Thank you for dropping by my blog. I post about a variety of topics including book reviews, my author journey, the writing craft and more. All my blog posts are listed below, but if you fancy looking at a particular topic, you can check the drop down menu on 'blog' on my main site menu. New blog posts added weekly, Monday or Tuesday afternoons GMT. Hope you enjoy!
Hi everyone, I’m excited to have an author interview on my blog this week! Allow me to introduce to you author Lelita Baldock. Her wonderful novel ‘Where The Gulls Fall Silent’ was one of my top 10 indie books I read last year. Her other books are firmly on my TBR. So without further ado, let’s get into the interview! 1. Introduce yourself! Tell us who you are, where you are in the world and what you like to write. LB:
Today on the blog, I’ll be reviewing A Wider World by Karen Heenan. This is Heenan’s second of her wonderful Tudor Court series. It is the sequel to the first book, Songbird. However, as it focuses on a different character than the first book, could also be read as a stand-alone. (Head here for my review of Songbird). Here’s a blurb for a bit of a flavour: Returning to England after almost five years in exile, Robin Lewis is arrested and
Hi everyone, I thought I’d give an update on my author goals! We’re somehow already halfway through March (each year seems to go by quicker than the last). So I thought it would be a good time to look back at the goals I made at the start of the new year and see how it’s going so far. 1. Have my 3rd historical fiction novel published My 3rd novel in my Dark Ages Celtic series is not published yet, but
This week on the blog, I’m talking about screen time. It’s ironic really that I’m writing this blog post on a screen, but that’s really what I want to discuss – how we balance screens. For me and probably most authors I know, technology is important for our business. We use our laptops or devices to craft our novels. We use also use screens for marketing or building our online presence – social media, blog posts, newsletters, websites. Plus, these things
This week on the blog, I’m talking about Bernicia, one of several kingdoms in Britain. Before becoming one united kingdom, there were many different tribes and kingdoms grappling for power. (You can read more about what Britain looked like in general in this blog post). The history of Bernicia Bernicia was an Anglo-Saxon (Anglican specifically) kingdom from 547-616 AD in the northeast of England. England. After 616 AD, Edwin of Deira takes over the kingdom. He also regains his throne of
This week on the blog, I thought I’d talk about making an author business plan. At the start of the year, one of my goals was to make steps towards being able to make an income from writing. Although I’ve focussed a lot on writing goals and tracking writing progress, I haven’t ever taken the plunge of writing a business plan. However, since this year I am starting to dip my toe into things like paid marketing, I decided it was
This week on the blog, I review ‘A Game of Wits’ by Niamh and Rebecca Schmid. I was so excited to dive into the third book of the amazing Schmid series. This book is the sequel to book 1, Of Shade and Shadow, also by the awesome Schmid duo (book review here). The second novel, The Ghostmaker: To Take A World written by Niamh Schmid, takes place in the same universe but with a different setting, plot and characters (my review
Since it’s Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d talk about romance this week! Romance is a huge genre in literature. Even more books have at least some element of romance in them, even if that is not their main genre. What makes a romance a romance? Like with any genre, romance has a few tropes (literary devices that mark a story as a particular genre) it has to hit in order to be a romance. Obviously there needs to be a love
This week on the blog, I thought I’d talk more about the setting of my historical mystery romance novel. I’m currently editing this novel as part of the ‘Now What?’ NaNoWriMo challenge. I wrote this project during NaNo 2021 and I plan to make it a free novel for my newsletter subscribers. So if you’d like to get a free novel and updates of when it’s coming out (hopefully by March or April), then you can sign up here! At the
This week on the blog, I review I am the Doorway by Eric Ortlund. I’m pretty excited about this. If you keep an eye on my blog posts at all, you might remember my post about being an ARC (Advanced Review Copy) reader last October. I didn’t say much then about the book because the author was working on his website and it was a bit early in his launch schedule to be shouting about it. Well, I ARC read I