Werewolf Not Included
Previously published in The New Writer Magazine Making sure your story fits the market We all know how hard it is to find the right markets for our work, but some writers do make it more difficult...
View ArticleThe Cheats' Guide to Writing Science Fiction
Previously published in The New Writer Magazine The Cheat’s Guide to writing Science Fiction I decided a while ago that I enjoy writing science fiction (SF), or speculative fiction as many SF writers...
View ArticleHow Do Ghosts Kiss? (and other important questions for the supernatural...
Previously published in The New Writer Magazine The supernatural romance is big business in publishing. This is partly as a result of Stephanie Meyer’s phenomenally successful Twilight series, which...
View ArticleWriters Behaving Badly
I’ve been looking for an old blog post I’d written about behaving professionally as a writer. It’s there, somewhere, amongst my zillion files and folders on Dropbox, but I can’t find it. And maybe...
View ArticleA Cheat's Guide to Writing Western Romances
Of all my old blog posts, this was one of the most popular. It also appeared in The New Writer Magazine. Having written two whole western romances – Bella’s Vineyard and Just Like Jesse James – I...
View ArticleCommon Mistakes by New Writers
I’m always a bit wary of doing things like this because similar online articles become ‘rules’ and then writers start feeling they can’t do anything right. These are not rules, or things new writers...
View ArticleWhen Mary Sue met Marty Stu
Mary Sue could hardly believe it. She was on her way to college when she woke up right in the middle of Middle Earth. She spied her favourite elf, Marty Stu, in the distance. “I know you,” she said,...
View ArticleCrossing over to the Light Side
Lighter writing is often denigrated as being insubstantial and fluffy. Those who write for the women’s magazine and light romance market are not always considered to be ‘proper’ writers amongst the...
View ArticleRomance Writing and reinventing the wheel
The recent case against Harlequin for plagiarism has brought up the subject of originality in writing romance. In that case, a wannabe writer accused Mills and Boon novelist, Kate Walker of...
View ArticleWriting in the Now
Originally posted on the Pocketeers blog. When I presented a workshop for the lovely Write Place Writing School at the beginning of November, I touched briefly on ‘writing in the now’ and wanted to...
View ArticleChanging Point of View and What it's Meant to Achieve
This post has been inspired by the recent release of Grey, the latest blatant money-spinner, sorry, novel, from E.L. James. The novel tells the story of the original Fifty Shades of Grey, but this...
View ArticleCatch up: Weight loss, book/writing news, The RNA Winter Party and The...
Hello folks. I really ought to keep this blog updated more often, so this is my attempt to do that. I don't normally write about my day to day life on my blog, as I'm mindful that I owe privacy to...
View ArticleCrooked Cats, The Mousetrap, RNA Winter Party and an Epic Yarn set in Egypt
I’m only just getting my breath back after an action packed November. You’ll be able to read about some of it on the RNA blog soon as I tell Elaine Everest all that goes into arranging the RNA...
View ArticleThe Language of Love
© John Siebert | Dreamstime Stock Photos The language of love in romance novels is important in order to set the scene. It has also changed much over the years. Gone are the flowery purple passages of...
View ArticleBack Story and Angst - How Much is Too Much?
© Marilyn Barbone | Dreamstime Stock Photos I have touched on this subject before, in relation to conflict within a romance. But I thought it was a topic worth visiting in depth. It is a tendency of...
View ArticleA Tortured Hero Versus a Hero Who Tortures
Orson Welles as Mr Rochester The tortured hero is the staple of romantic novels. Mr Darcy, perhaps a mild version of the tortured hero, felt awkward in public situations, giving Lizzie Bennett the...
View ArticleThe Case of the Ex in Romantic Fiction
A writer friend sent me a message the other day, asking my advice on how to dispense with her heroine’s absent husband. Should she kill him or just send him off to another country? It set me thinking...
View ArticleNew Releases on Amazon Kindle - Big Girls Don't Cry (Bobbie Blandford 3) and...
I'm delighted to announce two new releases on Amazon Kindle today. <br /> Big Girls Don't Cry is the 3rd instalment of my Bobbie Blandford series, telling the tale of a 60s...
View ArticleIn Praise of the Happy Ending
I like a nuanced ending to stories as much as the next person. I’m an intelligent woman so I know that there isn’t always a ‘somewhere over the rainbow’. Neither in real life nor in fiction. Yet...
View ArticleShort Stories and Going Back To My Roots
To those who have only known me in latter years, it probably seems that I’m all about the pocket novels. This is not entirely untrue. I’ve been writing them since 2008, when I penned The Secret of...
View ArticleOn The Mend and (gingerly) Raring to Go
Some of you may know that I've had a bit of a problem with my tummy for quite a few years. There was a lump above my belly button that just kept getting bigger and bigger. Of course, my first thought...
View ArticleThe Secret of Lakeham Abbey pre-orders and launch
<br /> I am delighted to announce that The Secret of Lakeham Abbey will be published by Crooked Cat on Friday, 20th...
View ArticleA difficult catch up post
It seems that my joy at sorting out my own health was to be short lived. I had only just been declared fit when we learned that my husband, Den, has Oesophageal Cancer. He'd had problems swallowing for...
View ArticleMore catch up and an MA in Creative Writing
Sorry I've ignored the blog for so long. As you all saw in my last post, we've been battling with Den's cancer. Three weeks ago he finished a course of radiotherapy, and since then it's been a bit up...
View ArticleFive Years Later
Five Years Later It’s been a long time since I blogged. On my last post, I wrote about how my husband, Den, was undergoing treatment for cancer. As you can imagine, fighting that consumed our lives...
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