The opportunity ambushed me, in a way. A dear poet friend of mine, Gayle Smith, needed another member for her team in the Greater Glasgow slam, and I had offered myself. Three days before the slam was to start, I thought ‘might as well’. You could read from a sheet of paper, notebook or folder, […]
Do you know the one thing that I cannot stand? Whinging Authors. Particularly authors who whinge about the lack of book sales, or even, whinge that they have sold a paperback version of their book but, because it’s not the kindle version, they get less in royalties. I mean come on! I know it’s tough […]
If you write and publish books for a living then you probably groaned when you read the title of this blog. It can take many months (6 months minimum) between finishing your book and all of its edits, to it finally being published. Many authors begin writing their next book whilst simultaneously working on the finishing […]
I’ve been performing my poems for about three years. I started out performing at open mics in local pubs and as part of women’s poetry group Wummin’s Words, before performing at a festival on the Largs coast and in FreshAyr’s poetry events. Around this time, I found a treasure trove of spoken words events in […]
I’ve written it before and you’ve probably heard it before, the English teacher exclaiming that the colour of an inanimate object is a clever tool used by the author to convey and deepen an emotion. I mentioned this briefly in Blog 37: On The Importance of Words but I didn’t explain why the author chose blue […]
Although I’ve been busy writing away in a vampire-style, hermit fashion, I have read one book recently that made me chuckle and say ‘this sounds familiar’. Why familiar? Well it’s because this book gives an honest insider’s view of my part-time job, and that book is Shaun Bythell’s ‘Diary Of A Bookseller’. If you […]
“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” Steven King “Read a lot. Read anything you can get your hands on.” […]
It seems that almost everyday my newsfeeds pops up with some article claiming that an alien artefact or lifeform may have been discovered, even The Guardian posted an article last month with the title ‘Is ‘Oumuamua an alien spacecraft? Initial scans show no signs of technology.’ For those of you who have more important things […]
Belated Happy holidays. Holly, jolly holiday season. It was that time of year again. The Christmas adverts were out, Christmas films were back-to-back on the TV, we had Christmas snow (or, in the case of my hometown, a slippery slick of sugar-coated sheet ice), the same five Christmas songs were on a loop in all […]
National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo for short) is a movement where, for 30 days in November, any writer can attempt to write a 50,000 word novel. It is the writer’s equivalent of a run and a community of fellow runners to cheer you on. Last year, I dared to participate for the first time. It […]