This is my first blog for the year, and I apologise for being so tardy. However, with Omicron hitting, some new health challenges and a new release coming up, I’ve been a bit swamped. But now I’m gearing up for the release of The Verindon Conspiracy and for my first event of the year, OzComicCon Homegrown in Brisbane. OzComicCon will be held on 26-27 March at the Brisbane Convention Centre. I’ll be there at the Rendered Realms stand with Jeanette O’Hagan. Unfortunately, Adele Jones can’t join us on this occasion. Our stand number is AA3, so if you’re attending, be […]

I think most of us hoped that 2021 would be an improvement on 2020 with its COVID craziness and all the problems associated with living in a pandemic. It didn’t help that 2020 was also a hard year for our family personally, so I was looking forward to a better 2021. Unfortunately, 2021 decided not to be cooperative in a major way in my life, as in the first half of the year, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I’m happy to say that I’ve had surgery and they managed to remove all the cancer cells, so it’s likely I […]

I think a lot of people will be glad that we’ve finally reached the end of 2020. I know I am. I hope that next year will prove a lot easier for many of us. We haven’t had it as bad as many people out there who’ve lost jobs and livelihoods, and here in Australia, we’ve done pretty well overall with managing the virus, so much so that my time shopping this morning looked pretty normal for this time of year. And it’s a relief to know that there are a few promising vaccines on our horizon. Hopefully they’ll help […]

When COVID-19 hit and we all went into lockdown, I thought it would be a great chance to find some new reads. I bought a few books back in March this year, but found, to my dismay, that most of them didn’t engage me. I even bought a book from one of my favourite authors but didn’t feel the desire to keep reading it. I was so relieved when Stephenie Meyer chose this year to release Midnight Sun, Twilight from Edward’s point of view. I’m a huge Twilight fan and had been waiting for this book for years. It didn’t […]

Last weekend I attended Supanova Gold Coast with Jeanette O’Hagan and Adele Jones. We had a great time and especially enjoyed (as usual) seeing what everyone was wearing. Jeanette and I were keeping tabs on the different Doctors, and we think the only ones missing were Patrick Troughton, Colin Baker, Paul McGann and Christopher Eccleston. There was certainly no shortage of long scarves, long coats and bow ties! I wore my new costume, which I talked about in last month’s blog. The tiara received several positive comments and I took it off a few times so that someone could have […]

Last weekend I went to my first ever Comic-Con event right here in Brisbane, and I’m hooked! I was at the Intricate Worlds table with two author friends, Adele Jones and Jeanette O’Hagan. It was a great idea to share a table, as it meant we could not only share the costs but also man the table if one or other of us wanted to take a break and see all the great things on offer at Comic-Con. I’m happy to say that all three of us were pleased with the response our books received. We gave out so many […]

I looked at my blog the other day and realised I hadn’t posted since February! Eeek! I thought I’d better rectify that. It’s amazing how quickly the years fly by and as an author, I suddenly realise how little I’d done to market my books so far this year. It doesn’t help that two of my most supportive bookstores closed down at the beginning of the year. Bookstores are becoming harder and harder to find and fewer and fewer seem willing to take authors for signings. However, I have been looking for other avenues. Not long ago I became involved […]

This afternoon I held a book launch for Once Confronted. I hired a nearby church hall and went down in the early afternoon to get everything ready for the 2.00 pm start. It’s amazing how many things you need to take with you to an event like this. I needed a sign people could see from the street so they could see where to turn into the car park. I needed another sign to point people to the right building. I put up posters and blurbs and book review quotes for all my books, with food and drink enough to […]

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 […]