NaNoWriMo: remembering the first time!

Do you NaNo? I haven’t this year, but I can still remember the first time. That makes it sound as if it was decades ago. It was actually in 2015 – but that seems like a VERY long time ago now! I’ve written so much since then… If you’re reading this and saying ‘Hang on,

The parting of the ways

That title is much more dramatic than this post will be :-)! However, I decided this was something worth writing a little blog about, so here goes. Most of my books – by quite a long way – are books for adults. However, just before the pandemic, I published a picture book for children –

10 thoughts on being an independent author

As it’s Indie Author Week this week, and I’ve now been self-publishing for just over 6 years, here are some thoughts on what it’s like to be an independent author. Before I start, two things: What follows is drawn from my own experience – I’m not saying it will be the same for everyone who

Here we are again: new year goals…

This year seems to have gone both quickly and slowly. Somehow, the whole family has managed to stay Covid-free (I ought to cross my fingers but it’s quite hard to type at the same time). The kids are back in school, I’m back tutoring (in just one school this time), but my husband is still

It’s my publiversary! 10 thoughts on 5 years of self-publishing

Time flies when you’re having fun! I only realised this morning that today is the fifth anniversary of the date I published my first book, The Secret Notebook of Sherlock Holmes. I’ve done publiversary posts before, which you can find by searching for ‘publiversary’, but I felt that I probably ought to mark a half-decade

It’s that time again: new year goals…

Well, 2020 has been interesting, to say the least. What’s that saying about ‘may you live in interesting times’?  I reread last year’s ‘life goals’ post, and either I was unusually prescient, or I may be partly responsible for the mess that has been 2020. If so, I apologise. That said, I’m conscious that I’m

One year old: happy birthday, Caster and Fleet!

I can’t believe it, but it’s true. I had a sort-of-feeling, and when I checked on Amazon I was right. The Case of the Black Tulips, the first book in the Caster & Fleet series, will be one year old on 19 June. I told my husband and he said ‘Is that all?’ And I

It’s my 3-year self-publiversary today! 12 reflections…

I noticed about halfway through this morning, in the midst of running errands and nothing much to do with writing, that today is my 3-year self-publiversary. My first self-pubbed book launched on 1 April 2016 (I picked that date for a reason, honest!), and hey, here I still am. I published a post for my

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

Why I’m not doing NaNoWriMo this year

It feels weird to say out loud that I’m not going to be taking part in NaNoWriMo this time around. Admittedly I haven’t been writing long, in the grand scheme of things, but NaNo in November, and Camp NaNo in April and July, formed part of my goals and targets and gave a bit of