Niamh McAnally: 'Find your tribe, share your voice and scribe on!'
BY Katie Smart
24th Apr 2025
We caught up with author and CBC student Niamh McAnally to discuss the writing group she formed with friends she met on our Edit & Pitch Your Novel course and their short story anthology Stories of Place: ///zinc.level.blindfold featuring work from the writing group, edited by Niamh.
Read on to hear more about the inspiration behind the anthology and how Niamh set up this longstanding writing group with her coursemates.
Your international writing group originally met on our Edit & Pitch Your Novel course in 2020 – since then you have continued to have monthly meetups online. Can you tell us a bit more about your time studying with us and how this lasting friendship was forged?
I began my journey with CBC earlier in 2020 while writing Flares Up: A Story Bigger Than The Atlantic (Pitch Publishing, 2022). Each six-week online novel course invited us to post our work for peer review. I believed if we could meet the writer behind the words, we’d become more effective in providing valuable assessments and support. So I began hosting weekly Zoom meetings alongside the coursework.
When I progressed to Edit & Pitch Your Novel, I met phenomenally skilled writers like Sandy Foster and Catherine Johnstone, who were committed to landing literary agents and pursuing traditional publishing. Our meetings became more productive and a collective energy began to build.
At the end of the course, I created a private online forum using ProBoards and invited nine of the 20+ authors to continue meeting monthly. What transpired was nothing short of astounding. We built a safe, supportive space where we could share work openly and candidly, without fear of plagiarism or negativity. That trust, and the friendships that grew from it, have thrived ever since.
Between us, during the past five years, we’ve completed 21 CBC writing courses – a testament to how much we’ve invested in developing our craft. Two of our writers, Lily Devalle and Billy Green, were accepted onto CBC’s selective Writing Your Novel – Three Months and Writing Your TV Drama – Three Months courses in London – programmes known for taking only the most promising writers.
Stories of Place is an eclectic anthology with stories from nine different writers. What initially inspired you to create an anthology of work with your writing group?
As time went on, we developed a genuine care for one another – celebrating each other's wins, whether writing-related or personal, as if they were our own. Soon, four members of the group had secured literary representation. Ben Tufnell, who authored The North Shore (Fleet, 2023), and I were both published. But I knew the rest were equally talented and their manuscripts deserved their place in bookstores too. But how long might that take?
I suggested we collaborate on an anthology and find a publisher to take it on. I hoped getting a collective deal would strengthen any of their individual query letters and each author would win that elusive golden ticket to becoming a traditionally published author. Making that a reality became my mission.
We planned to meet in person in the UK in 2023 to develop the project. Initially, there were ten of us. But sadly, children’s author Wendy Williams passed away the same week we were due to gather. Stories of Place is dedicated in her honour – our tribute to a friend and gifted writer.
The collection is themed around the geo code system ///what3words – this is an apt reflection of the global reach of the group. Can you tell us the origin story of this theme?
Concert promoter Chris Sheldrick, often struggled to get bands to the exact locations of their gigs. To solve this, he and a college friend developed an algorithm which divided the entire planet into 3m x 3m squares, assigning each one a unique three-word address. The system has been widely adopted. Car companies are using it for navigational tools, countries like Tonga and Mongolia for postal distribution, and emergency services like paramedics and firefighters are using the app to locate folks faster when every second counts.
It was Emile Cassen, one of our writers, who suggested using this theme. What a perfect solution to connect our eclectic styles and genres into a cohesive literary ensemble! The subtitle, ///zinc.level.blindfold, marks the exact spot where we were all sitting when we first teased out the idea. Each story is set in a specific ///what3words address, which also serves as its title. Readers are invited to look up the address before they begin – or discover the setting through the story itself.
As the editor of this collection – what’s been some of the challenges you faced?
Many told me it would be nearly impossible to find a publisher willing to acquire an anthology – especially one with multiple authors, some of whom were yet unpublished. That only made me more determined.
Writers today are expected to market their work. The old days of mailing a manuscript and disappearing into a cabin to write the next one are long gone. Publishers now want authors with an online presence who actively promote – through podcasts, articles, book clubs, and more. The social media pre-order campaign? That’s just the warm-up.
So I focused my strategy around one central question: what’s in it for the publisher? At 11:28 a.m. on November 17, 2023 – three months after we committed to the project, but before we had a manuscript – I pitched the concept to Black Rose Writing, the American publisher who had released my memoir Following Sunshine. My opening line was:
‘What if you could publish one book in the spring of 2025 that would receive world-wide promotion from nine individual authors?’
The message also outlined our vision for coordinated, international launches with potential promotion from a global brand (///what3words).
Five hours and forty-eight minutes later, the reply came:
‘Yes, we’d be interested.’
We were thrilled. The following April, I signed the contract and stepped into the role of editor. With nine of us contributing two stories each, and only four months until the due delivery date, there were many moving parts to manage. I knew we wouldn’t have time to debate every detail, and not every decision would win unanimous approval. We agreed the majority opinion would guide most decisions.
However, there was one exception: the front cover. I felt strongly this needed 100% consensus. To minimize the need for multiple revisions from the publisher’s design team, I asked everyone to mock-up their own vision. At our next Zoom meeting, we discovered we were surprisingly aligned. One of our authors, Nina Smith, highly skilled in marketing, blended the best of our ideas using Canva. I submitted her design to Black Rose. When their final version came back, it only needed a few tweaks. We had a cover we all loved – and a shared sense of pride in creating it together.
Do you have any advice for writers on crafting short fiction?
My first introduction to CBC was through Cynan Jones’s short story course, which I highly recommend. His module on concision is a treasure – valuable even if you’re writing a novel. Meanwhile, I would suggest focusing on a single storyline and keeping your cast minimal – a couple of characters at most. Draw the reader in with a powerful hook, enter the scene late, and get out early. Aim for an ending that resonates – something that leaves the reader thinking about the protagonist’s life and what might happen next.
Can you share any top tips for budding writers looking to build a long-lasting community?
Commitment and consistency! If you say you’re going to meet monthly, then meet every month. Otherwise, enthusiasm will fade; excuses will build. The geographical distance between our authors’ hometowns spans 12 time zones, which doesn’t make it easy. Our Australian members rise early, while those in the UK and Ireland have to stay up late. Each month, I send out possible meeting dates via a WhatsApp poll, then schedule the meeting based on the majority vote. No matter how few or many can attend, I always run the meeting.
The path to traditional publication is long and often paved with rejection. To keep morale high, I introduced the C.T.A.Y. Awards. Every time someone received a rejection, we’d applaud their progress. Each ‘No’ meant they were one step Closer To A ‘Yes’ – something we’ve proved to be true. Conor McAnally’s debut thriller Bullets in the Water is due out in November 2025 from Texas-based Stony Creek Publishing. Ben Tufnell has just signed a two-book deal with a publisher in the UK.
And as a group, on April 10th, 2025, we finally celebrated our mutual YES with the traditionally published release of Stories of Place: ///zinc.level.blindfold. Over 16 hours – starting in Melbourne, followed by Perth, Ireland, London, and Barbados, and wrapping with a multimedia presentation in Florida – we staged six live, interactive launch events across three continents.
We’re forever grateful to Anna Davis for creating the wealth of Curtis Brown Creative programmes that not only brought us together but deepened our understanding of how stories connect us – and to Reagan Rothe, creator of Black Rose Writing for supporting our vision to weave modern technology like ///what3words into the pop culture of literary fiction.
To any budding writer, we say: find your tribe, share your voice and scribe on! Together, you’ll grow stronger than the sum of your parts.
Get your hands on a copy of Stories of Place, featuring stories from Emile Cassen, Lily Devalle, Catherine Johnstone, Sandy Foster, Billy Green, Conor McAnally, Niamh McAnally, Nina Smith and Ben Tufnell.
Niamh McAnally is an Irish-born former TV director turned writer. To learn more about Niamh, visit her website.
The books linked in this blog can be found on our Bookshop.org shop front. Curtis Brown Creative receive 10% whenever someone buys from our bookshop.org page.