When my first book was released, I assumed authors wrote a book then sat back while royalties flooded in from everyone who had bought it, and the publishers did everything else. Expecting to sell millions of copies under my pen name (because all proper authors use a pen name, don’t they?) it was quite an …
Author: Voinks
Workmen and book reviews.
A fellow author on Facebook posted a snippet of conversation between two ladies which angered her, but I found rather sad. The gist of it was they would not read any book which had less than 1,000 reviews. It was also a dig at Indie or self-published authors and the smaller publishers. The lady who …
I got flowers today.
Shall we have a short story for a change? I got flowers today. It wasn't my birthday or any other special day. We had just had our first argument. He said a lot of cruel things that really hurt me. I know he was sorry and didn't mean the things he said, because I got …
The Making of ‘Weird and Peculiar Tales.’
This was originally intended as a Facebook post but for various reasons has ended up as a blog post instead. Here is a little of the background to how Weird and Peculiar Tales came about. I first ‘met’ my co-author Paula around six years ago through an online writing site. We seemed to be pretty …
Technology, Gremlins and Spirits
Last week I jokingly said on Facebook that as my ‘Val’s Tales’ business page was being ‘new and improved,’ obviously something was bound to go wrong. (Facebook is the dedicated social media site where I often publish short stories to give readers a flavour of my writing style, and encourage interest in my books.) In …
Forgotten Friends
I originally wrote this as a submission for a short story competition under the title ‘Heritage.’ When it didn’t win, I thought I would share it with you here. Although it’s fiction, there are certain elements of fact involved, but I’m not telling you which bits. ‘I don’t understand these computer things, Judy and I’m …
Books, blogs and marketing.
When I started my blog, the idea was to bombard you with ‘Buy my books’ messages so you all rushed out and bought them. That way I would be rich and famous and could sit around all day writing, which is what I love to do. It didn’t quite turn out that way and in …
Out there
I originally intended this to be a short story entry in a major competition, but ran out of time and missed the deadline. For those who are wondering, the date is not an error; read to the end and you’ll understand why. January 2019. ‘Do you hear the news tonight? Some sort of virus is …
Blogs, scams and nice people
I try to vary the content of my blog to keep it interesting, but it’s sometimes difficult to know which type of post people prefer. Should I keep it book related?Should I post more short stories? (These always seem to be popular but are very time consuming when I should be working on my next …
Friends of Friends and Facebook
This week has been so slow with connections, I wasn’t sure if it was my keyboard, mouse, laptop or just because there’s an R in the month. I received an advice in the spam email that someone in Moscow had accessed my account. I reported it, but for a moment it did make me think …