Our Editor in Chief, Simon West, is a self-confessed super-geek.
He is regularly found embracing silence, in deep thought, cogitating some scientific process or other, or inventing amazing gadgets in between drinking cups of organic tea.
Well, this time, he not only invented a cracker, but he went and made it too!
Magic Oxygen Publishing are enormously proud to present our Look in the Book feature.
What a terrific three days we’ve had spreading the word about our talented authors at the London Book Fair in Earls Court.
Paperback copies of Dear Mother, Action Plan for Living With an Alcoholic, The Breathing Wheel and more were shown to interested parties with great pride and we also discussed our forthcoming titles Children of the Crater and Off Her Facebook! the graphic novel amongst many others.
Rather coincidentally, the 1st day of the fair also shared the 1st anniversary of our inaugural paperback publication, Poetry of Divorce: for women by Tracey West.
Without wanting to sound too nostalgic – after all, it has only been 370 days – our compact and bijou team feel we’ve come a long way during that time. With almost 20 titles either out in paperback or e-book and the rest in production, it’s certainly not shabby progress in what is a very challenging, volatile and occasionally fickle market.
I do believe you have to have a bit of a quirky angle these days to get people to sit up and notice you on Twitter and Facebook.
It’s all very well if you just want to natter to friends and random strangers about what’s happening in the land of Dr Who and the like, but if you have a business message you want to spread across the globe, you need to do something slightly more edgy than pen a witty 149 characters of key blurb.
So, we thought we’d appoint a Poet in Residence to scrawl a few catchy lines on our Twitter feed and who better to anoint than our very own Tracey West, author of the successful Poetry of Divorce: for Women and performance poet of the same.
Unfortunately, we think she may have set the bar a bit high. Since she started Tweeting on the 26th March – just a week ago – she’s written 86 of the little chaps!
Dear Mother: award-winning new book from Magic Oxygen PublishingThe commencement of World War 1, one hundred years ago, is respectfully marked with a heart-rending play by Mark James that has scooped 8 prestigious awards and is now available as a paperback performance script.
Dear Mother tells the poignant and emotional story of a young boy’s journey to adulthood as he finds himself inadvertently recruited and sent to the trenches of the front line. His evocative description of the loveless chaos he finds himself immersed in is told via letters to his mother.
It’s a short, four scene, one-act play with a simple set and perfect for school or local amateur dramatic players to put on, but equally impressive and satisfying as a stand alone read. The challenging monologues will push aspiring actors to achieve their best performances, as the scenes bring the audience to the edges of their seats and nudge them towards a box of tissues.
It has drawn glowing reviews from audiences, peers, acclaimed actors and award judges, including praise from members of the armed forces and the founder of the National Memorial Arboretum:
Mark takes the audience directly into the mind and experiences of a young man trying to tell his family what he’s witnessing and enduring. The lead character becomes not just any Tommy, but every man, not just an English soldier, but every combatant. At a time when we’re trying to understand, as well as recall the horrors of the Great War, one could do little better than to read or see Dear Mother.
David Childs CBE: Founder National Memorial Arboretum & Author
Mark James’ Great War vignettes succeed in creating a small window in time through which we witness the poignant story of a single life and its place in modern history; a keeper for the First World War library.
Ramon Tikaram: Actor ‘This Life’ ‘Game of Thrones’
A touching, well told story that brings to life the letters and feelings of a young boy growing up all too quickly, against the backdrop of war. This one-act play is able to produce a powerful three-dimensional tragedy, extremely well. All it requires is a simple, stark set and three passionate actors; lest we forget.
Robert B Windsor: Artistic Director Facing Tides Theatre
An ideal performance piece for schools marking the 100-year anniversary of the start of the Great War. Mark skillfully employs letters to convey his account of life on the front line. Live performances will invite audiences to appreciate it on an empathetic level as they ponder the anguish of being parted from their loved ones in a time of conflict.
Tracey West: Author and Broadcaster
Dear Mother is available to order directly from the publisher, from local independent and High Street book vendors, online and of course, from libraries everywhere.
Publication Date: March 2014
Published By: Magic Oxygen Publishing
Paperback £4.99 : ISBN 978-1-910094-08-2
ENDS+++
Action Plan For Living With An Alcoholic / self-help / Lilly Laine
365 Silly Jokes for Kids / humour / Tracey West
The Breathing Wheel / children’s fantasy fiction / Anthony Ravenwood
Diary of Divorce / companion journal / Tracey West
High res images, electronic extracts from the play script and interviews with the author available from Simon West at Magic Oxygen Publishing.
Simon West: Editor, Magic Oxygen Publishing
Telephone: 07896 884 114
Email: simon@MagicOxygen.co.uk
Website: www.MagicOxygen.co.uk
Mark James DipLCM began performing in 2005 and has been involved in all aspects of stage performance at both local theatre and professional performances. He has won awards for both his acting and writing.
Originally writing Dear Mother in 2011, Mark toured the play around theatres and local festivals in the South and South West for 2 years, playing the lead role of senior Thomas himself. Dear Mother was met with great enthusiasm from both audiences and festival adjudicators alike, winning many awards including Best Set (Woolstore Country Theatre All England One Act Play Festival 2011) Best Actor (Dorset Drama League Festival 2012) Best Play in Class (Dorset Drama League Festival 2012) and Best Overall Play of the Festival (Dorset Drama League Festival 2012).
When he’s not writing, Mark is a busy singing teacher and performer, gaining his Diploma in Musical Theatre in July 2013 through the London College of Music. He also owns and runs his own production company, JNX Productions, specialising in high quality performances using the best of new and local talent.
See www.MarkJamesPlays.co.uk for his blog and further details.
I’m delighted to introduce you to one of our fabulous authors, Mark James.
Today, his award-winning play, Dear Mother has been published by us as a play script.
Mark is an actor, a music teacher and playwright based in the South West. I wanted to find out a bit more about what makes him tick and asked, which of those three hats he enjoys wearing most?
Hi Tracey, I can honestly say that the best part about my career is the variety that I get in it. I love my job and couldn’t pick an area that I enjoy the most out of them. Each one leads itself around to the other.
You were introduced to me as an actor. When did you first get the bug to act, what was your first role and in which performance?
I had always wanted to act since being at school, it was a huge passion from a very early age. Unfortunately, the school I went to was an all boys secondary that had no theatre or drama departments and music was restricted to an after school club. When I left school, life just got in the way and a new career started.
We’re always delighted to receive reviews from critics and our readers; this one has made us all very proud.
It’s from DotComWomen, a free content web site dedicated to women who are using the world wide web for their personal as well as professional growth.
DCW recognizes the importance of spending quality time with family and taking time for yourself. It’s geared towards bringing out the truly professional woman in you along with assisting you in keeping a healthy balance between career and values, family, health and personal time.
Magic Oxygen Publishing currently have 23 titles of varying genres either on the book shelves, or in production; what exciting times!
We’ve had the pleasure of working with some truly talented individuals whose passion for matters literary, rival our own.
A publishing house is only one of the elements required to get books into the hands of eager readers. We need reviewers to populate the news with their views of our titles and we also require stockists to sell them.
Our expanding team are busy preparing our future titles to launch into the world and we now require the services of objective book reviewers.
One of the most exciting bits about sending a new book up the wire as we like to say (which means sending our typeset edition of the book to the printer) is:-
(a) endeavouring to press the actual button that sends it, whilst we’re talking to the author that penned it, and
(b) receiving the electronic proof of said new book, shortly thereafter.
Today, we’ve have a very proud (b) moment, as Dear Mother, a play from the talented pen of Mark James, arrived in digital format in Simon West’s inbox.
It looks terrific and we cannot wait to release it to print.
Poetry of Divorce: for Women
Morning all!
What a glorious Monday morning it is, kicking off another splendid literary week at Magic Oxygen Publishing.
News just in (well, actually we knew last week, but were waiting to have it confirmed) Tracey West, one of our most prolific authors, is taking her book Poetry of Divorce: for women and adapting it into a dark comedy play.
It will feature several of her poems from the book; some poignant, some dark and a few that can can only be tagged quite simply, as saucy.
Poetry of Divorce was originally written as a coping mechanism for Tracey to get through her tumultuous divorce but the pieces she wrote didn’t lay out the intestines of her story, they were a melange of threads of truth from several divorces and many of them just sprung forth from the glittery corners of her imagination.
Simon West, our resident super-geek, is in the middle of creating a fancy widget thingie (don’t ask, it’s all alchemy to the rest of the team), which will allow you readers to have a sneaky peek through a few pages of our titles when you view them in our shop.
We haven’t a clue how he manages to make all these whizzbang gadgets and can only imagine he was very contented as a child when armed with a glass of milk, a chemistry lab kit or Meccano!
We’ll let you know as soon as our latest toy is ready to unveil, however, in the meantime I thought I’d let you know that we’ve just received a new consignment of Ant Ravenwood’s most excellent book for children, The Breathing Wheel!