…the Knesset (the Israeli Parliament) passed a segregation bill last week. Palestinian Israelis are not allowed to live i...

I have the new approval copy in my hot little hands. It arrived yesterday. It is 99.999% perfect. I love it, love it, love it. But today I h...

We drink a lot of milk at Hepworth Towers. Or rather, Dave drinks a lot of milk at Hepworth Towers. He drinks gallons of full cream milk. I ...

You remember I received my approval (pre-release) copy of the book last Saturday? And that it had a gloss cover when I had asked for a matt ...

This is largely a politics-free zone, but today I feel sick to my stomach about something and just have to ask: Why are we bombing Libya ...

I woke up at half past five this morning to the sound of the birds – the first time this year. Yesterday I lounged on my steamer chair in th...

My book arrived on Saturday. That is, the first approval copy of the pre-release books arrived on Saturday. What can I say? It was magic. ...

I’m still getting over the virus I had, and can only manage half a day on normal activities before I get tired. That’s OK. I have a safe war...

Get over to Authors for Japan – I am on there now and people are bidding.

I feel awkward about carrying on with my blog as if nothing had happened. It doesn’t seem appropriate, in view of the earthquake, tsunami an...

If you would like to donate money to help the people affected by the earthquake and tsunami, you can do so through the Red Cross . If you ar...

Yesterday was a day of high adrenalin, and if I hadn’t been laid low with a bug I might have exploded. Two things happened. The first thin...

I’ve been waiting excitedly for the hard copy of my book cover to arrive from San Francisco. I’ve seen it on screen, but I was dying to see ...

When I started writing novels I read a book called The Weekend Novelist by Robert Ray. I found it useful as a guide to plotting, and also f...

Do you recall how happy I was when  my village shop sourced me a dozen packets of pork scratchings? For those of you who don’t follow me ...

Ooh, publishing has started to get exciting again. Isaac has finished the cover layout and it’s all ready to go to the printers. His good fr...

I have tried. I have tweeted. I have tweeted 39 times in three weeks. And some of them were OK: - a bad idea to have a sofa in my st...

(Hmm, the title of this post reminds me of the original title of Plotting for Beginners, which was   Red clover, rural chic and fairy ligh...

I like to make the dialogue in my books distinctive and interesting, so I’m a keen listener to what people say AND the way that I say it. I ...

Sometimes people give such great service, you want to shout about it, and today I am going to do just that. 1/ Thanks to my village shop –...

I just got back from a great weekend in Paris with my big sister, Kath. The main purpose of this briefest of brief trips was to see ...

Did you know that for litho-printed books, the number of pages in the book has to be divisible by 16? This means that if your book pages tot...

Don’t tell me that astrology doesn’t work. Yesterday I had Mars (energy/conflict)  opposition (in difficult aspect to)  Mercury (communicat...

One of the good things about this self publishing lark is how much you learn in the process. Did you know that you have to purchase ISBNs ...

After a hiatus while I’ve been ill, things are getting exciting again on the publishing front. Several weeks ago my sister Jen went throug...