Your thoughts are probably elsewhere in light of recent events and the last three years, but the winter season is fast approaching. Halloween is just around the corner and soon after that Christmas will be upon us. Searching for gifts can be tricky and coming up with new ideas every year that won’t break your […]
I’ve been writing books, or at least trying to, for the last nine years. At first I was met with a lot of disbelief and raised eyebrows when I talked about being a writer. Most people didn’t believe I could or would be able to write a book. Four published books later, I have learnt […]
1. Eragon by Christopher Paolini Eragon was my favourite book throughout my teen years, I read it over a dozen times whilst I waited for the sequels to come out. For anyone who doesn’t know this book or the series, Eragon is pretty much the fantasy version of Star Wars, but with dragons too. […]
Lots of people dream about having a library in their home filled with lots of books, but aside from all the books you would like to have, what else would you want to have in your dream library? I gave this some thought and came up with my own list of things I would like […]
I’ve been working in a large bookshop for six years. There are approximately 70,000 books over two floors, most are second-hand and some are new. We also have some antiquarian and collectable books too. A lot of people like the idea of owning or working in a bookshop. It sounds like a perfect job in […]
I have been working at the bookshop, Westwood Books for almost six years, and in that time I’ve heard some weird and wonderful books requests. It always feels great when a customer walks in looking for a specific book that they haven’t been able to track down and you just so happen to have a […]
Words and Music at MILK Café is one of Scotland’s longest running open mic nights, which I co-host with fellow poet Gayle Smith. It was founded by writer and former reporter Pamela Duncan, poet Janet Paisley and poet Hughie Healy in 1990. They met every month in Sammy Dow’s pub in the south side of […]
About a week ago as part of National Crime Reading Month, I attended a talk about writing Historical Crime. Three authors, Matthew Booth, J. C. Briggs and Deborah Swift spoke about historical crime and how they went about their writing. As an author, I find the writing process fascinating and I’m always looking for advice […]
The dissertation is something that has been on the horizon for any student. I had wanted to do a creative writing dissertation since I knew it was an option and I was lucky that I managed to get in. I wanted to challenge myself. Instead of working on a project I had already started or […]
It was 2009. When I noticed some of the cool girls in my small primary school had made a Bebo account, I thought I’d give it a shot. I had fun with it, but I drifted from Bebo to Facebook when I started secondary school as more people were using it. In 2014, I became […]