This Post Contains Nuts
Recently a reader wrote to tell me that she’d borrowed one of my books from her local library and was enjoying it, but she was disappointed to discover they had no plans to acquire Dr Dan’s Casebook. I know libraries are chronically short of funds so I offered to donate a copy. The library replied,…
Read MoreGot Me Covered
My very welcome New Year’s gift was an email from a long-time fan offering her design and graphics expertise to create a cover for Dr Dan Book 2. This has turned into the gift that keeps on giving because she has designed a ‘look’ that can be adapted for the whole series I have planned.…
Read MoreThe Overloaded Plate
A Happy New Year to all you dear readers who’ve stuck with me through thick and very thin. Over the past three weeks I’ve managed to spend time with all of my grandchildren (no mean feat of logistics) and have also had enlightening conversations with two friends who share my tendency to overload. The conclusion:…
Read MoreDecisions, Decisions
I’ve finished first draft of the next Dr Dan book just in time for me to take a break and wear my other hat: the peripatetic granny bonnet. In the olden days this is the point at which I’d lob the typescript onto my editor’s desk, then run away and hide for a couple of…
Read MoreApostrophe Wars, The Epilogue
It’s a dark, dark day for guardians of the English language or, as we are now regarded, archaic and irrelevant, nitpicking pedants. The Apostrophe Protection Society is pulling down its shutters. John Richards, the man who founded it in 2001, has admitted defeat. ‘Ignorance,’ he says, ‘and laziness have won.’ I’m glad that my husband,…
Read MoreLet Us Now Give Thanks
for freedom of speech, while we still have it. A British TV presenter, Eamonn Holmes, has been criticised for using the word ‘uppity’ in connection with the Duchess of Sussex. Apparently the television company received a complaint (singular) and that’s all it takes these days to get you pilloried. Just one Outraged of Budleigh Salterton,…
Read MoreOn the Couch
Bear with me while I do a bit of navel-gazing. Writers sometimes try to explain where their writing comes from and I’ve often been asked how or why I decided to become a writer. The short answer is, I didn’t. I fell into it. Then someone told me I was quite good at it – …
Read MoreA Funny Old Week
It’s been a funny old week. The first thing that happened was an indecipherable item on my To Do list. I’m an inveterate list-maker because experience has shown me that I need order in my life. I accept that there are people for whom chaos is a seed bed of creativity, but I work a…
Read MoreI’m a Bear, Damn it.
Please excuse me for just one moment. You’ve caught me in the dying twitches of an existential crisis, but it shouldn’t last more than a couple of paragraphs and I promise to mop up afterwards. One of the jobs on my self-publishing To Do list has been to decide whether to spend money on…
Read MoreThe Long and the Short of It
When I first looked into the possibility of self-publishing, I was astonished at how prolific many indie novelists were, bringing out six or seven books a year. Then I figured it. Their books are short, as in 25 or 30 thousand words. What I would call a novella. Book-length fashions go up and down like…
Read More