Writing and reviews with an environmental, science fiction, and fantasy touch
The Perihelix (second edition) has been live on Amazon.com and Smashwords for a month now. It filtered through the systems to other Amazon stores and to iTunes, B&N and Kobo (and others) over the following days. In the two years
White horses definitely inspire me, but I haven’t used them in my writing yet. Well, I’ve used the figurative white horses that got round film censorship in the 1940s. You don’t know what I mean? That was when any more
November already? Oh, heck! The trouble with being an indie author, is that I’d like to be writing, and I can’t. I should write more, since that’s what I do. But once I get some stories written, they need to
‘Fanwester loses it’ is an extract that I really enjoyed writing. The original version (first draft, not the one that got published) was a lengthy rant by the character about people and things that my reader had no idea about
Camp NaNoWriMo week 2 was going well… until I read the latest Adirondack Publishing advice on The Story Reading Ape – about Voice. As you know, I’m re-editing The Perihelix, especially the first ‘half’ which had, let’s call it, ‘deficiency
An extract from The Perihelix (or whatever I’m working on at Camp NaNoWriMo) is my best offering for Flash Fiction this month. This 550 word section follows on from the snippet I gave you on Wednesday. Of course, you don’t
It’s the Insecure Writers’ Support Group today, asking about a valuable lesson you’ve learnt. I’m at Camp Nano, so this is just a quickie to show willing. My most valuable lesson The most valuable lesson I’ve learnt while writing comes
GhostGum Creek: I’m going back to June 2014 for this one, which surprised me as I’ve never rerun it before (I checked). It is a venue that I integrated into the end of the Perihelix (and has stood the test
Zanzibar’s Rings is the working title of the third book in the Viridian System series. It seems a bit daft, really, since I haven’t republished The Perihelix yet, which I withdrew after it got reviews which showed it really needed
Welcome to today’s Insecure Writers’ Support Group post. Today I bemoan having too many books on the go, both reading and writing. Don’t forget to visit the other #IWSG participants and our wonderful hosts. Welcome to March as well. Not that
Welcome to my foray into the Book Bloggers Hop, where we have a question set each weekend. I’ve adopted it mainly for the last Monday of the month, or when I’m stuck for a subject. This week… How do you
If it’s your first day back, Happy New Year. Welcome to the January edition of the Insecure Writers Support Group post. You can sign up or visit other insecure writers here… What we do is write about our troubles, or
Family have left, friends have gone, the leftover food has all been eaten up or turned into soup and frozen, and I’m resolving to lose what I put on over Christmas without doing anything too drastic so I end up eating
Yes, I finished camp and got back last week, but I was too busy with the Question of the Month and the Beach Reads Giveaway to update you then. As you know from my postcards, the target was to finish
The price of doing both Camp NaNoWriMo AND the A to Z Challenge in April was that my reading time disappeared completely and my email answering time was sadly neglected. In fact, I only dealt with urgent emails. When I
Friday is flash fiction day, and I’ve restricted myself to just over 800 words to bring you a piece of Viridian System series backstory, which readers of The Perihelix have been asking for. Well, they wanted to know more about
This year’s A to Z Challenge theme is ‘world-building’, in honour of my new sci-fi books – the Viridian System Series. Definition from The Perihelix, Chapter 5 Imperium, The: n. Benevolent system of world alliances, centred on the Terzan E
Yes, it’s Leap Day 29th February, and all you women can go and propose to that man you’ve been with for twenty-five years, if you still want him! Watch out, fellas! Seriously though, we have Bookhounds to thank for our
Tomorrow is launch day! Today you can pre-order it at Amazon, B&N, Apple, and Kobo. Tomorrow it will be for sale on Smashwords too. By the way, you can also vote for The Traveler in Black and White on AUTHOR SHOUT
If you have an agent and a publisher who handle all this stuff between them, and just tell you where and when to be places, or to approve some copy or to check your local paper, or whatever they do,
I’ve been bound up with editing The Perihelix this week, and can’t even think of other topics for writing. I spent two days reading the latest draft out loud (and recording it, although I don’t know that I need to
Oh, I saw this on Patricia Lynne’s site and I couldn’t stop laughing. Then I realised I just had time to join in myself. And after a traumatic time in the dentist’s chair yesterday, with everything else that’s been going
With everything that’s going on at the moment, I really can’t get my head around Chuck’s challenges. I decided to give you another taster from near the start of The Perihelix, starring my asteroid miners, Big Pete and the Swede.
Of course, the big challenge for this month is to finish the revised draft of The Perihelix and get it to my editor. Camp ends on Friday, so how am I doing on that? Well, I’ve finished. I’ve won, in
Hi all Things are going well, but I must be the only writer in the world who edits a book and ends up with thousands more words. Most people say they tighten it up and remove at least 10%, often more.