Category Archives: Writing

Delay…

10 Monday Apr 2017

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Unfortunately I need to announce a delay in publication of my new book The Girl from Ballymor. The book is ready – the delay has come from Sales and Marketing. There are only so many ‘slots’ available at retailers for the paperback and they want to give this book the best possible chance.

So publication has been put back to 7th September. I’m obviously disappointed by this but also keen to see the book on sale in as many places as possible.

Sorry to make you all wait a little longer. I hope you find the book is worth the wait!

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My two favourite words…

27 Monday Mar 2017

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I just wrote “The End” on a (very rough) draft of my next novel. It is SUCH a satisfying moment! All the more so this time, as I have been racing ahead to finish a draft before going travelling – we leave in just 6 days time.

Having finished it before we go means I can print it off and take the printout with me to edit. I prefer doing the first, major edit on paper, with a red pen. It’s easier to be ruthless when you can put a big red cross over an entire page and scribble something different in the margin or on the reverse.

Of course, once we are away travelling in our motorhome printing will be a bit tricky. I’ll be taking my laptop of course, and we have various arrangements to allow us to be online (see here if you are curious!) but printing would involve taking a memory stick to a print shop and explaining what I need in broken French or even more broken Italian. It’d probably cost a fortune too. So I was keen to get to the point where I could print it at home and take it with me.

In other news – The Pearl Locket is currently on sale in the UK at 99p, but only for a few more days.

And don’t forget my new book The Girl from Ballymor is available for preorder in both ebook and print format!

Another blog… and some news

05 Sunday Feb 2017

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I haven’t been completely ignoring this blog – I have just been stupidly busy so far in 2017. I’ve been editing the next novel, and writing the one that’s to come after that. And I’ve been planning a six-month trip in our campervan, which will begin in April. Associated with that I’ve been learning Italian.

Oh, and then there’s the day job, of course.

So – about this six-month trip – my husband and I have set up another blog in which we will write about our travels. Please do take a look, and if you are interested in following our progress around Europe, bookmark it or subscribe to follow it by email. I won’t put much about the trip on this blog, which I’ll keep for writing and book news. Here’s the link to the new blog: https://inktravel2017.wordpress.com/blog/ 

And a little bit of writing news – my book The Pearl Locket is on promotion in the US, currently selling at just 99c. This has given it a lovely boost, and I was over the moon earlier today to see it reached number 27 in the overall Kindle chart.  Of course I had to get a screenshot of that, to grin stupidly over whenever I need a confidence boost:

us-charts-5-2-17

It’s slipped a bit since I grabbed that screenshot but it was up there for a while, honest!

News catch-up!

01 Thursday Dec 2016

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I am a bit shocked and horrified to discover it is over 3 months since I wrote a blog post, and I am becoming one of those bloggers who has to start every post with an apology that it’s been so long since the last one. So sorry, dear blog followers, I shall try to do better!

So in the last post I was between novels. Since then I have completed two rounds of edits on the ‘Irish covernovel’, which does have a title now but not one I am allowed to share just yet! I’m waiting to hear back from my publisher on the latest edits, and also to hear when it’ll be put up for preorder. I will, of course, announce it here!

And I am now 20,000 words in to the next one, working title ‘Drowned Village’. So there’s been plenty of writing going on in this house, if not any blogging.

And in another snippet of news, my book The Daughters of Red Hill Hall has been included in Amazon’s December monthly deals, so is priced at just 99p for the next 3o days. Go on, treat yourself!

 

Between novels

29 Monday Aug 2016

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I’m in that wonderful, exciting, refreshing but also terrifying space between novels at the moment. I finished a draft of my last, still-to-be-titled, one over the weekend, and sent it to my editor today. There will still be plenty of work to do on it no doubt, but for the moment it is out of my hands.

Meanwhile ideas for the next novel after that are filling my mind, so although I’d planned to have a bit of a break I have spent a lot of time today scribbling notes and putting together a Pinterest board to inspire me.

There are a number of things I do when planning a novel before I start actually writing it. I’ll do them in roughly this sequence:

  1. Scribble notes about key scenes, in a lovely new notebook of course!
  2. Decide on names, ages etc of main characters
  3. Draw up family trees for main characters, especially important if genealogy is to be a theme in the book
  4. Draw up timelines for the two timelines in the novel
  5. Build up a Pinterest board of inspiring images
  6. Note down main areas where I’ll need to research ahead of writing, and order any necessary books
  7. Create detailed character sheets for the main characters so that I can really get to know them
  8. Scribble details of the main settings, draw a map or house-plan if necessary
  9. Write a one-page synopsis for my editor to (hopefully!) approve
  10. Write a chapter plan – two or three sentences outlining what will happen in each chapter

So although ‘the Irish novel’ has been sent off ready for the next stage (rather like a five-year old child being sent off for his first day at school), the ‘drowned village’ novel is already swilling around my head. You know you need to write a novel when you find yourself waking in the night with scenes for it playing out in full colour in your head.

It’s funny – to my readers Daughters of Red Hill Hall is considered my latest novel, but I feel as though I’m two novels on from that!

Inspiration from place names

28 Sunday Feb 2016

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For some time now I have wanted to write a novel in which all the characters are named after Dorset villages. Maybe it’d end up being a pastoral Hardyesque tale, who knows, but Dorset place names are wonderful for conjuring up characters. Here are some I’ve thought of.

Worth Matravers – elderly tweed clad, pipe smoking whiskery gamekeeper

Kingston Lacey – as Lacey Kingston this is our heroine, bit of an airhead, heiress

Margaret Marsh – the down to earth widow who runs the village post office

Piddletrenthide – split it as Piddle Trenthide and this is a fellow whose real name is Phillip, but he picked up his nickname in boarding school on account of his frequent bed wetting

Sixpenny Handley – dear old Simon went to the same school as Piddle Trenthide, and got his nickname for being not quite the full shilling

Melbury Osmond – all tan and teeth, tribute act playing the local pubs and clubs

Hazelbury Bryan – let’s rearrange her as Hazel Bury-Bryan,  horse mad and horse-faced

Bishop’s Caundle – Bishop Caundle is the white-haired retiring clergyman with a dark past

Maiden Newton – the town bike, ironically nick-named

Melcombe Horsey – actually he’s Malcolm, but he has such an upper crust accent it comes out as Melcombe

Wimborne St Giles – can be Giles Wimborne and I think he’ll be the hero who sweeps Lacey off her feet

I could go on! Wiki has a useful list of Dorset place names and I suspect there are other counties with just as wonderfully named villages. What do you think – should I write the novel? No idea what kind of plot could encompass all those characters!

 

Writing Magazines

19 Tuesday Jan 2016

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There are, I think, three stages in a writer’s relationship with writing magazines such as Writers’ Forum or Writing Magazine.

  1. As a beginner writer you buy them, read them cover to cover and learn a lot from them. You dream of the day when your work, even just a reader’s letter, is published in the magazine.
  2. As a writer who’s beginning to submit their work, you enter competitions featured in them, send in letters, fillers and article proposals. Some are published. You dream of the day when the articles are about you, not by you.
  3. As an established writer you are interviewed for features in the magazine, and buy the magazine to see what the journalist has said about you.

I seem to be somewhere between 2 and 3 at the moment – am delighted to have been featured in a article by Simon Whaley on how best to make use of the Leap Day this year (Writing Magazine, February 2016). He’s written about me because of my little time management book for writers – Give Up Ironing. That issue is in the shops now.

 

Stood and sat

30 Monday Nov 2015

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This is a bit of a rant, but I need to get it off my chest.

I seem to have read so many published books and articles lately, which contain phrases such as he was stood outside, she was sat in the kitchen. It’s driving me mad – every time I see this kind of thing it pulls me out of the story and makes my blood pressure rise.

‘was stood’ and ‘was sat’ are never right. It should be: He was standing outside, or He stood outside. And: She was sitting in the kitchen, or She sat in the kitchen.

No one makes this mistake with the past tense of any other verb, do they? I’ve never seen things like ‘He was ran across the field’ or ‘They were swam in the sea’.

I get that it’s a colloquialism, and therefore in dialogue you might use it if it would be natural for your character to do so. ‘He were sat right on top of t’mountain, by gum.’

But not in general prose. I’ve been trying to think of any way in which this kind of construction could ever be correct. The only example I can think of is this:

The cleaners had obviously been moving the ornaments. The china dogs were stood one at each end.

Now I write that, I’m not even sure it’s correct. Even if it is, it’s passive voice so better rewritten as: The cleaners had stood the china dogs one at each end. 

What grammatical errors wind you up the most?

Well, what shall I write now?

23 Monday Nov 2015

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I finished the first edit of my novel yesterday, and sent it straight off to my eldest son who’s my beta reader. I’m looking forward to hearing what he thinks of it, then I’ve time to make some more changes as necessary before sending it to my editor just after Christmas. Phew! It’ll be lovely to have time to start something new, before I get my editor’s comments on it and have to rewrite the whole thing, ooh-er.

Want to know what its title will be? Not sure if I should reveal that yet…Oh, go on then, you’ve twisted my arm. It’ll be called The Daughters of Red Hill Hall. It’s dual timeline, and both timelines feature the stately home Red Hill Hall, and two girls who are the best of friends at the start of the novel, until… I’ll say no more. Publication will be around April 2016 – will let you know when I have a definite date.

Anyway, after completing the novel and also sending a synopsis for the next one to my editor, I thought I’d have a few days off from writing. But I’ve sat here this evening with itchy fingers, so I wrote a guest blog post for someone else, and then this blog post. A change is as good as a rest, they say, and certainly it’s the case that writing something other than the novel I’ve been working on since the end of April feels refreshing and fun. Counting up, I realise that I’ve only spent 7 months writing this one, which is a lot faster than any previous novel. And in June I hardly wrote anything, so it’s really 6 months work. Not bad going, considering I work full time as well.

It’s good to give yourself a pat on the back now and again. Even if a minute later I’m back to the usual writerly mental state of feeling full of self-doubt and insecurity!

 

The next novel has been printed!

02 Monday Nov 2015

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On Saturday I finally finished the first draft of my next novel. It needs a fair bit of work to whip it into shape, but from this point on I’m editing rather than first-drafting. I feel more than ready for this change of tempo – it uses different parts of your brain and I am kind of looking forward to it.

I say ‘kind of’, because that first read through is a terrifying prospect. What if it’s rubbish? What if the plot doesn’t hang together and the prose is dull and lifeless, and the characters are unlikeable and inconsistent?

When I am writing a first draft I try to keep forward momentum going at all times, and never go back to edit. If I write something which will require a tweak or addition in an earlier chapter I just write myself a note and keep going. Otherwise I know I would never reach the end. This method works for me but does mean there can be quite a lot to tackle in the first edit – the one I must do before I let anyone at all read it.

Anyway, just now I printed off the entire novel. I will read it through with a red pen in hand and scribble notes as I go. Then I’ll get going on the edits. Deadline is Christmas. Wish me luck!