Michael Legat

Michael Legat is well-known in publishing and writing circles, having spent 35 years in publishing, mostly as Editorial Director at the paperback company, Corgi Books, and the hardcover house, Cassell. He became a full-time writer in 1978.  He is also the author of 22 books, including five novels (family sagas, each with a different industrial background) and 17 non-fiction titles, including 12 books for writers, and co-author of 2 horror novels. He has written many magazine articles about writing and contributed to the Encarta Encyclopedia. He is the author of the Factsheets.

Bob Ritchie

First career: writer of books about computers. Second career: founder/director of successful dotcom. Third career creative writer. Four short stories in high street magazines; articles in The Guardian and The Writer’s Handbook; sitcom shortlisted in BBC Talent competition. Scriptwriter for EastEnders. Lived in London, Paris and Amsterdam. Now lives near Oxford. We have several years of his entertaining Journal of a Virtually Unpublished Writer in our archive

Maureen Kincaid Speller

Having read her way through her local library, it was probably inevitable that Maureen then spent ten years working in libraries. A change of career led to her working as a publisher’s reader, and then writing reviews and promotional material for a number of book clubs. The last seven or eight years have been spent working as a freelance proof-reader and copy-editor, after training at Book House and with the Society of Freelance Editors and Proofreaders.

Maureen has worked on a wide range of fiction genres, everything from science fiction and fantasy to the so-called ‘literary’ end of the market. She also specialises in biography and mind, body and spirit books, but her interests are very broad, everything from popular science to literary criticism to gardening. She still keeps her hand in as a reviewer and also writes occasional critical articles on science fiction for small press magazines. She is the author of many of our reviews of books for writers.