fantasy writer
I just wanted to wish you all a wonderful festive holiday.
However you spend it, and whoever you’re with, may it bring you all you need and may you find a little magic there too.
This is my last blog post for 2019, so here’s to a happy, healthy and exciting 2020.
So the year is almost at an end. In fact, the whole decade is almost at an end. Very soon it’ll be ‘bye bye 2019, you little angel of a year’, and hello to something completely new and exciting.
It’s time to look back over the last twelve months and all the goodies 2019 has brought with it.
So I began the year with fingers firmly and hopefully crossed. Having submitted my novel to Burning Chair Publishing right before Christmas, this was the last chance for Haven Wakes. If they said no, I would shelve my precious book and begin something completely new.
January was a month of waiting to hear whether Burning Chair liked my novel, and when I finally thought it would be a ‘no’ or I wouldn’t hear back, I got the email I’d been hoping for – a request for the entire manuscript.
February was another month of twiddling the digits and waiting. Would Burning Chair be as keen on the entire manuscript as they had been about the first few chapters?
At the beginning of March, I received an email from Burning Chair asking to speak to me on the phone. Eek! Their call coincided with their visit to the London Book Fair and they finally gave me the news I’d been waiting for. They wanted to publish Haven Wakes!
Over that month a number of things happened:
My publishing journey had begun.
April was a whirlwind of edits, setting up my website and altering my social media presence to fit. I already had a writer Facebook and Twitter account, but I set up an Instagram account too.
My daughter designed a wonderful piece of artwork for the home page of my website and, with my copywriter hat on, I began working on the wordage for each page of my website.
By the end of April, my website was live.
May and June were all about the edits, by both me and Burning Chair, and beginning the process of finding a book cover design for Haven Wakes.
In July, I added my short story, The Hidden Knowing, as a freebie for subscribers to my newsletter, and continued with the edits.
The book cover design for Haven Wakes was revealed in the middle of August, courtesy of Stuart Bache and Books Covered.
With the final edits finished, the countdown began to publication day.
Haven Wakes was published on 1st October in paperback and e-book formats. That sounds all very factual but for me, it was a dream come true. That’s a cliched phrase, I know, but that was how it felt. After years of trying to get my fiction writing out there in the big, wide world, we had arrived.
October was the proverbial whirlwind of blog posts, promotion and congratulations. By the end of the month, the penny had finally dropped – I was a proper, official, published author and I had a second novel to write.
November saw me use the monthly writing marathon of NaNoWriMo to begin the first draft of the next novel in the Haven Chronicles series and cement my standing as an author by giving readings from my novel at the Chester Literature Festival.
In December, I received an early Christmas present as Haven Wakes became a No. 1 Bestseller on Amazon.
This time last year, I had no idea what 2019 would hold for me or where it would take me. Who knew what magic would reveal itself?
Book Two of the Haven Chronicles is my 2020 focus.
Steve is back with Hartley, Blessing and the darkling, but with a whole new cast of villains and supporters. He thought his life had already changed beyond recognition, but the journey has hardly started.
I already have it plotted and I’m a few chapters in. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see it published next year?
In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re full-on into shopping mode in time for the festive season. One of the best presents, in my opinion, that you can give is a book.
I suppose I would say that as a writer, but I’m not flogging my own novel in today’s blog post. Instead, I want to share nine novels that have stayed with me long after I turned their final page.
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
The Graveyard Book begins in a very dark way – murder. It introduces us immediately to the assassin, the man Jack and the peril that our protagonist, Bod is in.
Gaiman’s portrayal of Bod as a child, at different ages, is completely believable. In fact, the whole book, although strange on the surface (a child living in a graveyard among ghosts and ghouls) uses the familiarity of family, childhood, and growing up to bind the story together.
Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy
I was introduced to the ‘Skulduggery Pleasant’ books when my son found the first book in the series at our local library. Back then, I would still read to him on a night-time. I think I probably enjoyed the book as much as my son did.
Skulduggery Pleasant is the dead wizard detective pictured on the cover who, along with 12 year old Stephanie, investigate her late uncle’s death.
Magic, danger and, well, more danger and magic. What more could you ask for?
Running with the Demon by Terry Brooks
This is the first in the Word & Void trilogy and tells the story of a 14 year old girl called Nest who has strange powers, magical animal friends, and a quest to protect the children in her neighbourhood from demons and the like.
Running alongside Nest’s story is that of a Knight of the Word, John Ross, come to Nest’s town to protect her and the world from the encroaching Void.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
I love novels where an adult remembers what befell them as a child, and that is exactly what happens in this fantasy novel.
‘Ocean’ has Gaiman’s quiet, beckoning tone of storytelling, drawing you in until you have to know what will happen to the characters.
It’s a story of regret, bitter-sweet reminiscence, and the courage of a child who is wonderfully but terrifyingly out of his depths in a discovered world of magic.
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
This is a novel of magic, illusion (magical, mechanical and emotional), gameplay and love, set at the turn of the twentieth century in Europe and the USA which leaves you with more questions about the circus than you started with.
The circus arrives without warning.
No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.
The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett
The ‘Word Wizard’ Terry Pratchett is no longer with us but his writing was so brilliant and prolific that I’m sure he’ll continue to have and attract an audience for decades more, if not forever.
‘The Colour of Magic’ tells the adventures of unlikely hero and terrible wizard, Rincewind.
I love the world that Pratchett created in his Discworld novels. I mean, who wouldn’t want luggage with legs and a mind of it’s own?
I came across this book through my studies and it has stayed with me as an example of great writing ever since. Mary Shelley became an inspiration to me too, not only as a writer, but as a creative pioneer, and an incredibly strong woman.
Forget the Boris Karloff Frankenstein’s monster or Herman in the Munsters, this classic novel is a story of arrogance, struggle, abandonment, and heart-break.
I’m on the monster’s side, by the way.
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
‘The Moonstone’ is told through the eyes of members of the family affected by the Moonstone’s seeming curse, their elderly butler Gabriel Betteredge, the family solicitor and the retired policeman Sergeant Cuff.
Considered to be the first detective novel, ‘The Moonstone’ describes the days and events before, during and after the theft of the fated diamond.
This novel is, if you’ll excuse the pun, a gem of a read whether you enjoy crime fiction or Victorian novels or both.
My final book is an old battered copy of the last ever Hercule Poirot novel. This book belonged to my parents but I didn’t read it until I was an adult. This is by far my favourite Agatha Christie novel, if the only one that ever moved me to tears.
Set in the same country house as the first Poirot novel, ‘Curtain’ sees Hercule old and ailing as his loyal and long-time friend Arthur Hastings does his best to help his friend discover ‘whodunnit’ before Poirot takes his last breath.
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So there you have it, my nine recommended books to buy for your friends or family, or just for yourself, this Christmas.
Happy shopping!
Last month, I tried my hand at the NaNoWriMo challenge of writing 50,000 words in a month in an attempt to kickstart Novel Two of the Haven Chronicles.
I got off to a good start, but then real life got in the way, in the form of:
My final word count ended up at just over 16,000 words. It’s not 50k but it is a constructive chunk of work (and several chapters into my novel).
It also forced me to look at the plot-line for Book Two and decide whether it really worked. That’s the thing with writing – or at least, it is for me – until you put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, you don’t know if what you’ve written is the right way to go.
This month is all about finishing a commissioned murder mystery play for a theatre group up in Scotland and preparing for Christmas. I’ll return to Novel Two, with an altered plot-line, once Christmas Day is over.