Summer Update 2019
Hi everyone! Sorry it’s been so long since I last did anything on this blog! For a while my main engagement focus has been more with social media, particularly setting up my Facebook page. It’s been a busy couple of months over the summer, too, what with a couple of small holidays and having Holiday Club for children at our church.
With now coming into September, it’s hopefully going to be a fresh start! I’m intending on starting a Facebook Group, tentatively entitled ‘Rheged Readers’ which will be a port of call for those interested in my books & writing. I’ll be posting any upcoming news and blog posts, as well as it being a new way to engage with potential readers.
My other idea is to start a monthly newsletter. This will be similar to the Facebook group except it will go directly into your inbox – and it will include one or two new features. I’m still working out the process of this but keep an eye out, it may well be coming your way soon.
For now, here’s a bit of an update as to what I’ve been up to the last few months, since my last blog post (I realised to my horror the other day that I haven’t blogged since 10th May when I talked about going public! One of my other goals is to blog far more, at least once a fortnight if not weekly).
I can honestly say that going public has been one of the best decisions I’ve made since I began seeking publication. The support from family and friends, including my church family, has been amazing. I even got invited to take part in an interview during a women’s book event (The evening itself was fantastic! Enjoying beautiful weather outside, sipping Pimm’s, talking about books) which was great fun.
That first Sunday after going public was quite surreal and I was a bit worried how people would react (especially if anyone might think I’d been deceptive, after keeping it to myself for so long) but I needn’t have worried at all and I’ve gotten much more used to talking about writing if people bring it up in everyday conversations – in fact, I rather enjoy it!
Next, of course, was my second novel ‘The Veiled Wolf’ being published on the 30th May, just over three months ago. I was helping at a children’s camp the day it went published, but I celebrated a couple of days later by having a small launch party with family and friends. Helen, a lovely lady from my church, made this amazing cake for the occasion!
After the launch party my husband and I went on holiday for a few days in early June to Haworth, before I cracked on with doing the first round of edits for my 3rd novel. However, I found it quite slow going. There was something about chapter 4 that I just didn’t like the flow of, as it felt quite clunky and repetitive in places. I couldn’t figure it out for a while and the motivation for the novel started to ebb away a bit – I guess it was ‘editor’s block’.
I thought maybe I needed a bit of a break away from my 3rd novel, to hopefully give me a fresh perspective when I went back to it, so I decided instead to prepare for Camp NaNoWriMo happening in July. If you haven’t heard of it, NaNoWriMo stands for ‘National Novel Writing Month’ (Nano for short) and takes place three times a year. The main event happens throughout November, where participants are encouraged to write a 50K novel by the end of the month. I first took part in Nano last November with a Young Adult Fantasy novel called Lottie’s Locket (you can find more info about Lottie’s Locket in this blog post here).
Camp Nano then is a more flexible version of the November event, happening through April and July, where participants can work on any project towards any goal. I participated in Camp Nano for the first time in April, where I edited Lottie’s Locket (the fantasy project I did in November).
So, with Camp Nano soon to be happening in July, I decided it was time to try my hands at a new project. I’d had the idea for a few weeks, having been inspired by the holiday to Haworth. You don’t have to get to know me for very long before you’ll find out that Jane Eyre is my absolute favourite novel, so I was only too excited to be walking around the Haworth parsonage museum and wandering about the moors, like I imagined the Bronte sisters had once done. So I wrote a 50K novel in July, called ‘Brushing past the Brontes’ – I’ll be posting about this in my next blog post.
This then took me to August, where I got back to my 3rd novel – excitingly, I fixed the structure problem with chapter 4 and am continuing to edit. I’ve also started working on something which will be included in my newsletters, to give a bit of a glimpse into my writing
Phew, I think that’s all my writing related news for now. As I say I’m hoping to blog far more often, hopefully on a Monday. So, stay tuned for my next post, going into detail about my project about the Brontes. Bye for now!