Re-covering a book series

'You can't judge a book by its cover' is a saying you've probably heard many times, but I firmly believe that most people do - me included! While I was writing A Spider's Web, book three in my Mrs Hudson and Sherlock Holmes series, I made a decision to get new covers for the series. …

On unreliable narrators and alternative worlds

We finally got round to watching Cruella last weekend. We had thought of seeing the film when it first came out and paying for priority access, but I had suggested that we wait, since I wasn’t sure whether we'd like it. As it turns out, we really enjoyed it. When I looked on Wikipanion later, …

Have your say in my 2020 reader survey – and maybe win a paperback!

I did a reader survey last year and it was so helpful that I'm doing it again! I've put together a short (9-question) survey on SurveyMonkey. It's mainly multiple-choice, and its purpose is to learn more about my readers and people who interact with me on my author social media. I'll take the responses and use …

How do I measure success as a writer?

This is something which has been on my mind lately, probably as a sort of hangover from all those goal-setting New Year posts. What's the best way to measure success as a writer? Or do I mean as a publisher? Ooh, now that's a different question entirely. There are so many things you could focus …

Going the other way round

I am currently on a walk, and dictating into my phone. (Well, not now, I'm at a computer turning my ramblings into something vaguely coherent, but anyway). What is special about this walk, you might ask. Nothing particular. It’s a walk I often take, which involves going down a back road onto a track between …

Crunching the numbers: Book Report

WARNING: If you don't like numbers or graphs you might want to look away now...or skip this post altogether! I'm probably a gazillion steps behind the rest of the author community, but I just signed up for Book Report. If you haven't seen it, Book Report makes an easy-read dashboard out of your Amazon KDP …

A Bitesize trio: a book design mention, a question, and a reflection

So having said in my last post that I had nothing really to flag up, I discovered almost immediately afterwards that Bitesize got a mention in Joel Friedlander's eBook Cover Design Awards post for July! I'd submitted the cover mainly in the hope that people might see it and consider exploring the book, so Joel's …

I Write Like: Bitesize edition!

I've blogged about the I Write Like website before (see here), but I couldn't resist having another go! This time I've fed 4 flash-fiction stories from my forthcoming collection Bitesize into the I Write Like maw. I figured that as I've arranged the stories in 4 layers according to mood, it would be interesting to see what I …

Tech Tip Tuesday: Connect to local Amazon stores with global shortlinks

Today's blog will be a short one - appropriate, as I'm talking about creating shortlinks for books. It's also directed towards people who have books in the Amazon store, or plan to in the future. If that isn't you, look away now. If you already know about global shortlinks, I apologise in advance. If you …

I got a bad review and the world didn’t end

This week has mostly been about formatting the paperback version of the Secret Notebook. It's the first time I've formatted a real book and, after wrangling with a CreateSpace template, I'm hoping I'm over the worst. I will blog about it at some point, but not until I'm convinced there are no more surprises in …