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

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 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

Happy self-publiversary to me!

I only noticed this about half an hour ago (it’s latish afternoon here in the UK), but today is my 30-month or 2.5-year self-publiversary! Yes, two and a half years ago I unleashed The Secret Notebook of Sherlock Holmes on an unsuspecting world, and then, well, I just kept going. 30 months feels like a long time

A big 12 Days thank you!

Back in May 2017, I joined 12 other writers to take part in a charity Christmas anthology, 12 Days of Christmas, with all profits going to the child literacy charity The Book Bus. The premise was 12 stories, each themed according to the carol ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’. The anthology was the brainchild of the

Possibly the quietest book launch ever! Murder in the Choir

Happy Boxing Day! If you’ve been celebrating Christmas, hope you had a great time and are still full of food and replete with presents. Despite various illness bugs floating around the family, we had a lovely dinner and Santa came! So a good day all round. I possibly enjoyed it more because I was recovering

Winner winner chicken dinner: CampNaNo 2017

Phew! August 1 (how did that happen?) and I’m very pleased to report that Camp NaNoWriMo is done and the sequel to Murder At The Playgroup is in full draft! Here’s the graph: My target was 50,000 words for the month, and in the end I wrote just over 53K to finish Murder In The Choir. The

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,

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