Success Stories

“I’d been working on Dark Chapter for about a year when I applied for the TLC Free Read scheme through Spread the Word. Since I had very little income while writing, I was thankful that the TLC Free Read scheme could provide me with a professional assessment of the first section of my manuscript. My TLC reader Karen Godfrey wrote an excellent report. Prior to her assessment, I also had not considered Dark Chapter as a crime novel, but I began to see it in a different light as I continued with the manuscript. In 2015, I submitted the first 3,000 words to the CWA Debut Dagger competition, where I was Highly Commended. This led to offers from agents, and two years later, the novel is finally coming out, and has been listed by Stylist as one of ’10 Smashing Debut Novels to Look Out for in 2017′! So many thanks to the TLC Free Read scheme for giving me that initial confidence to believe in my book.”

“Although I’m a published poet, Kaleidoscope was my first fiction work of any length and I was nervous about sharing it. I needn’t have worried; Cynthia Rogerson was both thorough and encouraging in her TLC feedback. It gave me the confidence and direction that I needed – so much so that a few months later the reworked novella was taken by Mantle Lane Press for publication in their beautiful pocket-size range. Delighted is not the word!”

“I’d been wanting someone professional to read my novel and TLC was the one name that kept cropping up. So I got in touch with Aki and sent the manuscript. The team at TLC, Aki, Yen and Kavita Bhanot, who read the novel, were very helpful. I got a detailed report back on the manuscript which encouraged me look at it through the editor’s eyes and I agreed with most of the feedback. I used it to edit and hone the story and the novel read so much better afterwards. My experience with TLC was wonderful and I’m so glad I chose them.”

“So our book deal with Simon & Schuster has been announced and we couldn’t be happier. We can’t thank TLC enough for their genius matching of manuscript to reader. We not only got a great report, we also found our perfect agent – Hannah Sheppard at DHH Literary Agency. Consider our expectations to have been well and truly exceeded!”

“Finding TLC was a turning point for my writing. Until then, I had started many writing projects but had run out of confidence in my writing long before finishing any of them. In writing my second novel, the TLC reading service was invaluable. Like many writers I find it very hard to cut out pieces of prose I’ve carefully nurtured and become attached to. My TLC readers convinced me that a few painful changes to the text would make the portrait of the protagonist stronger and the plot tighter. The confidence I developed through my contact with TLC led me to decide to take the next step and self-publish in order to put my work out there in front of a real audience.”

“An early critique from TLC in March 2014 was very helpful in pushing me to work out what I wanted The Unseeing to be. Lesley McDowell’s insightful report pointed out that I had not yet left the realms of fact; I had not yet figured out what kind of story I wanted to tell. Looking back, I realise that I had mistakenly thought that the history was the story, when of course the story has to be the characters’ arcs – it has to be about what changes. Two years on, The Unseeing has become something else altogether. Something better. But it was hard for me to let go of the ‘facts’, and that is part of the reason that one of the key themes of The Unseeing is truth and deception – how we interpret other people’s stories and how we narrate our own. I’m grateful to both Lesley McDowell and Aki Schilz for their help on my journey to publication.”