Category: Uncategorized

  • Overcoming Marketer’s Block

    I haven’t blogged for a few weeks. I have a couple of good excuses – I’ve been crazy busy finishing the dirty draft of one novel and working on edits for another. Since I’m a writer, it’s good to be busy with writing. However, since I’m a self-published writer, it isn’t so good that I’ve also…

  • Please Release Me

    My blog this week is in support of the hugely talented Rhoda Baxter, whose new novel, Please Release Me, is on sale RIGHT NOW! Please Release Me features characters who are all ‘stuck’ in some way, so I’m taking that as my theme for today. What I’m stuck on right now is the dreaded edits for…

  • Rollercoaster Rides

    It’s a good metaphor: the writing life is full of ups and downs, as well as being occasionally terrifying, sometimes exhilarating, and feeling largely out of control much of the time. This week, I’m delighted to say I’m on a breathless whoosh downhill as the words for my brand new WIP pile up. For once,…

  • A Life Well-Edited

    Social media is often lamented for providing a stream-of-narrative, unexpurgated account of what’s going on in people’s heads (for some reason, people Tweeting what they had for breakfast is the most-often quoted evidence of this). I won’t argue that social media does allow for a sizeable degree of over-sharing, but I would take issue with the…

  • Book Lovers Rock

    Okay, so we all know that books are fabulous and the people who read and write them are brilliant, too. This isn’t something new, I’ve just been particularly reminded of it recently. Firstly, I’d run out of things to read. Yeah, I know, my TBR pile is always huge, but nothing on it leapt out…

  • Plotting in the rain

    It’s the first weekend of the school holidays, so naturally the weather is disgusting. All thoughts of walking along to the castle and enjoying an ice cream in the sun have been shelved. It’s exactly the sort of day to stay in and read a book – or write one. Choosing the latter, Offspring and…

  • Something for Nothing

    Well, it’s blatant promo this week, so switch off now if that’s not your thing. I was at YALC (Young Adult Literature Convention – an offshoot of ComicCon) this weekend, having a wonderful time talking about books and having the occasional fan girl moment. I also learned something pretty important for my writing career, which…

  • A sense of community

    When you read this I will be very happily miles away at the RNA’s utterly fabulous summer conference. I will meet friends I haven’t seen for a year and speak more in three days than I do the entire rest of the year. Writing is ordinarily a very solitary activity (well, if you don’t count…

  • Terrorised by punctuation

    Now, this probably isn’t going to be what you think. While I wouldn’t describe myself as an expert I’m quite comfortable with grammar and I absolutely know where to put an apostrophe, so punctuation actually holds no horror for me. What prompted this post was a blog I read about reading with your children, how…

  • Who are you writing for?

    A meme popped into my Twitter feed the other day: A good writer always thinks about their reader. At first glance that looks like sage wisdom that’s hard to argue with, but my hackles immediately rose. Always? No, I really don’t think so. Maybe at the editing/polishing stage, but at the writing stage I think…