Turn the Tables – Steph Warren

Book bloggers are invaluable to authors and help to get our books known, make recommendations for future reading and are generally supportive without any compensation except our heartfelt thanks. They often feature authors on their blogs and it suddenly occurred to me, it might be nice to 'turn the tables' and actually feature book bloggers …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Spirit of Technology background

The original idea of this page was to provide information and background relating to my published books, and there is quite an interesting story behind this one. During an amicable conversation with my first publisher, I confirmed I hadn’t received an email which she was sure her assistant had sent me, and her comment ‘It …

Writers, authors and changes.

I never really appreciated the difference between saying ‘I’m a writer’ and saying ‘I’m an author.’ I assumed an author had a published book to their name and a writer was striving towards that goal. Thinking back, that was rather a narrow-minded view and even Google offers different interpretations, including the transition to being called …

Reviews and ABC

Authors are a funny lot and often have a way of connecting things which on the surface are totally unrelated. In a convoluted way I moved from enjoying an Elvis tribute artists’ show on Facebook, to explaining the scenario of one of my books to an elderly man who doesn’t read English. Would you believe …

A week of achievements – Blind Date and Alderslay

Despite everything, including last minute adjustments to both paperback and eBook, ‘Alderslay’ is now available in both formats. https://mybook.to/Alderslay It’s only been out a few days, but there are already some brilliant 5* reviews, with comments such as: ‘One story you do NOT want to miss!’ ‘A story full of everything.’ ‘Absolutely outstanding.’ The genre …

New release ‘Alderslay.’

Trumpet blowing time. Finally my latest book has been released after years of trials and tribulations and is now available on Amazon. You can place an order now and it will be delivered to your Kindle on the release date 3rd March. If you prefer to read paperbacks, this option should be available around the …