In all three books I’ve released so far I’ve had a dedication page. The one in The Heir is my favourite. I dedicated it to the five friends who encouraged me to try and get it published after they’d read it back when it was just a first (or second!) draft. Without them, I might not be writing this blog right now. The Crown I dedicated to two people I used to work with who had encouraged me to start writing down my stories back in the nineties. The Reign was dedicated to my father and my husband; not unusual […]

This week has been a stressful one for me. Why? Because of that thing every author dreads – a plot problem. This is hardly the first time I’ve had a plot problem in one of my novels but this one proved to be incredibly tricky, mainly because it was in the manuscript for my soon-to-be-released novel, Once Confronted. Scheduled for release in October this year, my publisher returned the manuscript to me last Monday and told me I needed to have the changes back by early this week. It’s always hard when working to that kind of deadline, especially with […]

This week I’m talking about what is possibly the hardest thing for most authors – attending events and signings to try and sell their books. At a recent event, another author and myself were talking to a fellow author about this very thing, and she was saying how hard she found it to attend those kinds of events. Most authors are introverts and we’d much rather be in our own little worlds creating stories than going out into the real world to talk about them. Social media and internet interactions are frequently favoured over face-to-face marketing, simply because it’s less […]

Social media can be a useful tool in reaching people so they hear about your book. Gaining an international audience is now an attainable goal for an unknown author with a small print or self-published book, thanks largely to social media. A few years ago, that kind of thing would have been next to impossible. Sites like Facebook and Goodreads can make a huge difference to an author’s marketing. This doesn’t mean that having no social media platform means your book won’t sell. However, there’s no doubt that pages on social media sites can made a huge difference, so even […]