Because I don’t want to get ahead of myself, I note a few things I need to research, as a reminder, realistic costs and contemporary references, and some details on calorific intakes. I’d decided early on this would be a quirk for Tiffany in her …
Read MoreWriting Process 2
I now have Tiffany born in 1968, at University in 1986, the fateful brief encounter in 2000, and Chloe naturally being born in 2002, after the affair is over, making her 18 in 2021. This pleases me aesthetically and structurally, and I have a note …
Read MoreWriting Process 1
So, I keep my promises and said I’d blog a bit about my process of writing a new book, so here goes. Everyone will have their own process of course, and every book is different, but when I have a new idea, my most common …
Read MoreShow Me the Money
This is something fellow writers must ask themselves as I did. How much should I spend on my writing? First tip, by no means innovative or shocking to say, but don’t use Vanity Publishing. Simple. These days if all you want is a good looking …
Read MoreThe Mock Song – John Wilmot Earl of Rochester
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50453/the-mock-song You may not know John Wilmot’s work, and he’s probably best known today for his crudity, but writers as diverse as Aphra Behn, Voltaire, Hazlitt and Germaine Greer all found something unique and admirable in this arch satirist, and his contemporary translations of the …
Read MoreHonesty
In the spirit of openness, I should relate to you one of my (many) lessons from writing, and a bitter pill to swallow, that, shoch horror, some of what I write simply isn’t good enough. It was looking for places to submit short stories that …
Read MoreBook Cover -alternative version
In my earlier attempts at books, I tried to create covers myself. Now this may come as a shock to you, but I’m not a graphic designer, typesetter, photographer or artist. I know, it surprised me too, but the process of learning book cover composition, …
Read MoreFantastic Beta Readers and Where to Find Them
So this is a part of my series about the process of writing and publishing. For those who aren’t aware, Beta Readers come from a community of readers and writers, and give feedback on pre-publication versions of novels, varying from grammar and spell checks to …
Read MoreCockups in my proof
So, rookie mistake one, I’d left the guidelines on the cover template resulting in a dotted line around the different sections. Doofus. Easily fixed, though nothing is ever straightforward. To match the colours on the image I’d needed to flood fill with the colour code …
Read MoreHow Much Proof is Enough?
Well, it’s an exciting day for me. My first paperback proofs arrived just after I’d finished my scrambled eggs on toast (I wasn’t constantly checking the tracking information all morning, honestly). It’s always scary to reach the next new stage of the publication journey, and …
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