Richard Blandford - Editor
Richard Blandford is an author of fiction and non-fiction and has been a literary consultant since 2007.
Mixing dark humour with scenarios both banal and fantastic, Richard Blandford has walked the line between the comic and the horrifying since 2004. He is the author of the Elvis impersonator novel Hound Dog, the coming-of-age tale Flying Saucer Rock & Roll, Whatever You Are Is Beautiful, an eBook about an illness that turns people into superheroes, and My Life in Orbit, about an autistic comic book collector who thinks back over his strange life while preparing to meet his long-lost daughter. He is also the author of the short story collections The Shuffle and Erotic Nightmares.
His art survey London in the Company of Painters was published by Laurence King in 2017 and was listed by Martin Gayford as one of the art books of the year in The Spectator, and a London book of the year in the Evening Standard. A comic strip horror story, ‘The Fixer’, appeared in David Lloyd’s online comics anthology Aces Weekly in 2019. He has also written articles for the Guardian website and the art periodicals Frieze and Elephant.
Find Richard on X here: @rblandford
If you’d like to work with Richard, get in touch with our Writer Support team; tell us about your book and what you’d like support with, and we’ll help you identify your next steps.
Testimonials
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Anon
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Why we love Richard
Richard has a great eye for satire and has a wonderfully clear and direct approach to writing reports. We find his reports honest, contemplative and diligent; he will digest each line of your manuscript with the seriousness needed to pinpoint areas of improvement. We love his openminded approach to reading manuscripts, no matter the subject matter, he will always strive to improve your title in a way that chimes with your own aims and ideas. As one author wrote you ‘can feel the fondness for writing with which the editing has been done’.
What Richard says about editing
It is very rare for me to read a manuscript and not find some good ideas, interesting characters or astute observations in there, even if it is very rough around the edges as a whole. What excites me is concentrating on the parts that are distinct and unusual and showing the author how they can be developed, while at the same time raising the rest of the manuscript to a standard that matches them. My method is simply to read what is in front of me, say what I like about it and what I don’t, and imagine what a more successful version of it would be like. I also have an eye for detail and can spot inconsistencies and inaccuracies well. I particularly enjoy stories with a strong main character where the focus in on the world they inhabit, rather simply than following an overly mechanical plot. Having said that, I find a truly unexpected plot twist very appealing!
What Richard works on
Manuscript Assessment
Developmental Editing
Line-editing
Copy-editing
Proof-reading
Short Stories
Genres Richard specialises in
Richard's published books
Hound Dog
Dark comic novel featuring an Elvis impersonator who goes off the rails
Flying Saucer Rock & Roll
Coming-of-age tale about an amateur rock band.
The Shuffle
Short story collection in which the fantastic, banal, unsettling and profound collide against each other.
London in the Company of Painters
Art survey of paintings of London over nearly five hundred years of history.
Erotic Nightmares
The short story collection the 21st century truly deserves.
They say it’s impossible to feel two extreme emotions at the same time. In the world of Erotic Nightmares, the first short story collection from acclaimed novelist Richard Blandford, anything is possible.
A presenter on a pre-school kids’ TV channel finds himself an unlikely sex symbol, before a blackmail plot threatens to see his sex secrets splattered across the internet. Two university house mates develop very different seduction techniques to win over the women of their dreams. An imaginary friend has grown up long unseen by the girl who dreamt him up, but has fallen in love with her. A young man infiltrates a local ghost-hunting group and stumbles into a world of odd ideas, unusual kinks, and, quite possibly, an actual demon. And ’80s pop sensation Paul Young turns up at a house, places his hat down, and refuses to leave.
These are just some Erotic Nightmares. Funny, dark, sexy and repulsive, often at the same time, these are truly the short stories the 21st century deserves.
My Life in Orbit
A sharply observed cocktail of the unexpected― everything happens in a dull town.
Fantasticus Autisticus, his best friend Olly calls him now. He doesn’t really get it, but then he’s got other things on his mind. There’s the weekly haircut, his ritual orbit of the high street, and meeting his grown-up daughter for the first time at two o’clock.But his day does not go to plan. First he is roped into Olly’s haphazard attempt to recover money stolen from his fellow orbiter of the high street, Ahmet. Along the way he bumps into Teigan, who he longs to speak to but can never find the words. And then the nagging voice in his head he calls Daddy commands him to prepare his life story for his daughter. All of it.
And so he remembers. Growing up the only child of a single mother in poverty. The undefinable thing about him that made him different at school. His unlikely escape to university, and the teachings of a nineteenth century mystic.
Along the way, there are moments of both triumph and disaster, of love, friendship, and death. There are comic books (31,284 of them to be precise). And all of it has been leading to this day, when the orbit must break, and everything changes…