One of the (many) previous title ideas for Glasdrum was Bones in the Garden – because two women discover a skeleton in the back garden in Chapter One. That scene is one of my earliest ‘seeds of a story’ ideas. I still had handwritten notes I’d made in 1993, when I was twenty-two, and spent…
Ben MacDui, Britain’s second highest peak, was shrouded in mist when my fourteen year old daughter and I set off to climb it. Neither of us were hill walkers – this was a new activity. We had been drifting apart, as mothers and teenage daughters do, and when we weren’t apart, we had been mostly…
I was excited and hopeful to be one of six authors picked to pitch my second novel to a panel of literary agents at the London Book Fair. It started badly. My flight was delayed by three hours (initially due to fog, then a medical emergency that required an ill passenger and his luggage to…
Novelist Fiona MacBain shares how “write what you know” can help authors sell their book by presenting them with a ready-made target market. Source: How “Write What You Know” Helps You Find a Target Market
I’m going to be shattered later as I’m writing this at 7am having been awake since 2am. Insomnia is annoying but I decided a couple of years ago to make use of it. If I can’t get back to sleep in an hour, I get up and write. So today from 3am to 7am I…
Some more Indie Author ups and downs… Facebook adverts really work! They’ve been so successful I had to pause my boosted posts for 48 hours just to take a break from the notifications and lower my phone from my face for a while. It was getting out of hand; I was walking into lamp-posts as…
The writing journey continues… it’s been one week since Daughter, Disappeared was published; a dream-come-true week for a new Indie Author! Thank you to everyone who has bought an ebook or ordered a paperback – I’m overwhelmed at the response to my adverts. 113 ebooks were sold in the first week and a further 4,590 pages…
I’m excited because I’ve purchased ISBN numbers for my novels. I feel like a bona fide publisher. I agonised for some time over whether to make up a different publisher name or simply list myself as the publisher of my books. I’ve noticed many Indie Authors create a separate publishing identity, partly to make their…
The ‘fuck it’ stage I thought I’d document where I am on my journey to becoming an Indie Author: Bamboozled. Skint. Knackered. Not writing very much except To Do lists. I joked recently that becoming an Indie Author is more like setting up a business than being creative. Except it’s not that funny – it’s…
It’s surprisingly easy to write a book. Think up a story line, a few characters, and off you go. 1,000 words a day for 80 days and it’s done. Even if you only manage 500 words a day, you’ll have an average-sized novel in 160 days. Six months. Not long. Four years later… Like many…
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