Tag Archives: writerslife

Currently Querying

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It’s Hump Day once again, and I’m spending today taking stock of where I am with my next book, as well as starting to think about the second one in the series. Before I do any of that, though, I thought I would check in with a quick update on what I’ve been up to.

Holidays…

It’s that time of year, isn’t it? July just flew by for me, as I spent quite a lot of it on holiday in the very lovely Shetland isles. We visited many of its islands, did plenty of walking, and had a fair few picnics on the beach! In short, it was amazing.

Watching the birds at Hermaness Nature Reserve on the Isle of Unst

Writing…

After rounds of editing, my forthcoming novel is now out on submission to literary agents and publishers, and I’m patiently waiting for replies. I know I haven’t said a great deal about this novel (other than dropping a few hints here) but I hope to be able to reveal much more soon. For now, I can say that it’s historical fiction, set in late Georgian Edinburgh, with a mystery at its heart.

Other than my novel, I have put a couple of shorter pieces out on submission to magazine and online publications, and I’m awaiting news on those too. I’m also looking ahead to the second installment of my Georgian mystery series – I have so many ideas and threads to pick up from the first story, but I need to do some work to shape it all into a plot. I feel a trip into Edinburgh coming on, too, to help me ground myself in the story’s setting. That wasn’t possible for the first novel because of lockdown restrictions, so I will really appreciate being able to do that this time.

Reading…

I have been doing so much reading this summer! In fact, last night I stayed up far too late to finish Janice Hadlow’s The Other Bennet Sister, and it was so, so good. If you love Pride and Prejudice then you will love this – it’s the story of Mary Bennet, the quieter, bookish sister who is always on the periphery of Jane Austen’s novel. Recently I also read Miss Austen by Gill Hornby, which I similarly adored. Told from the point of view of Jane’s sister Cassandra, this is a novel about family stories and who gets to tell them. I was utterly spellbound from start to finish.

I have occasionally left the nineteenth century behind, however, and picked up some more modern reads. On holiday I enjoyed a couple of the very fabulous Tracy Broemmer’s contemporary romances, Hookin’ Up and Gettin’ Hitched from The H Books series.

My recent reads

What’s Next?

In short, a lot of waiting around! It’ll probably be well into the autumn before I know the outcome of my novel submissions. However, I plan to use the time well, working on the next book as well as doing some work on my short stories with a view to pulling together a collection. Oh, and I’m also going to do a lot of reading, and hope I’ll manage to post some reviews here, if time allows.

Hopefully I will have more news about my next book soon, so in the meantime, watch this space…

Studies in Wax

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As promised back in February, I have been quietly and steadily working on my new novel. I’m conscious I’ve been silent for some time now, so thought I’d blog a short update on how things are going. I’m pleased to say that I’ve now completed the first draft of the manuscript and have almost completed the first round of editing. There will be more reading and editing work to be done, of course, but I feel as though I’m making some serious progress towards the final, finished novel.

So, today I thought I might say a little more about what this book is about, and where it came from!

The first seeds of this story were sown in my mind back in the autumn of 2019, while working on an assignment for the creative writing course I was taking at the time. I was doing a lot of free-writing for this, and I produced a number of short passages about a psychic who has a vision of a crime which has not yet been committed. As I developed them further, I found myself wandering into the late eighteenth-century, sketching characters and settings which felt sometimes Austen-esque and sometimes far less privileged – a contrast which I enjoyed. I live not far from Edinburgh, a city with a notable Georgian heritage, so I began to feel this might be my story’s setting. At this point I had lots of threads, lots of ideas, but it was only when I started looking more closely at eighteenth-century Edinburgh, that I had a ‘eureka’ moment.

That moment looked something like this:

Madame Tussaud, from Wikimedia Commons.

I discovered that, in 1803, Madame Tussaud opened an exhibition in Edinburgh’s New Town. Travelling from France to London and then on to Edinburgh during the brief peace between Britain and France, her Grand Cabinet of European Figures was the first time the Scottish capital had seen her lifelike waxworks of royalty and revolutionaries – including, of course, the now infamous death masks. This tiny, fascinating piece of information provided the setting for my university assignment, but it was also the spark which got me to realise that the plots, settings and characters whirring around my head needed a novel. The result is a story which is grounded firmly in its period: a new century, an uneasy peace, an ancient city in flux, and an old world still reeling from revolution. It’s also a novel which still has that psychic and that original mystery at its heart: how do you solve a crime which hasn’t happened yet?

I can’t wait for you all to read it.

Travels, and trying

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This year, a lot of things haven’t gone to plan. I know that’s the case for most people – there were things we were meant to do which didn’t happen, and things we ended up doing which we could have never foreseen. It’s an understatement to say that 2020 has been quite some year – for me, like so many others, it’s been filled with disruption, worries, cancelled plans, and a pervasive sense that I’ve lost control over my daily life.

And yet, it hasn’t been all bad.

Last week, I was fortunate enough to go on holiday for a week. It wasn’t the holiday we’d planned – that was an east Med cruise, booked for July and cancelled by Covid. However, it was a holiday which has always been on our ‘to do’ list, and with tourism in Scotland reopening, we jumped at the chance to get away and visit the islands of Mull, Iona, Staffa, and Lunga. I am so glad we did – it was a week of breathtaking scenery, fresh air, plenty of walking and lots of wildlife.

Kilvickeon Beach, Isle of Mull

That’s not to say everything felt entirely normal, and the holiday didn’t always go completely to plan – a reminder, perhaps, that the pandemic casts a long shadow and it isn’t going to fade any time soon. Indeed, I learnt a number of things last week. One was that, as someone who in ordinary times finds busy and/or unfamiliar public places anxiety-inducing, I find the mask/sanitiser/social distancing/one way system merry-go-rounds quite exhausting. A second thing was that, after so many months of having their activities and interactions limited, my children are far less resilient against the disappointment of a locked-up playground than they once were. And a third thing was that catching your face-mask on your cartilage piercing will result in a slightly ripped and very sore ear.

Every day is a school day. Even when school has been shut since March.

Aros Park, Isle of Mull

So, now I’m home and it’s time to settle back down into some sort of regular routine for however long that may last. School starts again next week, as does work, and I have a book to finish researching and start writing. Lots to try and do. For today I thought I’d leave you with a final thing I learnt on my holidays, which is that I really like Taylor Swift’s new album. Not my usual taste in music, but it is very good, and I like this song in particular. In fact, I think it could become my anthem for 2020. After all, despite the pandemonium this year has brought, as the song goes – at least I’m trying.

Lockdown Life

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Happy Easter, folks! It’s a bit of a strange one this year, but life has been pretty strange for several weeks now. I hope you’re all staying well and sane during this unsettling time. I thought I’d check in with a few updates from lockdown life…

The House at Kirtlebeck End Offer

Like a lot of people, I will be getting through this period with the help of good books. More time at home does, after all, mean more reading time – at least, that’s the theory. With this in mind I decided to reduce the Kindle price of my newest release, The House at Kirtlebeck End, to 99p / 99c on Amazon UK and US. Head over here to get your copy.

Writing in Retreat

Over the past few days I’ve seen lots of ads online for virtual writers’ retreats. What a wonderful idea! Sadly I’m finding that this lockdown life does not agree with my creativity. Between homeschooling my kids, managing my own day job and generally adjusting to the bustle of a 24/7 full house, I’m not stringing many sentences together just now. I’ve got my final Creative Writing assignment due at the end of the month, so I am trying very hard to ‘freewrite’ my way to inspiration. Unfortunately, everything I write seems to wind back to this horrible situation we’re in which, frankly, is the last thing I want to write about.

Books, Music & Walks

Fortunately, there are those daily glimmers of light which keep me going. I am reading, and have read, some great books. My last excellent read was The Year without Summer by Guinevere Glasfurd. Set in 1816 during the summer which was blighted by the Mount Tambora volcanic eruption, the novel features the compelling and hard-hitting stories of a handful of characters and how their lives were affected. The scope of the story is impressive, spanning many lives and a number of continents.

I’m now reading Tombland, the latest Shardlake novel by CJ Sansom. Running at over 800 pages it is an absolute tome, so I may or may not finish it before this lockdown ends! Away from novels I’m also making an effort to read more modern poetry, and have recently picked up a copy of the collection Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times. Pretty suitable reading just now, I’d say.

I’m grateful also for some wonderful new music which has arrived in 2020. I have three new albums on rotation just now: Myrkur’s Folksange, Delain’s Apocalypse and Chill, and Nightwish’s Human. :II: Nature. And when I’m not reading or listening to music, I’ve been making the most of the good weather and discovering new walks around my local area with my family. It’s amazing how in the bustle of everyday life we often overlook those things which are right under our noses. If anything good comes from this, it’s that I’ve gained an appreciation of how much nature there is, right there on my doorstep.

Best wishes and Easter blessings to you all. Stay safe!