Drowning in words!

I've simultaneously got too many and yet not enough words! And what words I do have seem to be spectacularly in the wrong order... After spending a couple of weeks hiding from my critique partners' comments, I opened the file of my novel-in-progress and started to work my way through my notes, their notes, and …

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Interview with… Martha Engber

It's the third Monday of the month, we're zooming towards spring, and Martha Engber is here to share her writing life with you. Martha's second novel, Winter Light, was published in October 2020 by Vine Leaves Press. She’s also the author of The Wind Thief, a novel, and Growing Great Characters From the Ground Up. …

Past, present, future

The house is quiet. Half of us are back to school today (teaching and being taught); the other half (including me) are still waiting for our jobs to re-open. Our local secondary school is having a phased return so all the kids can be tested before restarting their lessons, so the streets are still quiet. …

Spreadsheets, statistics, and sums

Photo by Campaign Creators on Unsplash It's not the headline you expect for an author, right? It should be more words, plots, and sentence construction shouldn't it? Yet the more I write, the more maths I seem to have to do! Because, marketing! Getting my books in front of the readers who need to read …

10 Things I Love About Being a Writer

Photo by Jacqueline Munguía on Unsplash I've recently found myself slowly falling into a bit of a negative mood. Some of you are probably feeling the same. Dreary February, combined with lockdown and uncertainty, a deep wish to return to work, and the feeling that I'm repeating myself in these posts 😉 So today I'm …

Interview with… Phill Provance

It's time for another interview with a fantastic writer. This month, it's Phill Provance. In addition to his most recent poetry collection A Plan in Case of Morning (Vine Leaves Press), Phill’s books include two works of nonfiction, A Brief History of Woodbridge, New Jersey (The History Press 2019) and Postcards of McHenry County, Illinois (The History Press 2021), the …

Distraction and procrastination

The beta reads for WIP 1 are coming back. The general consensus is it's good, messy, and stuff doesn't work (but not the same stuff for each reader, which is to be expected). And in response to their notes, I've made my own notes of what needs to change which doesn't even correspond to anyone …

Weird dreams!

I normally write my blog posts on Sundays because I like them to go out early on Monday mornings. I was all discombobulated yesterday, so I didn't. And then this morning, I woke up at 3.30am, got up at 4.30, and basically my morning has been on a downhill trajectory ever since. So, I'm just …

January

January is my nemesis. It's dark and dreary and haunts me, and it's twice the length of any other month. Sometimes, it's even longer than that! A canine representation of my usual January despair. You can almost hear the huffing from here, can't you? But not this year. In a strange inversion of reality, being …

Interview with… Joanne Nelson

It's author interview time, and I'm delighted to introduce you to Joanne Nelson. Joanne is the author of the memoir, This is How We Leave available from Vine Leaves Press. Her writing appears in anthologies and literary journals such as Brevity, the Citron Review,the museum of americana,Consequence, and Redivider. In addition, she is a contributor …