NaNoWriMo 2017

It’s November 30th, aka the day of reckoning in the world of NaNoWriMo. I’ve not “won”. I did write a total of just over 25k words, which was my minimum target, and I almost achieved my bigger target of writing…

Perspectives

Every so often when I’m writing I come across something which, when I look at it again, I realise “Oh! I wouldn’t have thought that a few years ago!” It’s not just age/maturity/extra life experience which causes these moments for…

New stories out soon – Call To Arms anthology

I’ve spent most of the last year writing – or trying to write – short stories. Most failed at the first hurdle: I found out while writing that the story was too long to be short, so those ideas have…

A Busy Month

Not very busy recently with the ‘getting words on page’ part of writing, alas, though I’ve been plotting, making notes, and reading around for the two projects I want/need to get on with this Autumn. First up is a short…

Dangerous Books

There’s different types of dangerous books. We’ve all heard tales about books which are directly dangerous to your health: either the arcane knowledge they contain will drive you mad, cause you to become possessed, or some other terrible fate –…

Meeting the Sunderland

It’s nearly a year now since Under Leaden Skies was released. It seems both far longer and far shorter than that – I’ve certainly learned a lot in the last 12 months, and my writing has developed in ways I…

Gladstone’s Library – Food Thoughts

It’s taking me a while to work through all the words I wrote whilst at Gladstone’s Library a few weekends ago, but here’s another bit of my musings – I remembered I hadn’t yet posted it when I found myself…

Gladstone’s Library – 1st Thoughts

I spent last weekend at Gladstone’s Library. Between my arrival on the Friday afternoon and when I packed up to check out on Sunday morning, I wrote over 9,000 words: mostly story drafts (of which I posted a short one the other…

Weekend Writing Snippet

As anyone who follows me on either Twitter or Facebook is likely to already have noticed, I spent this weekend at Gladstone’s Library in North Wales on a writing retreat organised by my lovely publishers, Manifold Press. Over dinner on…

Consequences

No, not the party game. I’ve been thinking this week about consequences of choices we make. I’m still trying to figure out a coherent way of expressing these thoughts, but hey, I’m a story teller, so I figure I’ll use…