Teaser

You might remember some very good advice Simon Kewin gave a while back about writing. Well, today he's revealing the cover for his fantasy novel Hedge Witch which will be published later this year.

Simon has published a lot of excellent short, flash, and twitter fiction and had a novel Engn published by December House. Hedge Witch was accepted by a traditional publisher who was then so dilatory in getting the book out there that Simon has taken it back into his own hands.

Fifteen year-old Cait Weerd has no idea she's being sought by the undain: sorcerous creatures that feed off the spirit of the living. She doesn't know they need her blood to survive. She doesn't even know she's a witch, descended from a long line of witches. Cait Weerd doesn't know a lot, really, but all that's about to change.

At Manchester Central Library she's caught up in sudden violence. In the chaos she's given an old book that's been hidden there. Given it and told to run. Hide the book or destroy it. The book contains all the secrets of the undains' existence. They and their human servants want to find it as much as they want to find her.

Cait learns the fates of two worlds are at stake. Just what she needs. Along with definitely-not-a-boyfriend Danny, she has to decide what the hell to do. Run, fight or hope it all goes away.

It's only then she learns who she really is, along with the terrible truth of what the undain have been doing in our world all this time...

It sounds like something I really want to read. I can't wait for it to come out. Here are the links for finding out more:

Facebook | Goodreads | Blog

Reading With A Vengeance

I found an interesting blog that comments on books chapter by chapter and the posts on Fifty Shades of Grey are keeping me amused.

Ana tells us for the third time this chapter that Grey is, in fact, still sleeping. Riveting. I kind of wish I could join him, because at least then we’d both be unconscious.

I did try reading Fifty Shades but to me it reads like really bad fan-fiction. Strange that.

Ice Diaries

Ice Diaries came out this week. It's the latest book by Lexi Revellian and I loved it. She just goes on getting better which I wouldn't have thought was possible.

Tori is stranded in an England covered up to 20m deep in snow; can she find her way south to warmer climes?

There's a great cast of characters and I was so drawn into the story that I was surprised to look up from the book and see autumn leaves instead of snow! I recommend it.

If you pop over to Lexi's website you can read the beginning of the book for free as a taster. I admit I didn't bother; after Lexi's previous books I went straight to amazon as soon as I saw it was out.

Only two problems:

1. I nearly put the book aside in the middle when it became too tense.

2. I should have been writing my Nanonovel instead of reading a whole book in two days.

Meh. It was worth it!

Confessions of an animal junkie

If you've been following this blog then you probably like animals (well, cats anyway!) and you may well have met Phoenix in the comments. So then you're sure to love her new blog where you can read about all kinds of animals and even get her to post pictures of your own beloved pets! And then we can all enjoy them!

Confessions of An Animal Junkie is here. Why not give it a look?

Hurry!

You've just got a few more hours (until 6am Tuesday, US Central Time) to pop over to Phoenix's blog party and try to win some fabulous prizes! There are games too. Party time!

Roll up, roll up!

Photo by Ariaski

Come and join the extravaganza today over at Whirlochre's blog for his third fantastic bloggiversary. We've been promised

all the thrills of an annual dental check-up with zero risk of anaesthesia

plus the chance to win some GRAVY!

I hope to see you over there in the comments where we might even meet up with Latvia Love Doll.

How could anyone resist?

Edited to add: and here is a clue to question 1

A brand new blog!

You may know Richard North (@richthelandlord) from the comments on this blog and he has just started a blog of his own that's well worth checking out. It's mostly about photography but Richard says

it will inevitably drift in other directions too.

There will be links to 'cool stuff', occasionally some creative writing, maybe once in a while a recording of some of my music... and if something gets far enough under my skin maybe even a good old-fashioned rant...

His first photo is up and it's a good one. Why not pop over to Through My Lens now and say "hi"?

Halloween Haunting

If you've got a blog about writing, you might want to pop over to Theresa's Halloween Haunting, where you can:

Haunt blogs, find friends and critique buddies. It’s a great way to find blogs to follow and get more followers. And a chance to WIN PRIZES!

I'm not sure I need more blogs to follow just before Nano but it sounds like fun! Maybe I'll see you over there.

Goats

Today my Beloved and I met our younger son and his fiancée and went for a pub lunch. Afterwards we went for a stroll and met some goats, who were keen to eat grass from our hands. I'm not sure why, they had plenty of it under their feet.

They weren't nearly as impressive as the goats on jjdebenedictis' blog. Who knew goats could do that? Well, I didn't.

Where to get pictures for your blog

Lexi Revellian has written a helpful post over at BookBuzzr about How to Write a Popular Writing Blog.

One thing that struck me was

Use images – a picture is indeed worth a thousand words. Google images is a good resource; aim for striking images that are relevant (it doesn’t have to be in an obvious way).

I've started using Flickr for most of my images because they have a huge Creative Commons section, and that way I know I'm not violating copyright.

When you go to Flickr, you'll see a set of links across the page giving drop-down menus. You want Explore/Creative Commons. You'll then be offered a variety of licenses, you can choose any of them and click on See More. That will take you to a page of images with a Search box at the top and now you can search Creative Commons pictures for anything you like.

I know that Old Kitty takes her own pictures of Charlie every day - and very photogenic he is too! Where do you go when you want pictures for your blog?

Remix is out in paperback!

When I reviewed Remix back in August, several people commented that they'd like to read it in paperback. Well now you can! You can buy it on amazon, or direct from Lexi and she'll even sign it to whoever you want for only £7.99 including p&p if you live in the UK. Just look for the widget in her right hand column.

Oh, and she's giving away free bookmarks too!

All the good ones were taken

All The Good  Ones Were Taken has a very funny post today about the etiquette of books in pubs. Do pop over and see.

Extinct stories

In case you missed it, Phoenix Sullivan is calling for submissions for an anthology called Extinct doesn't mean forever.

I first met Phoenix on Evil Editor and she's now so good at critiquing query letters that she has her own blog for people to submit revised queries to, after Evil Editor has done his worst. Now here she is branching out into publishing!

The deadline for stories is the end of January, and it's a paying proposition. You might want to pop across and take a look.

Free book, free newsletter

Tim Hallinan is now producing an interesting and amusing monthly newsletter. Some of it is about his books - he's offering his first one free in Kindle format - and some of it is about writing generally. If you're interested,then you can email him at
  and ask to be put on his mailing list. (You'll have to type out his address - the link takes you to a site where you can get your own email images. Or you can go to his website and use his contact form.)

What if you don't got talent?

This is a post that some time ago I saved instead of publishing. So here it is now!

I've been reading Nicola Morgan's excellent blog and now I'm depressed. She has convinced me that as well as skill, hard work, perseverance, and intelligence you also need talent to write. Now I can do hard work etc. but how do I know if I've got talent or not? I could be like the 5' 11" teenager planning to be a ballet dancer when I grow up.

I know I say I'm not aiming at being published and in a sense it's true. I do dream about it though and the thought that it may be beyond me is a harsh one.

It's no good asking you lot if I've got talent - you're my friends! It's a bit like asking my Mum who always said "lovely darling". That's great, it's what Mums are for, but it doesn't answer the question.

And a little, tiny rebellious bit of me doesn't quite believe it anyway. Brain patterns change. People can learn and grow. Or is that like telling myself that I'll be playing clarinet in the Albert Hall one day, after starting at age 55 and practising for less than an hour a day?

What do you think?

What are you listening to?

From Bo's Café Life

I follow Bo's Café Life every day. It may not be obvious from today's cartoon but the speakers are writers and there are a lot of jokes about manuscripts, rejections and editors. The byline is

The writing life through the eyes of Bo, an aspiring novelist.

It always makes me smile.

What could be better...

...than a good book and chocolate to nibble on? I've just received a parcel from the wonderful Steph (aka maybegenius) who ran a competition a few weeks ago. I was lucky enough to be picked out of a hat (well, my name was, I didn't actually get into the hat myself) and she posted these goodies to me all the way from the States at great personal expense. (I'm not joking. International postage is dear!)

The Powerberries are chocolate-covered fruit juice pieces. They're super-delicious and they claim to be good for me because they're full of flavanol antioxidants and vitamin C. I choose to believe them. They are certainly moreish and I'm going to have to have trouble remembering that a sixth of a pack is a serving. You mean I can't count the whole pack as one serving? Oops!

Thank you so much, Steph!

Domestic gods and goddesses

Domestic Goddess by lacliquant is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License

Kevin Musgrove shares his reflections about his attempts to become a domestic god over in his blog Commonplaces.

It's very funny.  I know that some of you that read this are domestic gods and goddesses. I'm one of the other sort.

And anyway, life's too short to spend on housework. So why not read Kevin's blog instead?

Look over there

Do you follow Simon C. Larter? If not you may want to pop over to his blog Constant Revisions and read a very funny post about the Blogging Cycle.

Web design follow up

If you would like an author website but don't know where to start, Kate has good advice for you over at her blog.

If you remember, she offered some free web redesigns the other day, but she isn't able to set a whole website up from scratch for free so instead she's offering you advice so you can do it. In part one she tells you how to know whether you need a website and crucially what to put in it and what not to.

Many of her points about the characteristics of a professional website apply to everyone, not just aspiring authors, e.g.

• It is functional. It is clearly organized, easily navigable, there are no broken links, and it looks and behaves the way you expect it to on all major browsers.
• It is well-written. For the love of God, have it proofread.
  

Worth a visit.