Excited howls summoned me back to the land of the living, a desire to meet up with my fellow werewolves Stacey Mewse and Lauren Womack battling the early morning grogginess and driving me from my bed, and the screams of potential victims calling to me from beyond my Yorkshire territory. After months of planning and preparing for our first joint venture, the time had finally come. Birmingham Horror Con was upon us.
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Preparing for a Book Launch
I don’t know if a book launch is supposed to be chaotic, but I’ve found both of mine to be pretty hectic so far. With Hunted nearing publication now, there’s been lots to do in preparation for it; though it hasn’t been quite as bad this time round as it was for Hybrid. It helps that I already have my websites in place and it’s just a case of updating them for Hunted rather than having to sort the design and the build from scratch, and arranging the book trailer went a lot smoother this time.
The Challenge of Writing a Sequel
I’ve heard it said that the second book is always the hardest, and I’ve certainly found that with writing book 2 of the Hybrid series, which I’m calling Hunted. I started a very early draft back in my college days before I’d even done the first major redraft of Hybrid, but it’s taken me nearly a decade to finish a first draft, after years of struggling to find what direction the book needed to take. I had plenty of ideas of roughly where the story was going, but it took three re-writes of the first half of the book before I finally felt it was right, and that was before I even had the ideas to fill the second half! Other than the ending which came to me fairly early on, I had no idea what happened after the midway point I kept getting stuck at. And if it weren’t for all you amazing fans who’ve given me the motivation I needed to really bully my brain into working out what the story needed to be and then getting it written, I would probably still be struggling with the second half even now! Continue Reading…
The Story Behind Game Over
Since my Facebook competition winner, Seyma, picked this story for her handwritten prize, I thought I’d share the inspiration behind ‘Game Over’ next. I do intend to do a ‘story behind’ post for each of my short stories over the coming weeks, as I said in the first of these posts which covered ‘Invoking Hell’, but I’ll blog about other things in between to mix it up a bit.
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The Company of Wolves (Part 3)
Much like on the Thursday, I awoke Saturday feeling more tired than hungover. Though with the amount of alcohol I got through over the course of the three days, I’m sure there were some withdrawl symptoms on top of the sleep deprivation. Continue Reading…
Company of Wolves (Part 2)
Friday dawned too bright for my pounding head, my alarm sounding way too soon. This was the day of the trip to the UK Wolf Conservation Trust and the coach was leaving at 8:30, which meant getting up at 7:30 to make sure I had plenty of time to catch it. The long coach trip saved me, giving me the chance to nod off for another hour or so, and I was just about able to function once we reached the wolf centre. Continue Reading…
The Company of Wolves (Part 1)
One thing I’m learning when it comes to marketing is this: never underestimate the power of networking. Whilst most of my online efforts have been met with limited success, by far the most sales I’ve had to date have been through meeting people in the real world. I mentioned before I’ve been getting involved with Huddersfield Literature Festival, which was my first networking experience and an enjoyable one so far, and I’ve been on the lookout for other opportunities since. So when a friend linked this article on ‘the UK’s only werewolf conference’ on Facebook, I knew it was too good an opportunity to miss. I was originally going to do a write up of this all in one blog post, but it’s proving far too much to cover so I’m now going to split it into three, as the title of this post suggests. Continue Reading…
The Story Behind Invoking Hell
One of the most common questions I get asked as a writer is where I get my inspiration from. The answer to this isn’t a simple one, and the inspiration behind each of my stories to date has come from different places. This subject ties in with another one I want to cover, namely that of dealing with writer’s block. But I also thought it might be of interest to some fans to read what sparked the idea for each of my short stories, so today I want to talk about how I came to write Invoking Hell. I thought I’d start with this piece as it was the first one I chose for my YouTube channel, but I will do a post on each eventually. Continue Reading…
Getting to Grips with Social Media
In my marketing post I mentioned social media is a must. It was something I never really got into in my personal life, but as a published author that all changed. I’ve had to embrace it as part of my daily routine in an ongoing bid to reach new fans and engage existing ones, and it remains a staple part of my marketing campaign as time goes on. Continue Reading…
The Tools of a Writer
What’s the best tool a writer can have — besides the obvious imagination and creativity needed for fiction, and a good enough way with words to make your story readable? I believe it’s determination. Continue Reading…