Interview with… Melanie Faith

It's time for the second in my new series of interviews with amazing authors. Today it's the turn of Melanie Faith. Melanie was born in December and has a birthday-twin niece. She is a craft-book author, editor, poet, photographer, and professor. Her writing and photography are forthcoming or were recently published in Menteur, Verse of …

“I just want to sell my books!” says one author to another

It's - loosely - advice week here at the Fountain Pen, but I'm going to use this time to have a little rant about Facebook. Hopefully it will be a useful rant, a helpful one. On Saturday morning, I was scrolling through the stats for my Facebook page. If you don't have one, it shows …

Stuck in Covid

I've got eleven days to write, edit, polish and submit a short story to a very prestigious short story competition, the Manchester Fiction Prize. Well, I've got something written, but I'm not sure it can actually be called a short story - it's currently a jumble of words with the Covid pandemic as its central …

August Bank Holiday!

We love a good bank holiday in the UK - New Year, Good Friday, Easter Monday, a couple in May, August, Christmas and Boxing Day. Today, I'm going to be writing because I've got a self-imposed deadline coming up, and spent the weekend reading. Fun, but not particularly useful for the competition submission I haven't …

Making it up as I go along

The observant among you will note that I've changed my blogging day to Monday. When I decided I'd post a series of interviews, I was going to do them on the third Monday of each month but continue posting around the Thursday/Friday as well. I realised that was a little unfair on my interviewees because …

Interview with… Bauke Kamstra

Welcome to my new monthly new series, Interview with... My aim is to introduce you to authors you may not have come across before. The first few will be with fellow Vine Leaves Press authors, mostly because I asked and they were hugely enthusiastic! So without further ado, please welcome poet Bauke Kamstra... Hi Bauke. …

It’s so hot that…

... I'm struggling to work out at the moment because my new 'gym' is my bedroom which happens to be the hottest room in the house. ... I'm struggling to write because my new 'study' is my bedroom which etc etc... ... my deodorant melted and I had to put it in the freezer. It …

Off-schedule

I have a schedule. I printed out a year-to-a-page calendar, and scribbled all over it for working on my current draft, so I can work on something brand new before getting down to the edits for next year's release. And at the beginning of the summer, it felt easily achievable. Mostly because I wasn't going …

Keep Writing with Fey

Today, I'm helping to share the love for Chrys Fey's new book, which addresses something I think most writers struggle with from time to time. I do! Catch the sparks you need to conquer writer’s block, depression, and burnout! When Chrys Fey shared her story about depression and burnout, it struck a chord with other …

Alas, poor study…

I live in a three-bedroom house - or as I like to call it, a two-bedroom house with study. Sometimes it's my study, sometimes it's a bedroom. With the imminent return of my eldest from university, today it's a study, tomorrow it will be a bedroom again. Old StudyThe Place Where My New Desk Will …