Past Me is a bit of a nightmare!

I've mentioned my diary before. It's one of those 5-year ones which has just enough space for a tweet-length analysis of my day. Sometimes I love immersing myself in the events of the previous year or the year before that. Sometimes, I can't read them, because I know those entries contain painful memories. And sometimes, …

Never look back… until you want to

I never considered myself the type of author who would return to previous projects. Done and dusted, move on to the next thing. Sorted. Until I started thinking about filling the gap between now and my next novel with Vine Leaves Press in 2024! "I know!" I thought, and possibly shouted out loud in a …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

I’ve finished and just started…

Hello! Today I've watched the FIFA World Cup Final - still feeling a bit gutted England weren't in it, but excited for the next stage of their development - and completed the first draft/very detailed outline of my next project. I'd aimed to write the draft, aiming for 20,000 words, in June. But as it …