Knowing how the story ends

Recently I wrote a post about my finished novel, Dream Fall, and how I haven’t moved any further forward towards looking for a publisher. But its ok, because it gave me a chance to work on Dream Fall part II, and subsequently I thought of a few little things I wanted to add to part…

Dream Fall – Update!

Before the world ground to a halt 6 months ago, I was well on the way to looking for publication for Dream Fall. The manuscript had been read by three lovely beta readers and I had made some changes based on their comments. Then everything went haywire and my plans for looking into publication routes…

What a difference a narrator makes

l’ve been listening to audio books for a few years now, and lately I’ve been disappointed by the fact I haven’t been able to listen as much as I used to, now my daily commute is a thing thing of the past. It was while driving that I absorbed book after book, rattling through titles…

This is absolutely a blog post

Over Christmas I read an article about writers who blog. It said that writers should absolutely be blogging in order to build their audience, and ideally have a mailing list for potential readers to sign up to. I thought, Great! I already have a well established blog, and though 2021 was a bit of a…

Reading Review of the Year 2021

As we near the end of 2021, the year we all began with high hopes (‘Well it can’t possibly be worse than 2020…’), I’m attempting to bring a bit of light relief to my covid riddled household by going over my year in books. My challenge this year was to read 50 books, and again…

Recommended Reads: Where the Crawdads Sing

“Still there, but deep. Kya laid her hand upon the breathing, wet earth, and the marsh became her mother.” I had heard the title of this book mentioned quite a lot on bookstagram since its publication in 2018, namely due to the fact it featured in Reese Witherspoon’s book club, and she subsequently announced her…

Recommended Reads: Piranesi

Anyone who has read Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Susanna Clarke’s first novel, will remember a mammoth of a book, rich in characters and world building. Her second, Piranesi, is the complete opposite in terms of page count, coming in at less than 250, but in terms of world building it is every bit as…

Self help books

According to Wikipedia, a self help book is defined as a book that is written with the intention to instruct its readers on solving personal problems. The books take their name from Self-Help, an 1859 best-seller by Samuel Smiles. Until recently I had never read anything that could be classed as self help. The idea…

Observations on my A-Z Reading Challenge

I first designed an A-Z Reading Challenge in 2017 – finding a book title for every letter of the alphabet and working through them across the year. Every year since I have thought that I wouldn’t do another one, but somehow I always manage to find enough books on my TBR to make it work….

Reading Review of the Year 2020

I set myself a slightly lower reading goal for 2020, 45 books as opposed to 52 in 2019. Little did I know that the whole world would change soon after setting the goal, and with it, my reading habits. I actually completed 54 books this year, helped along by the fact that for most of…

Recommended Reads: One Line a Day

I got this book for Christmas in 2016, and so I began filling it in on the 1st January 2017. The premise is simple – write one line a day, every day, for 5 years. Each day has its own page, split into 5 sections, so you can see exactly what was happening, or what…

The confusing nature of the first draft

Finishing the first draft of a novel is, of course, cause for celebration. But only a very brief one. Thanks to national Novel Writing Month, and the desire to get as high a word count as possible in the month of November, the first draft of Dream Fall Part II is now a) completed, and…