July (so far) round-up

A few weeks ago I spoke about being busy. Well, what happened next was I signed up for a sponsored step challenge in aid of Diabetes UK, and started taking very long walks with Artoo. As you can see, he's loving it! My aim is to walk 1.7 million steps over the course of July, …

Absorbed into different worlds

It's common for readers to be pulled into the world of the book we're reading, to have characters so well-drawn we feel we know them and miss them when the story concludes. But did you realise authors feel exactly the same way? We live with these characters, in these worlds we've created, far longer than …

The middle of April already!

Well, I told you I was busy! Two and a half weeks since my last blog post! My major achievement this week has been still having an Easter egg and a half left over (if I was writing this an hour ago, it would half been an Easter egg and three-quarters 😉) The edits I …

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 …

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 …

New Book Out This Year!

Happy New Year! This isn't a New Year post, I did that last week - it's the first Monday of the month, so this is a post about my writing projects. This time last year I was preparing for the release of Grace & Serenity. And oh, what plans I had for books signings and …

Lockdown 2 – Electric Boogaloo

It's Sunday morning, in my world (although you're reading this on Monday or maybe even later than that). Usually by now, I've got my post written and scheduled because I work on Monday mornings and it's one of the few things I'm organised about. This week has been manic, with seeing family, friends, work, my …

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 …

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 …

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 …