When it comes to networking, there are those who seem born to it, working any room like a pro and coming away from any meeting with a ton of contacts and useful leads. As anyone who follows this blog will know, I am not one of those people. This was rammed home to me when […]
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I am reading Brené Brown at the moment – rereading, to be honest – and it has got me thinking a lot about her key topics of shame, fear and the ‘hustle of worthiness’. How they apply to freelance and creative lives in general, and to my own experiences, as a working-class woman with a […]
This John Wick riff (illustrated with my Funko, cos of course I have one!) is an example of the kind of fun little scene that I write when I am roughly working out a book. These often get cut because they don’t fit, they were just a sketch, or the story ends up going another way. I usually […]
I can’t quite believe it’s 7 years this month that I rather nervously released my little vampire book into the world! (Not My Little Vampire book, that would be copyright infringement.)What a journey it’s been. A steep learning curve at times, and sometimes frustrating, but watching what started as a short story written hastily to […]
I’ve been very neglectful of my writing of late, as the day job has been insanely busy, which makes it even nicer that a couple of nice pieces of news have arrived. An older short story of mine, inspired by my time as a subtitler, was chosen as story of the month by Byte the […]
“Be a disciplined half-ass” I don’t have a life motto, but if I did, this quote from Elizabeth Gilbert’s book on creativity Big Magic might be a good candidate. At first, it seems an odd thing to lay claim to. Surely, in the words of that other sage, Ron Swanson, we should avoid being a […]
Working on long-form projects like novels can mean that you feel like your profile is hard to maintain. Once the excitement of a book coming out has died down, how do you keep up momentum until you publish the next one? This may not be an issue if you are particularly prolific, but as many […]
Facebook kindly reminded me today that it’s 3 years or so since Angel Falls came out, so I am well overdue another book (thanks, Facebook!). But instead of using this as an excuse to beat myself up over the delay – Lord knows I have done that enough already! – decided instead to use it […]
2018 has been a funny old year – for most of us, I think. The world has felt more than a little nuts (remember when we were all just sad lots of famous people were dying – ah, good times) and it’s impossible not to let that bleed into your everyday life. If you, like […]
Happy New Year, one and all: I hope that, whether you celebrate or not, you survived the season intact. I actually had a big family Christmas this year – my first ever! – and it was a delight. My cousin and his wife (who is actually an old school friend of mine, also) hosted the […]
Dark Dates 