Marketing and ABC Destiny

First of all, thank you to everyone who responded to my questions last week, including the members of the Facebook online writing group during the blog posting day. You’ve probably heard me say it before but I love writing and hate marketing. I know all the theory and how things should be done, and that …

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 …

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 …

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 …

AI gone rogue. Part 2

The second part of my short story. If you haven’t seen the first part from last week you might want to read that first so it makes sense. I needed an excuse to escape from the house and get some fresh air, so decided to combine a quick trip to the supermarket with a coffee …

AI gone rogue. Part 1

If you use social media, you might have come across occasions where people have been banned for no apparent reason. This happened to a friend of mine recently, and was the inspiration for this two-part short story.  ‘You have violated our community standards and been placed under a two-week ban. During this time you will …

Trust

Something a little different this week. Although I wasn’t brought up with technology from an early age, I have learnt the importance of being cynical online. If it smells like a fish, and swims like a fish it’s a pretty good bet it is a fish. Of course, it could be a mermaid but that’s …

Books and Twitter and a little bit of everything

I know I said I might do a character interview but there’s been so much happening on the book and podcast front, I thought it better to delay it for a week. By coincidence, two items this week relate to books and lockdown, and two to foxes. In the Summer, Nikki Vallance did a series …