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Former weekly editor bids to win ‘X Factor for writers’

A former weekly editor is hoping to win an “X Factor for writers” to achieve a lifelong dream of having a novel published.

Terry Wardle’s novel Shakespeare’s Curse, front cover pictured below, has been selected by internet publishing house Kindle Press for a ‘campaign’, which means an excerpt from his book is available online and anyone with internet access can read it and nominate it for publication.

If the novel receives enough nominations before the end of March then Kindle Press will publish it online, and Terry is calling on fellow journalists to help get the book nominated.

The award-winning children’s author and a published historian served as editor of the Orpington Times in the 1980s, and also had stints as a report on the Kent Messenger and as sub-editor on the Birmingham Evening Mail.

Shakespeare's Curse

In 1996 he worked as a business desk sub on The Independent, and now runs an online news publication for the energy assessment industry.

Shakespeare’s Curse is set around the controversial, fictional opening of Shakespeare’s tomb in Stratford-upon-Avon. The story revolves around local newspaper reporter Tim, whose life is going nowhere until former girlfriend Kate arrives with a university team to open the great dramatist’s tomb.

Said Terry: “What Kindle has set up is a sort of ‘X Factor’ for writers, based on a public vote, which I think is great, and it would be fantastic if other journos would back my book. That’s my dream.

“If enough people nominate it to persuade Kindle to publish it, then everyone who nominated it will get a free digital copy of the book, and it will really please me if lots of us get free copies.”

A link to the Kindle Press campaign page for Shakespeare’s Curse can be found on Terry’s Facebook page.