There’s a supernatural serial killer on the loose… Elliot Cross didn’t believe in monsters. At least, not until his brother died at the hands of something unnatural. Four years later and a string of impossible deaths leave the police baffled. Consumed by a desire to shine a journalistic light on | Read more...
A TIME TRAVEL ROMANCE NOVELETTE It’s 2012. According to the Mayans the world is about to end… they might be right. When local science reporter Ruth Anders attends a press conference for the Kepler project, she knows it’s going to be a memorable experience but she never expects to be | Read more...
Welcome to the Graveyard—Where the worlds of the living and the dead overlap. North Bristol Writers present a third anthology of 16 enthralling tales. A boy encounters a mysterious groundskeeper; two students unearth an ancient terror; and in the wilds of Africa, a hunter stumbles into danger. Corpses rise, creatures | Read more...
The world of Genodd is a placed filled with mystery. The Eldar races have gone, leaving behind feuding barbarian tribes. Loosely affiliated into clans, they wander a world filled with Monuments – remnants of a time gone by. A place where Magic – if it ever existed – is lost. | Read more...
Creating an ePub Navigation TOC when you don’t have chapter headers to use If you make your eBooks with Indesign, you’ll know the Table Of Contents tool is super handy, except for when your chapters don’t have headers. This might be the case if you want to include a rasterised | Read more…
I’m in the process of working through my line editor’s comments on Mime and I thought I’d share a little glimpse into the evolution of one of my scenes. We join Elliot, armed with a fire extinguisher, in the middle of a very improvised rescue… 1st Draft White fog erupted | Read more…
My (long) short story Gravewatcher appears in the newly released Tales from The Graveyard from North Bristol Writers. Here’s a sample from the opening. Carina watched from the cemetery gate. Her new arrival tried to shove the gardener’s shoulder, passed straight through, and stumbled to his knees. Those who died | Read more…
If you’re anything like me, you’ve spent a lot of time stressing over your writing process and worrying that you are doing it all wrong. A lot of famous authors spout advice about writing, but no writer–bestseller, famous or otherwise–has the one true solution that works for everyone, because no | Read more…
It’s been said it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert. If you spent an average of two hours a day for six days a week, it would take you 16 years. I don’t know how accurate that claim is, but I do know many people balk at the | Read more…
In 2015 I attended the London Book Fair for the first time (If you’ve never been, go, you’ll learn a hell of a lot about how the book trade works). There I listened to a talk by author C J Lyons that completely changed my perspective. She said: Don’t think | Read more…
One of the most crucial parts of editing is identifying your own habits so you can address them. Repetition, crutch words, over use of adverbs, passive voice etc. This is something I usually address in a final pass — a final polish — after having addressed everything to do with character, | Read more…
About two years ago now I started listening to a podcast called Writing Excuses. I’ve been listening more and more regularly. It chimes with me; I can always find ways to relate their advice and reflections to my own work. Recently I’ve become a supporter through Patreon. In particular I | Read more…
For the last two or three years I have been in a kind of progress limbo. Various time and financial commitments have forced me to side line my own personal projects more than I would have liked. 2017 marked a turning point for me. A year of extracting myself from | Read more…
Earlier this year, having been unscrupulously recruited into producing a story for their second anthology “The Dark Half of the Year”, I moved from the tentative fringe to being a fully fledged member of North Bristol Writers. It’s a very dynamic and proactive group; rather than simply focusing on writing | Read more…
“I can’t die.” Even before I say it I know you’ll never believe me, but it’s true. “I can prove it.” I turn the knife over in my hand and watch your eyes slant towards the door behind me. You know you can’t get past me, which is why you | Read more...
Between the pale green, silver-spined fronds, round stems probe the air with tiny explorers at their tips. It’s pointless. The plant sits on top of a filing cabinet in an executive office on the fifth floor of a concrete box, yet it dangles its babies over the carpet in a | Read more...
The food was at the back of a small, white box. Mushkin put her foot on the smooth surface and tested it. Nothing bad happened. She sniffed and felt with her whiskers. Strange smells mixed with the tempting aroma of wheat but none that she recognised as dangerous. She stretched | Read more...