Book 3 sagas… In the last year I’ve written 80k words of my third book. That’s an average sized manuscript (both my other novels are about 78k words) so I should be celebrating. But unfortunately those 80k words are spread across two different novels, both of which I’m ditching. So no celebrating just yet. I…
I published Glasdrum, my second novel, on 1 April 2017. It had taken me about two years to write, and my first novel took me three years. Aha, I thought, a pattern of book-writing efficiency. Logically Book 3 would only take me one year. Nope. Maybe I got the pattern wrong. It’s not 3-2-1, it’s…
Blimey, I haven’t written a blog for 3 months. I’m definitely not getting my money’s worth from the £89 per year I’m paying WordPress for the domain name… I’ve not been blogging because I’m trying to write my third book – but progress is slow. I’d hoped to have finished my first draft by now…
I tried to write Book 3 as one document, simply because combining the chapters for the other two books had seemed huge tasks at the time (it really hadn’t been, maybe it had been the last straw at the end of a long process). But around about the 20k word mark of Book 3, the…
I gave up many precious book-writing hours a week ago to submit my two published novels to various vetted book review sites. According to Author advice, this is what I should be doing. It was on my To Do list for a long time, and now it’s underway. But it’s left an unpleasant taste in my…
I started writing this at 5.30am, having spent the previous hour working through my ‘writer’s’ To Do list. It’s quite long – and writing another book isn’t even on it. One of the tasks is finishing a script for an Xpo North promo clip, which I’ve promised to do for a long time to thank them for the support they’ve…
I have started a new writing technique which is working well: instead of trying to sit at my laptop for hours and hours because ‘writing only’ days are rare, I am doing alternate timed hours of writing/something else. Yesterday the ‘something else’ was gardening because my recently acquired home is surrounded by mature, beautiful shrubs that…
I am having a fabulous visit home to Glasdrum country (Lochaber on the west coast of Scotland), the highlight of which is getting stocked in the new Highland Bookshop on Fort William High Street (http://www.highlandbookshop.com/). It’s so nice to see a new independent bookshop, and what a fabulous selection they have; I’m honoured to be…
The other day an amazing thing happened. I gave a talk about my books at Belladrum Music Festival – and several strangers came up afterwards to buy them! It made me feel incredibly happy. Tearful, even. I think it’s because of something all writers (and other artists I’m sure) face on a regular basis: rejection. To experience…
This post is about my experience of using Amazon and facebook advertising for my two self-published novels. Disclaimer: this is not a guide to them in any way – I’m fumbling in the dark here, guessing as I go. It’s just a summary of my own experiences of using them. I’ve been using facebook adverts…
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