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.
Hi everyone, this week I’m thinking about planning a book launch. It’s quite timely for me, since my third novel The Reckoning of Rheged is coming out on 29th June! (So excited! Why not start The Boy from the Snow, book one in the series today?) We had a great discussion about book launches at #FriSalon, a weekly writing chat 5group. There’s a lot that is involved in launching a novel, so I thought I’d share some thoughts. 1. Plan your
Hi everyone, today I thought I’d talk about writing in-between projects. Last Friday, I hosted a chat in the weekly writing group #FriSalon on this very topic and it seems other writers are often in this phase. Have you ever finished a project and you’re not sure what to do next? I myself have been in this stage recently. After recently writing another 20k for book 5 in my series for April Camp NaNoWriMo, I’ve been wondering which direction to go
Hi everyone, this week on the blog I’m talking about why so many writers and readers love historical fiction. What makes it such a popular genre? Why do writers love writing it? Last Friday, it was my turn to host #FriSalon, a weekly chat where we discuss writing topics. (I really recommend it, both for the great chats and the wonderful community. Fridays 4pm GMT/11am ET). On Friday we chatted through this very question – so I thought I’d do a
This week on the blog, I’m talking about the concept of monarchy in our stories. You can probably guess what has prompted my thinking on this! As a Brit, the last few days have been quite different as we mark the passing of Queen Elizabeth II and Charles III acceding the throne. I’m very aware of contentious views on social media, but however you feel about the monarchy, it is a historic moment for the UK. The end of one monarch,
This week on the blog, I’m talking about writer’s block. You may have noticed a pattern that my blog posts address something relevant to my own writing experience. In other words, last week I struggled a bit with writer’s block. Or rather, perhaps more accurately, ‘editor’s block’. This sometimes happens when looking back over my manuscript. Some bits I enjoy going back over to revise. I’m quite happy with how a scene plays out, whether it’s a few lines of description
This week on the blog I’m talking about editing. Editing can often feel like a daunting task. Maybe you, like me, have moments where you just want to send the story out there as soon as you’ve hit ‘the end’. Here’s some reasons why editing first is so important! A lot of what will follow may well sound like ‘teaching grandmother to suck eggs’ – sorry if it sounds like that! However, some of you may be just starting out with
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
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
Hey everyone, this week on the blog I thought I’d talk about resolution. On Saturday I wrote the ending scenes to my 4th Celtic era historical fiction novel! I have some scenes to finish in the middle of my novel before I can call this draft done, but I’m so excited to have gotten the end of my story written. This got me thinking about the resolution stage of a story and what this involves. 1. The resolution wraps up loose