birthday Archives -

June 7, 2019

We Are Seven

Well, I have to say when I agreed to do one book, on split proceeds in 2012 I didn’t expect to be here celebrating our seventh birthday and over 70 titles. I am so proud of what we have accomplished and the stories we have put out, of all our authors and artists and the behind the scenes team of editors and formatter and others who work their tails off to make FS what it is.

Over on twitter we are doing random giveaways all month and other bits and bobs. We also have, throughout June a 25% discount on the FS ebook store (shop ebooks above) with the voucher code ‘skulkis7’.

I ordered this cake for my birthday a year or two ago, but it seems fitting.

We will be getting the newsletters going again this weekend, after a brief hiatus (I changed day jobs) and there are even more exclusive short stories on the members page, along with a long term discount on the store and more stuff to come, so please do consider joining the skulk.

We have loads of amazing titles coming out this summer, so there will be updates coming on those too.

I would also like to do an update on our authors who are out in the world doing other stuff, so if you have ever written for Fox Spirit and have books recently out or coming soon, award nominations, events, or anything else please let us know. We want to spread the good news this month as we are full of birthday joy.
It’s also Mr Fox’s actual birthday soon so there is so much cake going on at Kettu talo!!

June 6, 2019June 6, 2019

Fox Spirit is Seven! #skulkisseven

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Fox Spirit is Seven! How did that happen?!

Did you know there’s an ebook store right here? And that you can use coupon code ‘skulkis7‘ to celebrate our 7th birthday with 25% off throughout June!! What are you waiting for?

It’s a milestone that makes you thoughtful. Shakespeare talked about the ‘seven ages’ of human life in his ‘All the world’s a stage’ speech. The first is birth which he describes as

At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.

Fox Spirit managed to avoid that unpleasantry: it was born with a song in its heart, a laugh in its mouth and a pub on its mind — the Nun & Dragon. It was meant to be a one off, but here we are seven years later! Which in Bill’s words means:

Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school.

I suppose we can see a little bit of that: hands up skulk members who would rather be writing/drawing/plotting than creeping to our jobs and other duties? Yes, you can put your hands down now. We itch to have the luxury of time, but there are always new responsibilities. In the mean time we can remember that we are yet young and have so many ways to grow.

What will the next anniversary bring? More books? More multimedia efforts? Games? Skulk Island? World Domination?

Time alone will tell — but the skulk has ambitions, you can bet your floof on that. All kudos to our fearless leader Adele!

June 3, 2018

Now we are Six

Thank you to everyone who remembered our publishing birthday yesterday. We posted our very first post on June 2nd 2012, which I think makes us six. SIX! I had no idea we would make it this far.

It’s been an incredible journey, working with any artists, hundreds of writers, our team of editors, formatters and the wonderful readers who keep coming back and supporting us.

We hope to continue it for many years to come. This years titles will start pouring out soon, in the mean time we have around 70 already out there for your enjoyment, SFF, a little crime and horror, books for kids and young adults, anthologies that are tightly drawn on theme and tone, others that meander through genres on a word, we have #ownvoices, new voices, experienced voices, the well known and the intrepid adventurers, all are fearless genre warriors! We have fencing manuals, and essays, we have illustrations and incredible cover art, we are more a militia than a cult. We have cookies.

If you are new to us, welcome to the Skulk! If you have travelled some of all of these first years with us, thank you for all your support. Strap in, there is much more to come. And plenty of pamphlets.

June 3, 2013April 20, 2016

Happy Birthday To Us.

Happy Birthday the Fox Spirit Skulk

The process of getting up and running took place over May and June last year with the first book going live on the 4^th July 2012, but our first blog post went up on the 2^nd June 2012, so we were officially a year old yesterday. You should all get yourselves a cake and pop a candle in it to celebrate. I will be.

I spent the birthday doing the 2012/13 year accounts so I thought today I’d give you all a bit of a round up of the year. Lessons learned and a few highlights from the figures, that sort of thing.

I have learned that things do not go to plan. Even if I control every thing perfectly (which I don’t) then there will still be delays and hiccups and more changes to make.

I’ve learned that no matter how many people go through a document and no matter how many times there will always be one or two errors that sneak in. The largest of which was half the final story in Nun & Dragon being missing when the ebook first went live. If anyone who bought it never got the updated download (Kindle were supposed to make this available automatically) then let me know and I will send it to you btw.

I’ve learned that I will always take a bad review personally, even if I can find nothing of truth or merit in what it says. It is a fact that while I am being all cool and telling my authors to shrug it off, I am taking it out on pads or an opponent later. These books are your babies, but I believe in them and love them like my own.

I’ve learned that there are a huge number of amazingly talented people who are willing to be incredibly generous with their time and talent for whatever the budget will allow, just because they like the project, or the people or just feel like it. I believe very strongly that people should be paid for their work, but I am eternally grateful that people are willing to negotiate to help a start up like this get going.

Fox Spirit wouldn’t be anything but an idea without all the people but time and talent into it, submitting, formatting, creating artwork, editing, reviewing, just talking about our books, and so on. Thank you.

I’ve learned there is a much greater appetite for writing and reading short stories than I had imagined.

There are plenty of other things, but those are always at the top of my list.

Now the years figures.

Well Fox Spirit is running at a significant loss at present. That’s ok, I knew it would in the first year or so. The upside is I shouldn’t have to pay any taxes. Happy Days.

In our first year we published nine books. Two Novels, four novellas, one non fiction and two anthologies. We’ve had one guest editor published and two more in the works.

So far the best sellers have been Weird Noir and Pseudopod, level pegging at the end of the financial year and both Weird Noir and Pseudopod have had a small number of sales in Euros as well as £ and $. Nun & Dragon sold the most physical copies.

The anthologies and essays are overall moving faster with the novels and novellas going more slowly. I presume this is due to more people being involved in spreading the word. So folks, help spread the word we have starving authors who need your love. Not to mention starving artists and Editors.

We have had lots of positive reviews and I will update the press page shortly, so if you’ve reviewed something and it’s not up already let me know and I’ll add it. If you’d like to review us also drop me a line on adele@ foxspirit. co.uk

Our second year will be just as busy if not more so. There are three titles waiting in the wings to break into the world any moment a couple of novels committed to, Fox Pockets, more Noir, more Bushy Tales and general mayhem to unleash.

Keep an eye on our submissions page for what we are up to and follow us on twitter @foxspiritbooks or facebook to make sure you don’t miss anything.