Borrowing from mythology

Image of trees in autumn

I was chatting to a friend about Christmas this week – and how many religions have a festival around this time of year. Any culture which emerged outside of the tropics will have found ways to make the long winter nights more bearable. It goes right back to pagan times and most cultures ‘borrowed’ from […]

Happy Christmas, Happy Reading

Image of a Barn Owl

When Balance of Betrayal was published in the spring, I wrote a series of blogs about some of the characters. One of them was, at the time, a mystery even to me. You see, I created Afrial as someone to be staunchly loyal and yet I never really explained why. Check out the original blog […]

The Twitter trickle

I’ve been pondering about social media recently. I became active on Twitter around this time last year and, according to a number of books, you can conquer the world this way. They paint a very tempting picture. All I need to do is sit back, throw a few tweets out into the ether and my […]

One year on

Image from the front cover of my first book

12 months ago yesterday, I wrote my first blog. Fancy that! a whole year of posting about my experiences and life as a writer. Anniversaries are always a good opportunity to look back on progress and see how things have changed – so that’s what I plan to do.

When I wrote that first blog, […]

A new addition to the family

Image of the book cover

One of the joys of being a writer is the ability to do some good with it. I spoke about this in a recent blog – how I’m writing bespoke charity books for children. The most recent of these commissions has just been published, so I thought I’d say a little about how it came […]

Making it memorable

In the UK, last night was Bonfire Night. For my international friends, all that means these days is that is an excuse to stand out in the freezing cold and watch fireworks. It’s history is more interesting. It’s proper name – Guy Fawkes Night – is more telling and it is the day the British […]

How do you take the thing you most love and use it to do good?

I love to write

I always have, ever since early childhood. It’s my hobby, my love, my purpose. It’s never been my career because there have been bills to pay and a family to support – you know how it goes – and I never quite had the courage to quit my job and starve […]

Using my senses

I am immensely fortunate – although many wouldn’t agree – that, in order to get to work, I have a 25 minute walk at 5:15am to reach the station. Yes, that means getting up at sparrow’s cough each day and yes, that means I get home each evening and go straight to bed during the […]

Colour and light

Image of trees in autumn

Autumn is a season of mixed feelings for me.

I love warmth and sunshine and Autumn brings with it the promise of months of short days and gloom. For me that is a depressing prospect. The heating goes on, the windows have to be closed and, all in all, it feels like I’m shutting out […]

Grant me patience…

I’ve recently been re-reading Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. I don’t know if you’ve ever read it but it is a fascinating book. Written in 1937, it is the distillation of interviews with over 500 successful businessmen (yes, I do mean men – it was 1937 after all) to create a formula for […]