Category: Gratitude

How would you answer the covid novel’s call?

28/6/2020

History can’t have got the memo. The virus destined to put the world on pause has had us glued to the news: first with the exposure of right-wing government incompetence, then with the spotlight on racism we can no longer ignore. Whether this depresses or delights us, it’s hard to keep up. What’s the role of the writer – particularly writers like me with a tiny readership – in historic times? Should novelists switch to facts from fiction? Should we try to shape historic discourse or step back and observe?

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A few things I’ve learnt through my first foray into self-publishing with a short story e-book freebie

15/2/2020

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Big round of applause, please people! The year’s still in its infancy and I’ve already achieved one of my aims for 2020. On the other hand, in terms of literary or commercial benefit, I’ve spent way too much time putting together my little e-book of short stories as a giveaway for subscribers to my newsletter. But, once I got going, I enjoyed most of the twists and turns of the journey, with even the hairpin bends and U-turns a chance to admire the view. As a small-press published inbetweenie author, I’ve always tried to stay abreast of what’s happening in self-publishing, but there’s a huge gap between reading about something and doing it yourself. Let’s see if I can consolidate my learning by describing the process and perhaps helping others to reach the destination without too many wrong turns.

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Become a celebrity, write a series or win a major prize: My real and fantasy writing goals for 2019

21/1/2019

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If my smile in this photograph seems slightly strained, it might not be only because I’m not sure if the self-timer on Mr A’s camera is going to work. You see, although last year was wonderful in that Inspired Quill published my third book and first short story collection, it was also the year it came home to me how hard it is to get readers, irrespective of the quality of the book. It’s hard for everyone, unless you’re a celebrity, are writing a series or have won a major prize; so should I make those my writing goals for the year to come?

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With gratitude on launch-day and beyond

23/11/2018

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While our American friends have been stuffing themselves with turkey, we can all take a moment to appreciate what we have. With my short story anthology published today, I’ve a lot to be thankful for, not only for the fact of being published – and read – in this difficult climate for authors, but for the support from the blogosphere in the run-up to the launch. In Monday’s post – Becoming Someone is coming to an armchair near you! – I shared the links to the first few stops on my blog tour; today I’m sharing a few more, along with a reminder of the party, where I’m putting my gratitude into action by donating to Book Aid International.

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Can you recommend a #reading #charity for me to support through my #booklaunch?

22/10/2018

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When my publisher suggested releasing an anthology of my short stories, I didn’t plan to do much promotion. In the UK, short story collections are notoriously difficult to sell. But when I thought about the unpaid time and effort she’d put into editing, and the money into another gorgeous cover, as well as the enthusiasm of my readers for a third book, I reconsidered. My short story collection, Becoming Someone, scheduled for publication on November 23rd, deserves as much chance as any other book. So I got creative.

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I’m not telling you

19/6/2018

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I’m in a children’s playground, awaiting my turn at the top of the slide. I sit, push off with my hands, and down I go. Wheeeee! There’s no-one to catch me at the bottom, but that’s okay. I sit and wait, scanning the faces of the grown-ups, wondering which one of them will come and claim me. It’s only as the light begins to fade that I get nervous. As the metal beneath my buttocks cools. That’s when I realise no-one’s coming, and get up to wander alone through the world.

This episode came to me the way my stories sometimes do: vivid, urgent and determined to be told. But this wasn’t fiction. This was a metaphor for the origins of me.

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My writing year

28/12/2017

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My second novel published and significant progress on the third. Dozens of 99-word stories and a few longer short stories released into the world. Well over 100 blog posts and three articles published in print magazines. Lots I haven’t managed to do this year, of course, but those omissions will ensure I’m not bored in 2018. For now I’m celebrating another satisfying writing year.

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How to have a book launch party

11/8/2017

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While babies might have naming parties, couples wedding parties, a book launch party can be both celebration of a significant milestone and a marketing opportunity. I might be only on my second novel, but I have a fat party-to-publication ratio of 3:2. So, still buzzing from my latest, I hope these pointers based on my experience of hosting a launch party might be of use to others who have yet to foist one on your friends.

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A huge thank you, as a second novel is born!

25/5/2017

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Happy publication day to me! I must admit it doesn’t feel the huge leap it did the first time round, but I’m still excited, albeit not breathlessly so. There’s a quieter satisfaction in having more than one of my own novels on the shelf, making the transition from writer to author to novelist. This post is to thank those who’ve helped me on my way. While writing is a solitary activity, no writer is an island. Our achievements arise through hard work, good luck and not a little help from our friends.

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A necessary nip of narcissism?

26/3/2017

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It had been a great night at the Polari salon in Nottingham, and the audience was waiting for the final performer to take the stage, when a woman bounded from the back of the room. Scowl framed by the hood of her black anorak, and ignoring the compere’s insistence that she wasn’t on the programme, Barbara Brownskirt barked out a series of poems from her numerous unpublished collections about, among other things, her unrequited love for Judi Dench. She was scary. She was hilarious. She was – and still is – the unsuccessful lesbian Poet-in-Residence at the 197 bus stop, Penge, and the brilliant creation of writer and performer Karen McLeod.

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The joy of rewriting

11/3/2017

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If there’s a honeymoon period in the transition from writer to author to novelist, it’s got to be the publication of that debut novel. It’s a place which might have haunted our dreams for years, without any confidence we’d actually reach it. No wonder it seems almost magical to see other people with your book in their hands.

By definition, a honeymoon can’t go on indefinitely. There is no fairy-tale happy ever after when real life intervenes. After two lovely launch parties for my debut, I came back to earth with a bump when I learnt that, as with being married, there’s nothing particularly special about having written a book.

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Beyond the sum of their parts?

26/12/2016

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Every novel is comprised of different parts that writers, readers and reviewers hope will combine into a satisfying whole. My last two reviews of 2016 – before I reveal my favourites of the year – are of novels for which finding that coherence is a particular challenge, but extremely worthwhile if achieved. Both published this summer, neither seems to have attracted many reviews on Goodreads, but I’m impressed with both (albeit one more than the other) so I hope you’ll at least give my reviews a chance.

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What kind of light do you shine?

21/12/2015

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These dark mornings, Mr A often finds me pottering about the house in the dark. “Why don’t you turn on the light?” he says. I shrug, but of course he can’t see me. “I like the dark.” In the safety and familiarity of my home, I prefer to wait for the natural light to seep in gradually through the windows, rather than with a sudden burst of artificial light. Of course, it’s never completely dark in a town with a streetlight at the end of the garden and, if I’m at the computer, it emits light of its own. But, within these wishy-washy constraints, I cling on to what passes for darkness as long as I can.

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Never let me go: the dilemma of lending books

4/11/2015

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So, you’re midway through composing a blog post when, in a flash of inspiration, you hit on the very book that will nail the point you want to make. You scuttle off to your “library”, zeroing in on the shelf where – however eccentric your filing system¹ – you know it will be waiting for you. Except that it isn’t and, you now remember, it did a flit some time back. You lent it to a trusted friend – his/her exact identity lost in the mists of time – and it’s never been returned.

It’s happened to me a couple of times in recent months. The book in question was one of my favourite novels, namely – I kid you not – Never Let Me Go². I should’ve taken more notice because I’m bereft without it. I want to break into friends’ houses at the dead of night and go rummaging through their possessions till I find it. I’ve asked around of course, but no-one has fessed up.

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Flogging the first, fixing the second and rewriting the third: Am I now a novelist?

23/10/2015

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This post marks three months since the publication of my debut novel, Sugar and Snails, and a possible a transition to another stage of my writerly identity. A few weeks before publication I wrote of my ambivalence at claiming the title of author but, once my book was out there, and people were saying nice things about it, I felt less of a fictional fictioneer. Now, as I start to soft-pedal on the selling (for non-British readers, flog is slang for sell), get ready to edit the next one (another contract is signed and Underneath is scheduled for May 2017) and revisit the fast first draft of what I hope will be my third, I’m wondering if author is big enough to encompass the size of my ego. With three novels in mind, am I now a novelist?

The analogy isn’t very original but, like many clichés, it’s one that works: like children at different stages of development, these novels require different kinds of attention, fluctuating amounts even, as they venture into the world. Of necessity, my firstborn has been the priority over the last six months and, while it’s always going to need me, it can stand on its own two feet as I snuggle up with the baby, and the middle one prepares for its turn in the limelight.

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The art of the long-distance blog tour

23/8/2015

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The year I turned fifty, I undertook a long-distance walk: 190 odd miles across northern England from the west coast to the east. Instead of trying to cajole a group of friends into joining me, I chose to do the whole thing alone, but arranging for various friends and family to accompany me for a day at a time. Sometimes I walked solo, sometimes with individuals or a small group of four or five, with my husband – not an aficionado of rambling – valiantly attempting to fill in the gaps. Although the planning process stretched my organisational capacities to the limit, the event itself was wonderful, despite blisters, inadequate navigation skills and the vagaries of the English weather. After two and a bit weeks hiking across three national parks, I reached my destination at Robin Hood’s Bay, exhausted and exuberant. Back home, with a couple of days free before returning to work, I began writing the novel that became Sugar and Snails.

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Shifting perspectives as the blog tour enters Week 2

27/7/2015

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If I was breathless last Monday, announcing Week 1 of the Sugar and Snails blog tour, I must be on the verge of a swoon this week as I begin another round of visits. The first week has gone brilliantly (you can catch up with those first five posts via the links on my blog tour page), so how could I not be excited about the second? I start today under Julie Stock’s Author Spotlight, with a piece about setting part of my novel in Cairo. As a writer of contemporary romance from around the world, Julie has a particular interest in the challenges of setting fiction in real places, the subject of her own post on Susanna Bavin’s blog this week. Tomorrow, Helena Fairfax is interviewing me about where my own life is set, among other things. Helen lives in an interesting place herself, the UNESCO World Heritage Site and former mill town, Saltaire, which you can discover more about in her fascinating post. Then I’m off to chat with my namesake, Shaz Goodwin on Jera’s Jamboree. With her day job as a school Inclusion Lead, I was interested in her interest in novels that tackle a social barrier, as Sugar and Snails most definitely does. On Thursday, I’m on Our Book Reviews discussing the various transformations of my novel from its initial inception as a story of masculinity across three generations. This post arose out of a Twitter conversation after Mary, one half of Our Book Reviews, read and reviewed an advance copy. Obviously, I was delighted to be invited back. Finally, Friday sees me in Australia, quite fittingly discussing the theme of friendship in the novel and in its realisation (extending the theme of my previous post on gratitude) with one of my dearest blogging friends, Norah Colvin. As Norah has already hosted me once before, I know the tour bus will be safe to leave there over the weekend until I get behind the wheel again on Monday.

I’m generally not in favour of “update” posts, but I can’t ignore the perspective shift since I posted five days ago. As of last Thursday, I’m a published novelist, and enjoying it immensely. With each review (six to my knowledge so far), with each supportive tweet at #SugarandSnails, I’m claiming more of my authorial authority. I’m even infiltrating the more traditional media, with a feature on Sugar and Snails in the Lincolnshire Echo and a nerve-wracking but not too dreadful outing on BBC Radio Nottingham (my bit is at about 2.15 p.m. and the link expires in about three weeks). The highlight of the last few days was, of course, my Nottingham launch party, which I’ll be sharing more about in due course. But in the meantime, there’s this lovely and unexpected post on the event from The Mole, the other half of Our Book Reviews.

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One huge leap for Anne, one teeny tiny step for womankind

22/7/2015

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My first novel will be published tomorrow: a momentous event, and the only reason it isn’t the culmination of a lifetime’s ambition is that it wasn’t until I was almost 50 that I could allow myself to strive for things that weren’t about serving the needs of others. So, although I might not have been able to acknowledge it until recently, this is what I’ve always wanted. And I’ve worked damn hard to get here. Hurrah for me!

Yet in the larger scheme of things, my novel is insignificant. Although, because of its subject, it might help one or two people along the road to self-compassion, it’s not going to change the world. It’s not going to halt climate change or make the world a fairer place. Even on a less grandiose scale, it’s just one more novel in a world already bursting with books.

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Breathless with excitement as the blog tour departs

20/7/2015

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It’s publication week for Sugar and Snails and I’m breathless with excitement. The buzz is building with two reviews already (from Victoria Best and from Stephanie Burton) and some lovely tweets from early readers at #SugarandSnails. Now, thanks mainly to the generous response to my request for hosts, I’ve made two excursions to other blogs (firstly, to Shiny New Books to share my thoughts on writing about secrets, the false self and insecure identities; secondly to Isabel Costello’s literary sofa to discuss the pleasures of small-press publication), and my case is packed ready to depart on the blog tour proper.

I’m starting off today at my publishers’, Inspired Quill, with a piece on being an older debut novelist. Tomorrow I’ll be having a virtual chat with award-winning novelist, Carys Bray, just over a year after she answered my questions here on annethology. On Wednesday, I’m talking transformations at The Oak Wheel, courtesy of Jeff Martin (who’s running a series on Inspired Quill authors). And then on Thursday, publication day, I’m in two places at once, sharing my experience of writing about “the awkward character” with Sacha Black, instigator of the Bloggers’ Bash, and answering questions put to me by bookworm Sonya Alford, at A Lover of Books. Do follow me as much as you’re able but it’s a gruelling schedule and I don’t expect you to read every word. I aim to update the links as I go but you can keep track at your own pace via my blog tour page.

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“I love this book” and other generous terms of adulation

9/7/2015

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What can be more excruciating than contacting your favourite reviewers and writers in advance of publication to beg them, not only to read, but to like, a proof version your forthcoming novel, and declare so publicly for all the world to see? Well, quite a lot, as it happens, but please indulge a first-time novelist’s egocentrism, if you can, for the duration of this post!