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
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 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
It’s NaNoWriMo time again! Where writers from all over the world flex their typing fingers and prepare for frenzied word sprints and quite possibly a few late nights. If you’re unfamiliar, NaNoWriMo (Nano for short) stands for ‘National Novel Writing Month’ where participants from all over the world commit to writing everyday throughout the month of November. The goal is to have a 50k word novel by the end. It will be my fourth time participating in Nano so as you
This week on the blog, I thought I’d talk about being an ARC reader. ARC here stands for ‘advanced reader copy’. The way it works is you receive a free copy of an unpublished book and commit to giving it an honest review. The reader then posts the review on or immediately after the publication day and perhaps shares a bit about the book on social media. Possibly the ARC reader might offer the author some last minute author feedback or
This week on the blog, I thought I’d talk more about the story snippets I’ve been sharing recently on social media. In particular, I thought I’d give some sneaky peeks into a bit more context about the character and what’s going on in the scene. Hopefully without any spoilers!. First, though, I’ll tell you how to make one, in case any writers fancy giving it a go! Story snippets – how to make one I’ve found making story snippets a relatively
This week on my blog I thought I’d talk about writing groups, the latest in my Writing Craft series. I recently joined one on Google Hangouts, most of whom I ‘knew’ virtually. It’s been great to connect with them and I’m sure my writing is improving already as a result. The other writers are based in the US so while it is mid morning their time, it’s mid- afternoon for me here in the UK. This has worked out really well