Cleaning off the cyber-dust

Oh dear. I'm not very good at keeping track of things.

As you may already know, I run an online magazine called Sparkbright. It publishes every six months, in June and December. Since putting out our sixth issue back in June, I've done absolutely nothing towards the upkeep of the site (so, 650-odd spam comments to get rid of...), the twitter site, the blog... nothing. So I should probably get back on that!

I'm trying to be more organised in general, and actually keep track of what's going on with regards to my internet activity. That includes: this blog; the Sparkbright website; the Sparkbright blog (on the site); the Sparkbright twitter account; my personal twitter account; the Sparkbright facebook page; my facebook page and several email accounts.

I'm going to try and post here at least once a week, so you can look forward (er, maybe) to seeing a bit more of me round here. And I really do need to do some work for Sparkbright.

This 'trying to be organised' thing is all part of my day zero project: 101 goals in 1001 days. My list is here, if you're interested, but I'll be back soon enough to tell you more about it.

Ciao for now!

Sparkbright magazine

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I run and edit an online magazine. We are currently preparing our sixth issue, which will be due out at the start of June. There are two of us on the editorial staff - me, and my friend Ami, who lives in the States and who I met online a few years ago now. Obviously we're working in different time zones, which makes communication quite difficult, and I hadn't heard from her for a few months. So the majority of this issue has been done by me. By which I mean most of the accepted submissions have been my decision - just me. I'm a little nervous about that, if I'm honest, but it's also quite exciting to know that I'm responsible for 90% of this issue so far.

I've also put together some prospective cover art - I always find it difficult to find suitable artwork, so I got myself a free trial of Photoshop and decided to have a go at it myself. I'm pretty pleased with how it's turned out - as it's our summer issue, I wanted something quite bright. And as we don't have any set themes for the content we use, it's always difficult to choose a particular subject or object to focus on for the cover art. So I went for something more abstract... I like it, and I hope other people do too. I haven't worked with Photoshop for a good few years (since our home computer broke and I started university), so it took quite a few attempts before I ended up with something I was happy with.

I might make a couple of other possible versions before my trial runs out - it's always handy to have some cover art available for if it gets to the week before the new issue's due out and I realise we haven't got any artwork sorted!

If anyone's got any comments or suggestions as to how I could improve it, or if you like it, please let me know! I'm open to all feedback, and would love to hear from you.

Artwork © Emily Smith, 2011. Cover art is to be used by Sparkbright magazine, June 2011.

About Me

Hello there!

I'm new to this blogging lark, but for a while I've been wanting to set one up for book reviews and personal reflections. So here we are.

I'm a final-year university student trying to get into the publishing industry. I've previously had work experience at two literary agencies and one well-known academic publisher, and I've loved every minute of it. I'm looking forward to the placements I've got lined up for this summer, and to hopefully finding a permanent position in the business sooner rather than later.

I like most types of literature, with a special love for Young Adult fiction despite a general opinion at university that you should grow out of "that sort of stuff". But to be honest, I read most things. Except, perhaps, horror or really psychological fiction, because that gives me nightmares and leaves me unable to sleep for days. Which is pretty sad, but it can't be helped!

Other than my book-loving ways, I'm pretty normal. I have a love for original flavour hula hoops, and could quite happily eat my own body weight in cake. I drink a lot of tea. I'm learning to cook, but not very quickly, or very well. I run an online magazine which has been going for over three years now, which I am really proud of.

Look me up on Twitter, if you like: @ek_smith and @SparkbrightMag