Self-published novel wins top award

Award-winning self-published author, Mark Blaney, is interviewed in The Guardian.

For the first time in the 57-year history of the Somerset Maugham awards, a prize has been given to a self-published work. Blayney's Two Kinds of Silence is described by the author as a "genuinely amateur effort: I took the cover photos in Wales, designed the cover with a friend, taught myself Quark so that I could typeset it, and instructed the printer on the size of the book. It was hell on earth really, trying to do it on top of a full-time job."