Having returned safely home and caught my breath, I thought I should share my experience of Fantasy Con 2021. It started with a noob “mistake”, in that, not knowing what time everything starts on the Friday, I booked the Thursday night in my hotel to make sure I could be | Read more…
Most authors follow the advice to only write in one genre. To brand themselves and their books with a narrow focus. But, confining authors to a single genre, even if that genre is broad, seems quite tragic to me. How many readers would claim they only read and enjoy one genre? Why would we expect writers to be any different? Maybe there are some compromises to be found if you want to give your creativity free reign. | Read more…
What I’ve learned from being involved in a dyslexic friendly publishing project. If you follow me on Twitter you might have noticed me tweeting a lot about a Kickstarter project that is currently funding. The project is titled “Open Dyslexia” and it’s being run by my local bookshop, Books on | Read more…
So you’ve written and published a book, now you need to find some people to read it. You might think you need a marketing budget, but while paid ads are often successful, there’s loads of things you can do at no cost at all! 1. Write more books The single | 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…
A pessimist’s view on the option of self-publishing. When faced with rejection, the aspiring author used to have two options: consign the unpublished novel to a dusty drawer somewhere, never to see the light of day again, or take a deep breath, dive in, and rewrite and reword, repeatedly, until | Read more…