Blog

This blog post focusses on my friend and writing buddy, Janice Preston. We both joined the Romantic Novelists’ New Writers’ Scheme in January 2012 and since we met at our first Birmingham chapter meeting, we have been friends. Jan achieved publication success in 2014 with Mills and Boon. Her debut novel, Mary and the Marquis… Continue reading Spotlight on Janice Preston – From Wallflower to Countess

Dog diary two weeks in… I’ve settled well in my new home. Mummy hasn’t a clue about doggie things, but she’s doing okay. Daddy and the boy seem to like me too. They took me to the vet’s the day after I arrived and it was a very embarrassing experience. I was being so good… Continue reading We survived!

I’m scared and excited. In unknown territory. We are having a puppy! A Maltese. Lily will be joining us later this month. We have half term to puppify the house. All advice and tips welcome. I am a first time dog owner. Writing may suffer. May be the subject of many blog and Facebook posts.… Continue reading Will Life Ever Be The Same?

At the beginning of 2014, I read an article by Elizabeth Gilbert, who wrote Eat, Pray, Love and The Signature of All Things. She suggested keeping a happiness jar for the year. Basically, you start with an empty jar and put into it a note of anything that makes you happy or grateful during the… Continue reading A Year’s Worth of Happy Moments

Each year I rate the books I read out of five for writing and five for plot, then I add these scores together and come up with an overall score. In 2014, I awarded eight stars or more to the following books:- Truth or Dare? by Laura E James (8 stars) Cauldstane by Linda Gillard… Continue reading My Favourite Reads of 2014

I was reading somewhere about how your family traditions anchor you in your society and culture. What traditions do you have at Christmas? We put up our trees early in December and every bauble has a story or a memory associated with it. For example, the five glass icicles that my grandfather bought back from… Continue reading Christmas Thoughts

I haven’t posted on my blog for a while. When I last posted I was doing well with editing one of my novels using a technique of analysing the text with coloured post it notes. Shortly after that I’m not sure what happened, but the doubt crows began to circle and I also started to… Continue reading Strange Times and Successes

Yesterday I showed you my scene pieces from my work in progress sorted into sections.  After that picture, I bagged the sections up, so that they didn’t get moved around and I can work through each one individually. I probably should have said that the story themes and scenes are drawn from a rather scrappy… Continue reading Gathering Pace

I posted last week about my experiment with printing plot points from my work in progress on colour coded paper. Initially I didn’t think it had worked in the way I expected, in that, I promptly ignored the cut out paper and re-wrote my first chapter in the first person.  However, this morning I had… Continue reading Mmm maybe this can work

I’ve decided to try a few mini blogs, as I don’t seem to be getting around to blogging very often. The photograph shows the current state of my work in progress novel. Yes, it is in bits! I’d got rather bogged down in it and decided to try a new approach. The bits of paper… Continue reading Do Not Laugh