This week on the blog, I review the book ‘Heroes of the Shadow: Blue Scar Indeabinito by S.S. Frankowska. This is the author’s first novel. It’s a recent debut, published in February 2021. A flavour of the book This book is an epic portal fantasy that tells the story of Thomas, a soldier
Thought this week I’d give an update on my writing and how I’m doing with the goals I set back in January. It’s been a busy three months! 1. Proofread my 3rd historical fiction novel This was my first, main goal. Most of 2020 was spent deep into the edits of my 3rd
This week on the blog, I thought I’d talk about trying new genres, or writing different genres. From posts I’ve seen in the #writingcommunity on Twitter, writing in different genres seems a bit controversial. Some writers say the more genres the merrier, whereas others say it is good for an author to have
This week on the blog, I review the book ‘Of Shade and Shadow’ by best friends and sisters-in-law Niamh and Rebecca Schmid. It is their debut novel, published in December 2020. The Plot This fantasy novel starts with a bang a year after a great war has devastated the world. Astra, princess and
This week on the blog, I thought I’d talk about the ‘murky middle’. If you’ve not heard the term, you can probably guess what it means. It’s talking about when you might start to run out of steam or lose your in the middle of your novel. Things can get a bit, well,
This week on the blog I review this wonderful book. It is New York in 1899. Diva Ella Shane is an opera singer famous for playing ‘trouser roles’ – playing the male leads. When the Juliet to her Romeo drinks real poison at the end of a performance, at first everyone believes it’s
It’s been a while since I did a blog post about the world or setting of my novels, so this time I thought I’d talk about Edwin of Deira. Deira was an east Yorkshire kingdom. It was originally a Brittonic Celtic kingdom, that was then taken over by the Angles sometime in the
‘Finding You’ is the third book of the author I’ve read. It follows ‘The Vintage Bookshop of Memories’ and the novella ‘Christmas at the Vintage Bookshop of Memories’. You can check out all three books here. Both of Holland’s previous books are romance dramas, whereas here she delves brilliantly into a mystery. Laura
This week on the blog, I’m thinking about antagonists. Why are they needed? What makes a good antagonist? Do they have to be the villain, or even a character in your novel? It’s a topic I’ve been thinking about for a couple of weeks. Mainly since I’ve started plotting, researching and writing what
This week on the blog, I’m reviewing the complete edition of ‘I, Richard Plantagenet’ by J.P. Reedman. It’s been a while since my last historical fiction read and I was not disappointed by diving into this one. This edition actually contains two novels, ‘I, Richard Plantagenet: Loyaulte me Lie’ and ‘I, Richard Plantagenet: