It’s been another week of illness at the croft of bees. The children went back to school but Mr. B and I got it instead, so the blog posting schedule remains in a mess, and the house remains uncleaned. I did some writing on Elf Princes’ Quest, but not as much as I would have…
I had this week all planned out – in so far as I ever have a plan. I was going to blog on Monday about how my muse was like a giant amoeba, engulfing everything in its path and growing, growing, until it ATE MANHATTAN. (I’m not even sure where Manhattan is, but it sounds…
Every so often, I have a drive to create more, faster, to build up my backlist and bank account and reputation as a hard working author and all that jazz. Recently I’ve been trying the whole “write at least 1000 words a day and no slacking ever, no excuses, you layabout” thing. This was fine,…
I’ve held out for a long time against all this advice (indeed against the downright assumption) that all writing ought to be done in scenes. “But I write in chapters!” I cried. “Why should I bother with fiddly little bits of scenes when I can see the whole chapter in one lump and just work…
Welcome to Elin Gregory, an old friend but a new author. Elin has just had her first solo book published, and has all sorts of interesting things in the pipeline – I’m particularly looking forward to On a Lee Shore, and A Fierce Reaping. Elin and I seem to back opposite sides in history, but…
I recently had a lovely email from Gert Alenhall, who is the person in charge of making and keeping the 18th century clothes of the mariners on the Swedish ship Götheborg. He also runs a business of his own, designing and making all kinds of costumes. Check out his website here www.ateljealenhall.se ) He said…
Well, the gist of this post is in the title. My lovely editor at Samhain, Anne Scott, emailed me this morning to say “Did you know Bomber’s Moon has a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly?” To which I had to sit down abruptly with the smelling salts (porridge actually) and calm myself before replying. Publisher’s…
Huzzah, and other, more period-appropriate, exclamations. The first draft of The Pilgrims’ Tale is complete at 87,890 words. It opens with a scene a little bit like this: only without the anachronisms and arrows, and carries on being less about war and more about music and gender-role confusion than is usual with me. It’s probably…
I occasionally also froth at the mouth about this subject, and have crossed one publisher off my list of ‘people I will ever work with again’ because they tried to take my wases away. But I have been too lazy/ill informed to ever write a proper post about why using the verb ‘to be’ does…
Hold these dates! September 14th – 16th 2012 will see the third annual UK Meet for readers/writers/reviewers/fans of GLBTQ fiction. There will be a full day of programmed events on Saturday 15th, plus social events on Friday evening and Sunday morning. Full press release, with details of where, what and how to book, goes live…
