbly, are espousing a noble cause.
– Pat McCabe


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Franklin’s Grace

It’s supposed to be a short form, the good story, but it has about it a largeness I love. There is something to admire in all these tales, these strange, insistent invention. They take place in a rich and satisfying mixture of places, countries of the mind and heart. – Christopher Hope


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Asylum 1928

There are fine stories in this new anthology, some small and intimate, some reaching out through the personal for a wider, more universal perspective, wishing to tell a story – grand, simple, complex or everyday, wishing to engage you the reader. – Kate O’Riodan


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Five O’Clock Shadow

I feel like issuing a health warning with this Fish Anthology ­ these stories may seriously damage your outlook – Here the writers view the world in their unique way, and have the imagination, talent, and the courage to refine it into that most surprising of all art forms ­ the short story. – Clem Cairns.


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From the Bering Strait

Every story in this book makes its own original way in the world. knowing which are the telling moments, and showing them to us. And as the narrator of the winning story casually remarks, ‘Sometimes its the small things that amaze me’ – Molly McCloskey


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Scrap Magic

The stories here possess the difference, the quirkiness and the spark. They follow their own road and their own ideas their own way. It is a valuable quality which makes this collection a varied one. Read it, I hope you say to yourself like I did on many occasions, ‘That’s deadly. How did they think of that?’ – Eamonn Sweeney


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Dog Day

Really good short stories like these, don’t read like they were written. They read like they simply grew on the page. – Joseph O’Connor


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The Stranger

The writers in this collection can write short stories . . . their quality is the only thing they have in common. – Roddy Doyle


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The Fish Garden

This is the first volume of short stories from Ireland’s newest publishing house. We are proud that fish has enabled 15 budding new writers be published in this anthology, and I look forward to seeing many of them in print again.


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12 Miles Out – a novel by Nick Wright

12 Miles Out was selected by David Mitchell as the winner of the Fish Unpublished Novel Award.
A love story, thriller and historical novel; funny and sad, uplifting and enlightening.


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Altergeist – a novel by Tim Booth

You only know who you can’t trust. You can’t trust the law, because there’s none in New Ireland. You can’t trust the Church, because they think they’re the law. And you can’t trust the State, because they think they’re the Church And most of all, you can’t trust your friends, because you can’t remember who they were anymore.


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Small City Blues numbers 1 to 51 – a novel by Martin Kelleher

A memoir of urban life, chronicled through its central character, Mackey. From momentary reflections to stories about his break with childhood and adolescence, the early introduction to the Big World, the discovery of romance and then love, the powerlessness of ordinary people, the weaknesses that end in disappointment and the strengths that help them seek redemption and belonging.


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The Woman Who Swallowed the Book of Kells – Collection of Short Stories by Ian Wild

Ian Wild’s stories mix Monty Python with Hammer Horror, and the Beatles with Shakespeare, but his anarchic style and sense of humour remain very much his own in this collection of tall tales from another planet. Where else would you find vengeful organs, the inside story of Eleanor Rigby, mobile moustaches, and Vikings looting a Cork City branch of Abracababra?


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News & Articles

Fish Anthology 2024

Fish Anthology 2024 LAUNCH

11th June 2024
Monday 15th July at 6:30 Marino (Old Methodist) Church Bantry, West Cork, Ireland The Launch of the Fish Anthology 2024 was held in this charming old methodist church. Many of the authors published in the Anthology read from their work, to showcase sample of  the talent in this book.  We had a get together of […]

Poetry Prize 2024: Results

15th May 2024
  Winners Short-list Long-list     Here are the winners of the Fish Poetry Prize 2024, selected by Billy Collins, to be published in the Fish Anthology 2024. Below you will find short biographies of the winners and the Long and Short Lists. From all of us at Fish we congratulate the poets whose poems […]

Short Story Prize 2023/24: RESULTS

10th April 2024
Winners Short-list Long-list   On behalf of all of us at Fish, congratulations to all of you who made the long and the short-lists.  Apologies for the delay in this announcement. The 10 winners will be published in the Fish Anthology 2024. The launch will be during the West Cork Literary Festival, Bantry, Ireland – […]

Flash Fiction Prize 2024: RESULTS

10th April 2024
Winners Short-list Long-list   From all of us at Fish, thank you for entering your flashes. Congratulations to the writers who  were short or long-listed, and in particular to the 11 winners whose flash stories will be published in the Fish Anthology 2024. The launch will be during the West Cork Literary Festival, Bantry, Ireland […]

Short Memoir Prize 2024: RESULTS

1st April 2024
Winners Short-list Long-list   On behalf of all of us at Fish, we congratulate the 10 winners who’s memoir made it into the Fish Anthology 2024 (due to be launched in July ’24 at the West Cork Literary Festival), and to those writers who made the long and short-lists, well done too.  Thank you to Sean […]

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