De-blog

(Second time of trying to post...) OK, yes, it's Thursday, but it's still Wednesday somewhere in the world. BST? Dunno what you're talking about... ;) I've not taken part in WIPpet Wednesday for a few weeks, nor any other snippet sharing, because I had a bit of an author epiphany, or meltdown. I'm undecided. The long and short of it is I realised I wasn't enjoying writing, and the reason is...deadlines! I can write to deadlines, no problem at all, but they're not always a good thing for creativity. So, I'm not doing it anymore! Unless I really, really have to. What is WIPpet Wednesday? WIPpet Wednesday is a blog hop where authors share from their current works in progress - expertly organised/hosted by Emily Witt - and the excerpt has to relate to the date in some way. For links to other fabulous authors' WIPpets, visit: http://www.inlinkz.com/wpview.php?id=355404 It's 29th September, 2016, so I'm going with 29 sentences from ...

Title: Holding Author: Graham Norton Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton Expected: 6th October, 2016 ISBN: 9781444791990 Link: https://www.hodder.co.uk/books/detail.page?isbn=9781444791990 Blurb: Graham Norton's masterful debut is an intelligently crafted story of love, secrets and loss. The remote Irish village of Duneen has known little drama; and yet its inhabitants are troubled. Sergeant PJ Collins hasn't always been this overweight; mother of­ two Brid Riordan hasn't always been an alcoholic; and elegant Evelyn Ross hasn't always felt that her life was a total waste. So when human remains are discovered on an old farm, suspected to be that of Tommy Burke - a former­ love of both Brid and Evelyn - the village's dark past begins to unravel. As the frustrated PJ struggles to solve a genuine case for the first time in his life, he unearths a community's worth of anger and resentments, secrets and regret. Darkly comic, touching and at ti...

Today, I was accused of 'author preaching' about bisexuality in one of my books, and the best part of it was, on this occasion, I wasn't actually preaching! This, alas, is what comes from writing visible bisexual characters, and I'm going to keep doing it. Without apology. That's not to say I don't get preachy from time to time. At the end of this post is an excerpt of full-on preachy-ness, all of it based on real reactions to bisexual people. Readers of Hiding Behind The Couch will have met Kris Johansson. He's one of The Circle - the nine characters at the centre of the series - and he is the most visible bisexual character in my writing. He's one of the two main characters in the stand-alone bi/gay romance, Crying in the Rain , which is FREE on All Romance eBooks until Sunday 25th September (to celebrate Bisexual Awareness Week). There are other bisexual characters in HBTC, but not in The Circle. Here's a breakdown of the gender/sexu...

A bisexual top ten. :) I'm saving the best for the top spot, of course... 10. Vanessa Carlton (as if I haven't heard this piano riff a thousand times... ) 9. Fergie (Black-eyed Peas) 8. Amy Winehouse 7. Debbie Harry (Blondie) 6. David Bowie 5. Richard Fairbrass (Right Said Fred) 4. Lady Gaga 3. Billie Joe Armstrong (Green Day) 2. Brian Molko (Placebo) 1. Freddie Mercury (Queen)

This coming Thursday (22nd September, 2016) is release day for my novel, The WAG and The Scoundrel . It's a nerve-racking time. Will readers like it? Will they love it? Or will they hate it? Worse still, will they give it a big fat indifferent 'meh'? I've been writing novels for nearly twenty years, and that old chestnut 'you can't please everyone' is one I (mostly) accept. My books aren't for everyone, but it doesn't make negative reviews sting any less. But anyway, that's not what this post is about. Or it is, a little bit. What I'm going to attempt to do here is provide content warnings (for potential triggers), spoiler warnings and a general note about inclusivity in LGBTQ fiction so that readers do not go into The WAG and The Scoundrel entirely unknowing of what lies ahead. However, this will be sketchy information at best, because if I spell it out, it'll spoil the story! Content Warnings These are some of the key themes...

This morning, I got to add ANOTHER phrase to my most-hated corpspeak list, and I thought I'd celebrate by blogging about it! I should also point out that I STILL hate the word 'blog', which is why my blog is titled de-blog (or deb log). Back when I created my blog, I was part of an IT steering group (steering group, ffs), where people 'in the know' talked about these 'innovative new technologies' such as blogging, content management systems, dynamic web content, and so on - what we now call Web 2.0 - a technology scarred by the favourite buzzwords of the time. innovative dynamic we will add your distinctiveness to our own... I knew technology. I'd been writing PHP for six years by that point. I'd been hacked and I knew how to hack. I knew as much as I needed to, all of it self-taught. Skip a couple of years... The web moved on, as did I. Well, actually, I moved back to writing fiction and I'm almost proud to say that I haven't ha...