Anyone who has read my book Under Leaden Skies has hopefully seen the dedication; for those of you who haven’t, here it is: It’s an odd thing, writing a tale which revolves around and relies on war as one of its key underlying concepts, without feeling one is in some …
Been a bit of a weird week for me. One of my friends from work died unexpectedly (but thankfully not violently) last weekend. I found out from Facebook around 5am on Monday morning (hadn’t been able to sleep, so resorted to checking the internet). Needless to say, none of us …
I was going to write here a post filled with all the awesomely fantastic facts I learned about Sunderland flying boats during the course of my research, but then I thought: really? I know I’m super-interested in them, but that’s because I’ve been reading & learning about them for over …
So, Under Leaden Skies was released yesterday. I find I’m feeling a lot more higgledy-piggledy about it than I thought I would… I mean, I’ve known these characters for 4 years! I put their story to one side for at least 2 years, but still they nagged at me, and …
Having been hanging round with various writerly types for over 10 years now, I’ve heard my fair share of stories about book covers going wrong, or it taking an absolute age to find a design which both author and publisher are happy with. I think it’s fair to say that …
I’ve just got home from Abergavenny Writing Festival It’s a new event this year, and it’s a good one! Most writing-focused events I’ve been to have been ticketed for the whole event, which is great because of the atmosphere you get and the sense of it being a whole event. …
At the 2012 UK Meet, held in Brighton, the opening session was “Novel Openings”, where writers from a number of sub-genres read out the opening (first 150 words – at least that’s what the guidelines said!) to one of their stories. I volunteered to take part, and read out the …
Something I’ve often told people about myself, but rarely explained its significance, is that I spent two summers working as a crew-girl on a hotel narrowboat pair. For anyone who needs a translation, that means I spent two summers travelling around the inland waterways of England, living aboard a traditional …
A couple of weeks ago, I finally got as absolutely as far as I could on my own with my WW2 story “Under Leaden Skies”. After a last check through, I sent it off to the publisher I pitched it to* back in September and decided a small celebration was …
I had to prune a few branches out of the Christmas tree, in order to make space for baubles to hang from rather than just sit on branches. “You could make a wreath for the front door from them,” husband suggested. So I asked Google how to do this, and …