Book signings, genres and covers

With Spring hopefully not too far away, and restrictions easing, I’m looking forward to the resurrection of local book fairs. The one I attended shortly before Christmas brought to mind my first book signing many years ago. I had no idea what to expect, but my publishers told me everything had been organised with the …

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 …

Never stop learning

When I was about 10, I received my first writers’ rejection letter. Every week my father would buy a teen magazine for me and ‘Woman’ magazine for my mother. As soon as she finished reading it, I would devour every page and unknown to my parents, submitted a short story for their regular feature. I …

Writing and Publishing

‘You should write a book.’ How many times has someone been told that by a friend and thought ‘It seemed a good idea at the time?’ There are two routes to becoming a published author (or possibly three.) Write a book, perhaps find an agent, submit it to a publisher and do the happy dance …

Balancing the Books

I love writing but hate marketing. When my main career was working in a bank, I enjoyed the customer contact, was good at record keeping and pleased when a plan came together and a problem was solved to everyone’s satisfaction. Occasionally, even giving bad news could be turned into a positive experience. If a customer …

Boring blurbs and Books.

One of the joys of being an author is being able to connect with others in the industry. A challenge in one of my writers’ groups was to describe your book in the most boring way possible. The results were hilarious, and surprisingly, some of the shortest and most mundane were intriguing for what they …

Aspects – Claire Baldry, ‘Listen to Love’ and ‘The Wrong Sort to Die.’

Lots happening this week with my own new paperback release, 'Listen to Love' which you can find here: Listen to Love.  A new release 'The wrong sort to die' by Paula Harmon who was featured on this blog a few weeks ago, The wrong sort to die  And last but by no means least, I'm delighted to …

The allotment Part 1 and blog changes

There was some really useful feedback last week, which I'll be taking into consideration when revising the blog format. Thanks to everyone who responded and messaged me. After a very busy week, here's the first part of the traditional short story for you to enjoy while I work out why and where the traditional set-up …

Behind the writer

Have you ever wondered about the person behind the book or magazine articles you are reading? Last week I touched briefly on the reasons authors began writing, and their objectives when setting pen to paper. At one time, having a book published involved years of approaching the big five publishers, possibly paying an agent, having little …

Bloggers and Blaggers

Running a regular weekly blog takes up a fair amount of time. I love writing the stories, but it proves quite difficult trying to analyse which genre readers enjoy most, or if they would prefer more variety. Apart from actually writing and publishing the posts there’s the need to follow up, so I have a …