Penny for the Guy: a story for Bonfire Night

Here’s a cheery little story for Bonfire Night. Hope you enjoy it! Penny For The Guy ‘Hooligans, that’s what they are,’ he said, tugging the curtains closed and turning up the volume on the telly. Samson woke, and barked twice before settling again. ‘Every damn year, crash bang wallop. I’ll be glad when it’s over.’

Happy Halloween!

The horror story here is that our dishwasher isn’t working…other than that, we’re good. I’m looking forward to two things this Halloween. One is going trick-or-treating with the kids later – sweeeeeets! The other is taking part in C.L. Monaghan‘s Halloween takeover event, Midnight Mayhem and Magic, to celebrate the launch of her new book, Midnight

Match Point: a tennis tale

As Wimbledon’s on, here is a little flash story I wrote a while ago. Imagine it narrated by your favourite tennis commentator! Match Point   ‘Get out of the way, Marnie!’ Dylan shouts, pointing his racket at her. ‘I want to plaaaaaaayyy…’ Marnie whines, Bambi eyes pleading. ‘No. You’re too small. You’ll probably hurt yourself,

Books books books!

Today I’m talking about even more books than usual! First of all, Murder At The Playgroup is featuring in 3 book promotions this month: Best Of British and Irish – This showcases books by British and Irish authors, and you can download free excerpts and even whole stories from Instafreebie. Lots of different genres, and the promotion

Paperback Writer!

Book post is the very best kind of post – especially when it’s proofs of your own paperbacks! It almost makes the agonising over typefaces, spacing, etc etc etc worthwhile. I’m delighted to report that the paperback versions of Bitesize and A Jar Of Thursday are now available on Amazon. I’m also working on an offer for my Etsy

A Thursday update: ARCs available!

What a relief! Yesterday I got the last comments from my wonderful proofreader, made the changes, and uploaded the final version (I hope) of A Jar of Thursday to Amazon. I’m a natural fretter, so while I knew I had time to make changes, I still had the what ifs in the back of my mind. What

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

Bitesize launch: open the box!

Today is UK National Flash Fiction Day and also launch day for my new book Bitesize! To celebrate I’m starting the book off at an introductory price of 99p/99c on Amazon, and it is also available to read on Kindle Unlimited. Bitesize is a collection of 68 flash fiction stories. The stories are arranged in four different layers, each with

One thing after another: signing up for Camp NaNoWriMo

When will I learn, eh? There I was, having pretty much finalised Bitesize, thinking I would have a nice restful time writing the sequel to the Secret Notebook, and somehow I have managed to sign up to Camp NaNoWriMo. If you haven’t encountered Camp NaNoWriMo before (and it’s my first time), it’s a more relaxed version

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