Happy 2019! I'm starting this year's blogs with a wild tangent from my writing life into, well, the rest of my life. Gasp! No, writing is not the entirety of my life, though it occasionally seems like it (not a complaint). Like many people who watched 'that' episode of Planet Earth II by the incomparable Sir … Continue reading Plastic-free, cruelty-free, chemical-free
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via SFSF Awards 2018 Sheffield Fantasy and Science Fiction club (SFSF) has released its annual awards for best collection, best novel and best completed series, which you can read at the link above. Nestled among some truly excellent winners is Darksoul, meaning that the last day of 2018 is going to start as well as … Continue reading SFSF Awards 2018 – Darksoul gets a Skadi!
In no particular order and with varying degrees of importance and silliness, some things 2018 taught me. Note, these are not prescriptions for others on how to approach life, writing, or anything. My job isn't to tell you what to do; it's, hopefully, to entertain you and then tear your heart out and crush it … Continue reading Things wot I learnt or did in 2018
I've seen the first trailer for Avengers 4. Let me be clear, I'm going to watch it. I love the MCU and they're generally solid films. That said, Black Panther was the best MCU film of the last few years for me, easily, EASILY outstripping GOTG, Ragnarok and Infinity Wars. Which leads me on to … Continue reading Where did all the Wakandans go?
Those were the last words I wrote in my WIP yesterday before going out to tutor with The Access Project. They're not a line of dialogue - it's a prompt so that when I get back to work this morning, I'll know what needs to come next. It wasn't a conscious decision to include an … Continue reading It’s an ambush!
I'm deep into the last week of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month for any who don't know - expect a post-NaNo round up next week), but I just had to pop on to say that my second child, Darksoul, has been reviewed in Publishers Weekly, and they've only gone and given it a starred review. … Continue reading Darksoul in Publishers Weekly
This last week I have found myself in a situation I've never encountered before. Having submitted the draft of Bloodchild to my publishers for edits, I was faced with taking a work in progress I'd been messing around with and writing for fun, and examining it in a new critical light - this is going … Continue reading On writing a second series
I was recently sent an ARC of Rosewater, Tade Thompson's new novel which is being published through Orbit on 20 September. It is the first in the Wormwood Trilogy, set in a near-future Nigeria seemingly blessed with an benevolent alien presence. Rosewater is a town on the edge. A community formed around the edges of a … Continue reading Interview with Tade Thompson
This is supposed to be a newsletter, but my newsletter server/provider is currently having issues whereby everything it sends gets delivered to the recipients' spam folder, which is less than ideal. So, it's here, instead. *insert pretend newsletter format here* Book baby 2 is due Hello! I hope that, like me, you are all flailing … Continue reading Darksoul, events, anthology stories, and HEMA
The creative arts, particularly writers and artists, are littered with those who have failed to reach their own expectations, potential, dreams and goals. We all want to excel in our chosen path, all want to achieve the aim of making a living from what we love to do.
The harsh truth is that the majority of us will fail. We’ll have our lofty ideas and will fall short after a few exhaustive years of trying everything we can think of to reach that breakthrough point. We’ll cheer at the successes of others and wish with all our hearts that we could emulate just a fraction of it for ourselves.
So, for the majority of us creative types not quite finding the success we dreamt of, what are our options?
- Give up chasing dreams that never come true.
- Continue pursuing our goals in the hope that elusive breakthrough will happen.
- Diversify.
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