The Big Give is a charity that helps other charities to find sponsors who double their income from public donations. December 3rd kicks off the Big Give Christmas Challenge — if you have some spare change, I’d recommend the Orangutan Foundation. It’s a sad truth […]
If you love authors, buy ebooks. Royalties from ebooks are — by a staggering amount — greater than paperback and hardcover books. Pounds against pennies, in some cases. So if you want your authors to have nice things, like enough money to keep writing, pay editors and commission cover artists…buy ebooks. I know, physical books […]
Blood River, my first Nightmare Vacations story, has a new cover to celebrate its second birthday and the imminent arrival of its sibling: Blood Point. With this new cover, Blood River is available in hardcover for the first time and includes a preview of my new story. Although Blood Point is not a sequel, both […]
Most writers hate writing a synopsis, so it seems like the perfect challenge for an AI. What I discovered reveals a lot about the current state and limitations of generative AIs like ChatGPT and Google Gemini. The current wave of interest in AI is fascinating because it inspires so much hype on both sides. I […]
The charming Lee Benson interviewed me a while back for his Sunday radio show on Black Country Xtra – Listen with Lee*. Our chat popped up on Sunday and you can catch up until January 20th or listen on the player below. We chat about living in Ireland as a Brit, I read from Blood […]
If 2021 was a year of change, 2022 was a year of new adventures: I published my first novel. I got to grips with living in a new country. I started a new business. I turned 50 (that still hasn’t sunk in). And I became a doggy daddy. Writing a novel is hard, publishing is […]
Blood River has been winning great reviews from advanced readers at ARC review sites BookSirens and NetGalley in its first month. My debut novel is currently riding high at 5 stars on Amazon UK, 4.4 on Amazon USA, and 3.71 on GoodReads. Here are a few of my favourite quotes. “A really interesting supernatural survival […]
It’s five years since Blood River‘s journey began, from a notebook in the Borneo rainforest to Amazon Kindle ebook. It’s a roller-coaster tale of supernatural survival horror, and you can buy it here. I’ve no idea how Blood River will fare with reviewers and readers, but it’s been an experiment from day one. It’s become […]
How do you turn a collection of story ideas into a coherent 100,000-word novel? Novel planning was one of the most daunting tasks I faced as a first-time novelist. As a journalist, I’d got used to writing a few hundred words without an outline, or jotting down a few ideas for a thousand-word article or […]
Blood River has taught me that bringing characters from my imagination to the page isn’t always easy. Writing courses spend a lot of time on character description but very little on character visualisation. Characters develop as their stories and the world they live in emerge through your writing. There comes a time when you need […]