New Year – sort of

Hello. Yes, I know I’m late for *your* New Year, but March is my New Year.

Let me explain. Where we live there is a stipulation that we need to spend the month of February away. It’s no big deal, and we knew before we moved here. It’s a chance to step away from the office, to think about the bigger picture, and what we are doing and what we should be doing.

The great thing is: when we come back on March 1st, it’s like a new start. The weather’s starting to be a bit more spring-like, we have refreshed our existing ideas and created a whole load of new ones. More to come on that later in the year.

For the moment, I’m concentrating on the launch of the EFFICIENT NOVELIST course. Yes, it’s finally coming to fruition. Forty-two modules, nearly an hour and a half of videos, four free ebook downloads, 209 voiceovers and 223 graphics, charts and slides. There’s a lot in this. Finally, the modules are all complete, and they have been uploaded to the course website. Still to do? Uploading the downloadable worksheets, uploading the free ebooks. And begin the marketing campaign.

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2022 Non Resolutions

Long time readers will know that I don’t like RESOLUTIONS. There’s too much focus on one day in the year, and there’s too much looking back on a previous year with regret, with a false determination to DO BETTER next year.
And it’s all too easy for the resolutions to fall flat.
Like: “This year, I’m going to lose x weight”. It’s a focussed target, which might appear to be good, but it’s a digital target. You will either succeed, or you will do the ‘F’ word – FAIL. And failure is a destructive state of mind.
We don’t like destructive things – we only like constructive things. So my resolutions are NOT resolutions – they’re aims, or goals. If I don’t reach those goals, I’m not going to beat myself up about it, because as you will have seen if you’ve read my ‘looking back‘ post, there’s still a lot to celebrate.
So let’s get started.

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2021 ROUNDUP

It’s been another year, hasn’t it? Crikey. And we still seem to be no further forward with the epidemic in the UK, with indecision in our government and both anxiety and obstinacy present in our communities at the same time. Weird times.

Anyway, let’s move into the roundup of my year.

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Writing – literary or genre?

There is a question all writers should confront at some point during their writing life:

What sort of writer do I want to be?

Because, of course, there are a number of different types of writer. Perhaps the question should be: “What do I want from my writing life?”

Believe it or not, this is something nearly all writers fail to ask themselves. I know, we all start off writing as a bit of a hobby. Most of the population can physically write, putting letters together to form words, and words together to form sentences. That’s a basic function many can handle.

But writing seriously? Learning how to write productively, and with a purpose and with an intention to gain an audience?

THAT’S DIFFERENT

To align with this blog’s title, one of the choices fiction writers should make is: do we want to write genre or literary fiction?

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Location research

I’m not a researcher. I’m not big on spending hours talking to people, interviewing them even, learning about them, their jobs, their private lives, the places they live and work. I do know authors who are researchers, and they love spending time learning stuff.

Nope. Not me.

But this week, I travelled about an hour away from home to look at a small village that I might use for a new series of cosy mysteries.

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PUBLICATION DAY!

Even after writing and publishing 4 novels (including an ebook box set), 2 collections of short fiction, and 4 non-fiction books for authors, I still get a kick out of pressing that PUBLISH button.

And so it is with some pride I announce that my first crime book, published under my own name, is now available via this smartlink:

mybook.to/BodyOnTheBeach

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Themes

I want to tell you about themes. When I first started writing (short, literary fiction), I was forever being told about themes, and about how my writing needed more thematic writing in them. I really struggled to work out what a theme was, and how I could get it into my writing without making it look clunky and hokum.

After a couple of years of very minor success, I moved onto writing longer fiction. And, since I read commercial genre fiction (crime / thriller / horror / espionage), I naturally began to concentrate on those areas – writing the sort of books I’d like to read. If they were any good.

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Release of MELTDOWN

I have published and released MELTDOWN, an apocalyptic thriller.
“MELTDOWN is an apocalyptic thriller, bringing climate change, corruption and personal anger into a thrilling race against time.”

An ageing nuclear power station, run by a company trying to stretch out its final years.
A maintenance worker, bearing a grudge, with a new and mysterious girlfriend.
A local landowner, prepared to bend the rules in order to protect his investment.
And the heaviest rain for years.
What could possibly go wrong?


The buy links (Amazon) for the UK and USA are:

UK Ebook https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0847T8DR1
UK Print book https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0849T1P5C/

US Ebook https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0847T8DR1
US Print book https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0849T1P5C

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