Way back in 2016 I wrote a short story, Man of War, for Manifold Press‘s Jane Austen inspired anthology A Certain Persuasion. When this anthology was launched at Queer Company 2, all contributing authors were invited to write a short article, related to the story we had written, for the conference programme. As my story was set aboard a Royal Navy
This is not the blog post I was going to write. I was going to write about how my outlook has changed over the past year – politics, changes in the genre I tend to hang round in, understanding more about my own writing, and working my way through a few issues in said writing. I was going to write
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 every day (total of 3 days over the month with no new words added: 1 due to family day out,
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 me, it’s also where I live, how we live, and sometimes more exactly who else lives here… Our little village
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 been put to one side to be worked on later. Thankfully, I did eventually manage to write two stories which
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 checking the time & thinking “Not long before 5, I’ll have to start prepping dinner in a bit”… One of
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 working with Manifold Press on the cover design for Under
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 following opening of my WiP, Rare Breed. I had originally
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 motor-and-butty pair of narrowboats. They were owner-operated by a married
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 in order so added a couple of items to the