De-blog

Well, my writing is not going well even though I’m on a writing holiday (at home). So far, there’s nothing in Alumni that is a) right for Bi Awareness Week, and b) suitable for a blog that can be accessed by people of all ages. Brief Story Info: For WIPpet Wednesday, I’m posting from one of my longest-standing works in progress (I wrote it in 2011) in the hopes it might inspire me to do some more work on it. The story is titled Meredith’s Dagger , and it’s contemporary fiction with historical interludes (based on real local history), a bit of romance thrown in and some feminist commentary on mental health, witch hunts and modern psychiatry. (Yes, I’m that  good at sticking to a genre). The setting is a university town house shared by Julian and Richie, both students, Anneka (she and Richie are long-term buddies) and Tamara (Tam), who is Julian’s older sister and bisexual. There’s a long history between Richie and Tam— much  longer than either is aware of. This novel...

The Red Lion Pub Quiz (as featured in In The Stars Part I: Capricorn–Gemini ) A MESSAGE FROM YOUR QUIZMASTER: Good evening, ladies and gents, and welcome to tonight’s quiz, brought to you by yours truly, with a little help from the internet. We’ve got eight rounds, and you can play your joker to double your points on anything but the Music round. (Answers at the end) Round 1: Cryptic (UK soccer teams) 1. White birds spot city 2. Workers, smart with sun-god 3. Glass mansion 4. They roam in packs 5. Keepers of the royal lawns 6. An offal lot of water 7. Flowery buns 8. Not your average Womble 9. His urban settlement 10. All the bacon Round 2: A Man's World (answers start with man-) 1. A hard, brittle, greyish-white metallic element, atomic number 25 2. A variety of beet cultivated for cattle food 3. The strongest and lowest bone in the human face 4. Dressmaker's dummy 5. Creature of Persian mythology 6. The juicy fruit of the Garcina mangosta...

It's WIPpet Wednesday again. :) I've been staying at my mum's for the past week, looking after/being looked after by this fine chap. Now I'm home, and my dogs don't care one way or the other. The cat seems pleased I'm here, though. I didn't get much writing done this week, more focused on audiobooks and getting everything in place for the release of Goth of Christmas Past next month. I've almost made a video trailer, and preordering is in progress. I also managed to add a little bit more to  Alumni . Brief story info: Alumni is Season Eight of Hiding Behind The Couch , and obviously has some elements of the characters coming face-to-face with old acquaintances from university and the like (readers of the series might recognise a name or two in the snippet). This follows from last week's snippet ; Genie has called on Xander—a long-term friend who purportedly sees ghosts—to get to the bottom of strange goings-on in her home. WIPpet maths...

Today, I've been playing around with different video editing programmes, both on and offline, and in the process made a trailer for the audiobook of  Of The Bauble  even though we (the narrator and I) are still finalising the recordings. So I won't be sharing that trailer just yet. But! I figured it was time to announce the audiobooks. :) The Great Village Bun Fight is somewhere between ACX's file storage system and the retailers, so it should appear on Audible, Amazon and iTunes with the next couple of weeks. Of The Bauble (as mentioned) is undergoing a few final tweaks before we submit it to ACX for approval. My narrator for both books is Jack Hardman, who describes his accent as "[not] so northern that it is difficult to understand, but is common enough sounding that it isn't alienating to people outside of the London area." I'm inclined to agree, which is why he is the perfect narrator for both stories. I'll post again when ...

Two WIPpet Wednesdays in a row, woohoo! I'm on a roll and snippeting from Alumni again. Brief story info: Alumni is Season Eight of Hiding Behind The Couch , and obviously has some elements of the characters coming face-to-face with old acquaintances from university and the like (readers of the series might recognise a name or two in the snippet). This follows from last week's snippet ; Genie has called on Xander—a long-term friend who purportedly sees ghosts—to get to the bottom of strange goings-on in her home. WIPpet maths for 12th September: 12 paragraphs for the 12th. And the WIPpet Snippet: “You will keep it to yourself, won’t you?” Xander marched across the room and stopped a few feet from her location. No eye contact. She remembered now. He’d been just the same when they were children. “His Lordship doesn’t speak to anyone,” Jonathan assured her on Xander’s behalf. “But you do,” she pointed out. “I am contractually obliged to keep His Lordship’s ...

This is not intended to be an exhaustive list of the differences between British and American English. Most of us know, for instance, that crisps are to Brits what potato chips are to Americans, and so on. We're also aware of the differences in spelling - colour vs color, realise vs realize etc. - although in UK English both -ise and -ize are acceptable, and there are exceptions in both forms of English. If it's lists you're after, here's a Bored Panda list of common differences in vocabulary. See also this more extensive list on Owlcation . There's also Luke Mastin's  very comprehensive list of US/UK/Canadian spellings . I decided to put together this brief guide for the benefit of my fellow editors, proofreaders, authors and others who work with the written word on both sides of the Atlantic, as questions about what is 'correct' come my way quite often, and I like to think I know a fair bit about this stuff. OK, I do  know a fair bit about this ...

This probably isn't going to be the kind of post you're expecting, and, in fact, it has relatively little to do with M/M Romance per se. Had I reached a particular point in my writing life ten years earlier, this blog post may well have been titled 'My love-hate relationship with YA Fantasy'. I can write in both genres incidentally, although perhaps not as well as other authors. I am (or I was) most comfortable writing contemporary realist fiction, so even when I'm attempting to write within other genres, the outcome is somewhat of a crossover. Contemporary fiction is broad and not that descriptive as genre titles go. Indeed, it is not really a genre at all—it doesn't even have an entry in Wikipedia! :o It is, in effect, a catchall for any fictional story set in our time and space, and which doesn't fit neatly in any other genre. Anyway, that's what I write. Wrote? I don't know. I'm still hopeful for a present participle... that...

It's Wednesday, and I haven't posted a WIPpet since April - if it sounds like some kind of --- Anonymous admission, well, it sort of is. I love my work, so that's what I do. Work. I think I even use it to procrastinate on writing, and I've been...too busy to write, never mind post to my blog. Brief story info: Alumni is Season Eight of Hiding Behind The Couch , and obviously has some elements of the characters coming face-to-face with old acquaintances from university and the like (readers of the series might recognise a name or two in the snippet).  I'm hoping posting will kickstart my brain into writing some more. WIPpet maths for 5th September: 12 - 5 = 7 mentions of Xander by name (yeah, yeah). And the WIPpet Snippet: Standing dead centre of Genie’s daughter’s liquorice-all-sorts-inspired bedroom, Lord Xander Etherington-Bowes flapped his hand—palm up, palm down, palm up, palm down—and hummed a monotone melody. “What’s he doing?” Genie whispered, ...