January is a harsh month. Not just because here in the UK it’s cold, usually wet, and seemingly always so dark, but it’s also a long month – payday is a long way away, the majority of funds have been spent at Christmas, or for Christmas, and now it’s back to work with the next […]
Ah, so that’s another year gone. Once upon a time I would lament all the things I had not managed to achieve – not getting an agent for the novel, not being published, or winning no competitions; hell, sometimes it was even not bothering to enter those competitions. Always the focus was on the things […]
In my previous post I wrote about following your dreams. What a lot of writers are faced with when deciding that they want to become an author of published work is that following this dream means accepting that writing is actually a business. In order to have work published there has to be involvement with […]
We all imagine our lives are different sometimes. Mostly, we project forward and see ourselves living the life we always wanted, whatever that may be. For me, I’m a traditionally published author with a multi-book deal, my best-selling novel is in a prominent position at all bookstores, and I’m at a book signing during my […]
Not too long ago I stepped down from my role as Secretary to Huddersfield Literature Festival. It wasn’t an easy choice, but I recognised that it had become the ‘reason’ I wasn’t writing; I was prioritising the work for the Festival over my own desire for a writing career. As such, it was time to […]
It’s no secret that I live with two debilitating conditions, both of which are currently without a cure and have very little medical understanding for cause. M.E. and Fibromyalgia are difficult to manage because they are so fluctuating. I consider myself lucky enough to be able to work part-time and still enjoy many activities that […]
It’s finally arrived; after three months of debating and editing and proofreading The Memorial Tree and other short stories is now available to purchase over at Amazon! It’s odd to think that at the end of March I was halfheartedly planning a search for further agents to whom I could send out my novel, and here I […]
So, this week will see me publish my first ever collection of short stories as an Ebook! How exciting is that? It’s taken me a long time to get to this point and I’ve amassed such a collection of writing that it seemed only right to share some of them with the world. So, on […]
Writing competitions. If you write and want to get your work published this is one of the first routes into authorship. There are some writers who excel at applying their material to the various competition topics out there, others still who tend to focus on particular genres or types, and then there’s me. I’m great […]
It appears that my write every day challenge has fulfilled its purpose: I am writing again. Yesterday I sat down and drafted a short story I have had on my ‘explore this‘ list for some time. It is a sequel to a story I wrote in 2015 called ‘The Memorial Tree’, which came 2nd place […]
