I agree with this. Some writers put in a lot of scientific terms or words from other languages, but I find that it becomes annoying pretty quickly, especially if you need to look it up every time to work out what the author’s talking about. Most people don’t enjoy doing that anyway. Are they going to put down their book (or, to think in modern terms, open a browser on their tablet) when they’re in the middle of reading a story? Maybe if it’s a non-fiction book they might be more prepared to do that, but if I’m in the […]

Last Thursday I went to my first ever book signing as an author. The bookstore where I was scheduled to do the signing was a good 50 minutes’ drive from my home and in an area I wasn’t too familiar with, but with the help of a friendly policeman, I was soon seated in A Lot of Books, a small bookstore in the Ipswich City Mall. They had set up a table and chair for me in the only available space – the doorway! While this certainly had its plus side – everyone who walked in the door couldn’t help […]

Why is this so easy to do when I’m editing but not when I’m writing in the first place? In fact, it can even be difficult to find problem words when editing my own work. It’s amazing how many times I can go through my own novel and still, after read-through 624, I say to myself, ‘Ew! Why did I put it that way?’ or ‘Why did I use that word? That’s dumb!’. I guess that’s why having your book edited by someone else is so important, although they can miss stuff too. An edit of book two in my […]

The book launch for my debut novel, The Heir, was held on Saturday. I had two launches, really: one in person and one on my Facebook author page. I knew if I tried to post on Facebook at the same time I was trying to prepare for the physical book launch I’d probably blow a gasket, so I scheduled most of my posts ahead of time. It was exciting actually, to reflect on all the things that had led up to this point. I went right back to when I first wrote The Heir and my friends who had read […]