It was the 145th anniversary of the death of Charles Dickens this year, and while much has been written about his life and work, we can still learn a lot from his methods. His depiction of a supposedly-fictional London was so realistic – he clearly drew a lot from how people lived in worked in Victorian […]
Writing Tips
“Write What You Know” Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Does
If you’ve ever read anything about writing, chances are that at some stage you’ll have encountered the maxim that you should ‘write what you know’. It’s at this point that some writers will throw up their hands and declare that nothing interesting ever happens to them, so what can they possibly write about? It can […]
Put the ‘social’ back into social media
We hear daily news stories about the ‘evils’ of using the internet, whether it’s sick adults grooming children, trolls jumping on anything they can to provoke a reaction, or those being recruited to fundamentalist causes. That said, social media can also be a brilliant place, connecting like-minded individuals, raising awareness about issues, spreading news stories that […]
The Best of Luna Station Quarterly is here!
I’m pleased to announce I have a story in a new anthology! The Best of Luna Station Quarterly: The First Five Years features FIFTY stories by women writers who have all appeared in Luna Station Quarterly, and it has an absolutely stunning cover by Hugo Award-winning artist Julie Dillon. My story is The Sought After Smile, a fantasy […]
Should authors be paid per page?
Do you love books? Do you think that it’s fair that when you buy a book, you only pay for the pages that you actually read? Well there was uproar recently when Amazon announced that it would be paying authors not according to the sales of each title, but rather the percentage of that title […]
Stop apologising for your book
Have you ever met a writer who almost seemed apologetic about their own work? Or are you a writer who tells people that your book is “a horror, but it’s all a bit silly really”? Stop apologising for your own work. When I told people that I had my first book coming out, I was naturally […]
