Hi everyone, this week I’m listing my top 5 indie books of 2023. Happy New Year! I thought it would be a great way to kick off 2024 by looking back at my top 5 indie books of 2023. Here they are, in the order I read them! The Forever Cruise by Deborah Klee I really enjoyed this book. Deborah Klée’s unique novel focuses on retired people residing permanently on a cruise ship. The story follows 3 women – Alice, a
Hi everyone, this week on the blog I thought I’d do some reflecting on 2023 and the author goals I set at the beginning of the year. It’s been a busy year, including moving house and participating in three NaNoWriMo events! Without further ado, here’s how I got on with my author goals this year. 1. My Dark Ages series It’s been a good year for my historical fiction series! The third novel in my series, The Reckoning of Rheged, came
Hi everyone, today I thought I’d tell you a bit more about my NaNoWriMo 2023 project. If you’re unfamiliar, NaNoWriMo (Nano for short) is an annual writing competition. Writers challenge themselves to write about 1600 words every day throughout November, with the goal of having a 50k novel by the end of the month. You can find out more info about the challenge here. This is my 6th year of doing NaNoWriMo and I’ve been excited to get started today! My
Hi everyone, this week I thought I’d update you on the author goals I set way back in January 2023. How I’m doing with them all, how many I’ve met or whether I’ve got any goals left to meet now we’ve hit September. 1. Publish my 3rd novel in my series Excitingly, just over two months ago, I hit this goal! My small press published The Reckoning of Rheged, back at the end of June. The publication process ended up being
Hi everyone, today I’m discussing success as an author and how we can measure it in different ways. In particular, I thought my recent book launch would be an apt time to talk about it. Book 3 in my Dark Ages historical fiction series, The Reckoning of Rheged, came out just over two weeks ago. (You can check it out here!) It had been a long time coming – I’m small press, so my the publication process took about two years.
April is here, so I thought it would be a good time to tell you about Camp NaNoWriMo and give you an author update. Camp NaNoWriMo If you don’t know, Camp NaNoWriMo is a flexible version of November’s NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). While in November the general aim is to write 50k of a new novel, in Cam5p NaNo writers can choose their own goals and continue to work on existing projects. For April Camp NaNo, my goal is to
Hi everyone, I thought I’d talk about my first virtual writing retreat experience! The amazing writer Lelita Baldock organised a ‘Winter Writing Retreat’ this past weekend – you may well have seen her posts about it on social media. I’ve attended a few retreat days before, but this was my first time being able to dedicate a whole weekend to writing – or so I hoped anyway! A few unexpected commitments meant I couldn’t make every session live or have as
Hi everyone, today is the 5 year anniversary since The Boy from the Snow was first published! All the way back in August 2016, I thought I might try to get my book published. While researching options, I came across Olympia Publishers, a small press who seemed particularly interested in new and unknown authors. I remember hitting ‘send’ on their online form, thinking that I’d never know unless I tried. I wasn’t expecting to hear anything back, but first they wanted
Hi everyone, today I thought I’d talk about my top 8 indie reads of 2022! I read some really great independent books last year. In fact every read was enjoyable, so if you’re an indie author and your book doesn’t make my list, it’s not that I didn’t love it. I had to be quite ruthless, otherwise I’d be hear all day! You’ll notice that several books are from the same author – excitingly some of my favourite authors released new
Hi everyone, Happy New Year! It’s been a while. I thought coming up with my 2023 author goals would be a great way to kick-start this year’s blog. So, without further ado, here are my goals for this year: 1. Have the 3rd Novel in my series Published The sharp-eyed among you may have noticed my first goal has carried on from last year! I’d hoped the 3rd novel in my series would be published in 2022, but the publication process