BA G Airlines

Here’s a little background as to how this story came about. 😀 For some time, a local resident has been reporting dangerous potholes to the borough council with little response. He came up with the idea of photographing small objects and toy people in position inside the potholes, to both give an overview of the …

Valentines, Listen to Love and Rock and Roll.

A lot was happening last week. Apart from being Valentine’s Day and my birthday, I was also invited to take over an authors’ social media site for the day, and talk about my books, and writing in general. Another highlight was a very long telephone conversation with someone who was able to supply a mine …

Scarves

Some online friends recently related true stories of dogs walking and dogging,  It reminded me of this one I wrote several years ago, when someone had a similar experience in a layby. Every Christmas and birthday without fail Aunty Emily gave me a scarf. Don’t get me wrong, I love scarves but there are only …

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 …

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 …

Procrastination and Social Media

As an author it’s sometimes difficult to decide where to concentrate your marketing efforts. Facebook is probably the first choice, but then you need to get to know your readers so should your personal page include fans, or be restricted to actual physical friends and family? If you have a business page, should it constantly …

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 …

Halloween retribution

It’s been a busy week with the development of my new YouTube channel ‘Val’s Tales.’ Covid-19 has caused delays with the logistics of combining people and equipment but where there’s a will, stubbornness comes into its own. 😊 More news as it progresses. The post is one day early this week, as I thought it …

Where does the time go?

When I first started writing seriously, I was under the impression you wrote a book, publishers published it, and you sat back with a smile on your face while everyone bought it and left glowing reviews. Even with my traditionally published books I had no idea you were expected to do your own marketing; I'm …

Questions and Answers

Book bloggers provide a service by reading and reviewing books, and sharing their thoughts with other readers to assist them in making a choice from the millions of books available. They are also invaluable to authors, not only for the publicity they provide, but by helping readers relate to writers as individuals. Many authors are …