Hello,

And Happy New Year. Oh hell. It’s a bit late for that, isn’t it? Time was, I’d get these letters out at the start of the month. And now look. It’s the 26th day already. Anyway, happy late January. The truth is that later January is probably better than early. The days are getting longer. Only a very few pine needles remain on the floor. Snowdrops are pushing through the soil. Maybe if Keats had lived longer he’d have written an Ode to Slightly Less Shitty Winter…

Anyway!

Here we are in 2015 and we’ve already released a book.

This is a slight departure for us because - as I’m guessing you already know - DJ Taylor has already made his reputation. It’s also a departure because it’s short stories. And part of the reason we’re releasing it is because we believe that short stories deserve more coverage. This is a book that proves how artistically important and rewarding the form can be. But the main reason we’re putting it out there is simply that it’s bloody good. We love these stories. They’re moving and resonant and quietly haunting - as well as often very funny.

As with all our books it’s been an honour for Elly and me to work on Wrote For Luck. And it’s very pleasing that other people are responding to the stories too. They’ve already had a bunch of glowing reviews. The Guardian say: “Taylor has a great knack of pulling the reader in, and his endings, which spin out into rather mournful, very British epiphanies, linger long in the mind.” We Love This Book say: “In the end the collection itself should be considered the frame in which a collage hangs, each scene creating something bigger than its constituent parts. Not a particularly optimistic collage, but an intensely human one.” BookMuse say: “The stories are crafted with deceptive skill, so much so you think you could be overhearing a conversation in a coffee shop. Curiosity engendered by the situations, natural dialogue and plausibility of characters make these vignettes feel uncomfortably familiar. Like a master chef, Taylor’s brilliance is extracting the essence by reduction. The Eastern Daily Press say: 'Tender, melancholic and laced with Taylor's astringent wit, the tone of the stories is as varied as their content'

We’re expecting more reviews soon we have signed first editions in our store and oh please love it.

I’m also very proud to launch the latest entrant in our Singles Club today, Daughters - Three Stories by Samuel Wright. Why three? Because I liked them all so much, I couldn’t decide which one to publish. And because, well, you’ll see…

Daughters contains three stories about precious things.

Alice has something terrible to admit. Ana sees something explosive. Grace doesn't want to play any more. And all three of them matter, urgently…

It’s a wonderful new mini-collection from Galley Beggar favourite and soon to be superstar, Samuel Wright. It’s £2 in our store.

Traditionally, I end this email with a few calm and quiet words about Jeff Bezos and Amazon. For a change, however, I want to praise them instead of bury them. Recent events in Paris have made me feel very lucky to be able to slag someone off so much and so often and not feel horribly scared. For a change, I have to admit that the evil empire are not all bad. They haven’t yet taken our freedom to speak our minds. I can still write that Jeff Bezos is a tit. A festering wound. A squeezed bollock spread on toast and served up with marmite and vomit custard. I can tell you that he’s coming for publishers today, everyone else tomorrow and he won’t stop until he’s eaten the sun, plunged the world into eternal darkness and started using our cries of bitter agony as a power source. I can point at his polished cock of a bald fucking head and laugh and be ridiculously infantile and mean and hope for nothing worse than a slightly disapproving email from my mum. Bezos may be an arsehole, but hell. He doesn’t shoot defenceless men and women in the sick name of religion. He doesn’t kill fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers who smiled and loved and pitied and hoped and who did nothing worse than go to work one morning. Who, like you and me, believed in the power and necessity of printing the truth.

By this time, you already know if you’re Charlie or not. As a publisher, we at Galley Beggar absolutely are - and hope you’ll forgive our clumsy expressions of solidarity.

Okay. On with 2015.

Fondly, Sam

As usual, I'm also going to use the end of the newsletter for a few more adverts, where you can safely ignore them, or kindly indulge me, depending on your fancy:

Firstly, please join The Singles Club so we can pay writers to write. Here's the blurb:

We have a fantastic new subscription system set up for our Singles Club so that you now only have to make one payment to get hold of 12 stories. But how to go through the ins and outs of paypal payment systems without boring the dirtbox off you, I don't know. Probably the best thing to do is to head over to the relevant page on our site, where I've tried to give a brief, but to the point explanation, and to take it from there. The important things to know are that:

(1) Subscribing saves you the trouble of going to the site every month to get your fix of superb ebook literature – we'll just email you the files every month.
(2) Subscribing (so long as enough people do it) will enable us to start giving our authors money up front on for each story. Yes! We are going to pay people to write short stories. It's like the golden days of the 1920s. Only they'll be in electronic book format instead of Strand magazine… Anyway! You get the idea. This is a mighty fine way to keep authors doing what they do best – entertaining you.
(3) It costs £12 a year, or £1 a month, or less than a meal in Pizza Express. Unless you have a voucher.

Secondly, our website is here. It's had that revamp I was promising. It's slick.

Thirdly, to donate to Galley Beggar Press and earn yet more of our gratitude, click here.

Fourthly, go on, buy a postcard set. They're lovely:

Fifthly, thanks for reading write down to the bottom. There's no prize, but I sure do like you.

And hey! Slowdive were amazing. Elly fainted during Golden Hair. In other music news, there's a new Jim White album out today. I recommend that you buy the hell out of it. It's superb. And he's too cool.