I blog about CREATIVE WRITING & LIVING.
About moving from being published by Penguin to SELF-PUBLISHING.
And about THE ALLIANCE OF INDEPENDENT AUTHORS that arose from my adventures as an author-turned-indie.
Click below right to COMMENT in The Guestbook.
#poem #poetry #inspirations
I wish we could flow/
as oceans tide,/
swelling with joy at our/
pulse to unfurl.
I feel we should roll/
as planets turn,/
dark days and seasons held/ Read the whole post »
We’ve become a modern day menace, apparently. Spreading our laptops and smartphones across tables and sofa, turning our local Starbucks or Costa into an office.
Marketing professors Merlyn Griffiths, from the University of North Carolina, and Mary Gilly, from the University of California, claim in a new study, Dibs! Customer Territorial Behaviours, that we cause rows with other customers and Read the whole post »
#creative #writing
“He claims… that he writes out of the desire for consolation, that something in story-making eases him, assuages his demons.
“But it also exhausts him. He has to be careful. (‘A man cannot work with the cream of his brain for more than Read the whole post »
#COMPETITION for UK followers. 
Fancy an unforgettable night out at the beautiful King’s Place next Monday night, 14th May?
I bought myself a ticket to hear the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, read from her work, including her 2011 collection The Bees.
Irresistible.
Only then I got an invitation to an even more irresistible dinner.
So I’ve a ticket going a’begging. And so…. a little competition.
HOW TO ENTER: Write Read the whole post »
#WW #Writer Wednesday #creative 
You were born with a mouth,
a tongue, and two sets of teeth
were given, the first by year
two, then at seven. All thought
through, all you’d need
to feed and to speak. Now
please do.
—–
#Inspiration #Meditation: Free ebook. 
I’m upgrading my Facebook page and its free giveaway.
If you’d like a copy of ’Inspiration Meditation: A Guide For Writers Artists & Everyone’, go across now and like the page – soon it will no longer be available for free.
I’m also looking for feedback on the book, as I’m putting together a new edition for print.
If you’ve done Read the whole post »
#GoCreative.
I’m a bit sceptical about brain training and #creativity. Brain training works best in getting you used to jumping through particular mental hoops and improving your ability to do a specific brain task. 
But creative thinking is different.
The brainwaves that distinguish creative leaps, great ideas and inspired thinking have been shown by neuroscience to be Read the whole post »
Closing a week of posts about the launch of the Alliance of Independent Authors at London Book Fair, this (long) post offers:
[That’s me in the photo on the right, getting a tad Read the whole post »
on ‘How I Went Indie… and Why’
LINDA GILLARD
I was an award-winning, mid-list author of contemporary women’s fiction when three years ago I was dropped by my publisher. (“Disappointing sales” was the reason given.) After two years my agent still hadn’t found a publisher for my fourth and fifth novels. Editors liked the books, but said they’d be hard to market as they belonged to no clear genre.
While looking for a new publisher, I kept myself in the public eye by chatting on book forums, writing guest blogs and setting up an author page on Facebook. I was preparing for a miracle. Then it came. The e-book revolution.
I indy-published my fourth novel, HOUSE OF SILENCE on Kindle. I hoped to sell 10 copies a month, maybe 10 a week if the book really took off, but I sold 10,000 downloads in less than four months. I’ve since Read the whole post »
[#ALLIA #writing] Maybe it’s because I’m Irish but every book I’ve ever written has had a lot to say about freedom — even my very first publication, a nonfiction book with a small
feminist press in Dublin (Attic, now part of Cork University Press), called BodyMatters For Women.
That was a health and exercise book – the day job then was fitness instructor – but the most important chapters, for me, were those dealing with ways to break free of our society’s messed-up messages about women’s bodies.
From there to the book I’m working on now – a novel about Read the whole post »
