A writer's resolutions for 2018

In my previous blog I reflected on what I'd learnt in 2017.  So now It’s time to look forward to a new year and make my writer's plans for 2018, a.k.a. resolutions.  I do this every year and yes, I do look back at them from time to time.  Like most of us some I have fulfilled, others have been partially met and some discarded along the way.  So are they worth it?  I think so.  It’s a good time to re-focus, to assess what I’m trying to do, what I want to achieve.

So for 2018:  For the complete blog follow the link 

Another year as a writer - time to reflect

Well, that’s almost it for 2017.  I don’t know whether it's because I'm a writer and there never seems to be enough time, or it’s just that I’m getting older (as everyone does of course).  However, I sure someone is sneaking days out my years while I’m not looking.  Still, it’s time to reflect, which I think it’s important, especially for an indie-author.  What have I done well and what could have done better?  Where have I stepped up to the plate and where have I shirked or side stepped issues?

For the complete blog - follow this link

All those writer courses - shop wisely

Now up front I want to say I’m not against paid on-line writer courses.  I can only comment on the ones I have looked at and in a couple of cases paid out good money for.  They are full of useful content that, if you are in the right place with your writing and prepared to put in the time and effort I’m sure they can have a major impact.  However, what they are not (in my opinion) is a magic bullet.  For the vast majority of Indie-authors success will not be instant and when it comes will probably be modest.  But hey, modest is good and I’ll be happy with modest when I get there.  And yes any better than modest, I admit, would be great.

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Writers beware - sod's law exists

Part of my first job on leaving Uni was in the quality assurance section of a scientific organisation.  Believe it or not, before the late 1970s little of it existed.  After all everyone was doing their best so the data and reports would be fine wouldn’t they?  Answer, no.  Because if nothing else Sod’s Law operates. i.e. whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.  And one of the problems back then was that nobody understood what could go wrong – it was of course, anything and everything.  So after a few well published cases, which I won’t go into, the need for a formal system of quality assurance was established.

For me this involved, amongst other things the checking of scientific reports, both for internal consistency and against the “raw data”.  At first my involvement, essentially pointing out where people had made errors was resented.  I mean, who was I to tell a senior scientist they had made mistakes.  And this wasn’t just the odd typo, whole lines of data were transposed, decimal points were in the wrong place, thing disappeared from the records only to appear elsewhere.  I could go on.  These didn’t always affect the scientific outcomes, but occasionally they could and this was important work.  What’s more it’s not as if you could predict when or where a major error might occur.

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What does it take to be a writer? - Persitence

For most writers success is not an overnight event.  One of my all time, and sadly missed, writer heroes, Iain Banks, completed five or six books before being published.  He persisted.

Now I write this blog a week or so after I’ve launched my latest book.  I’ve had some sales, but not as many as hoped for.  So yes, I admit it, I’m a little disappointed.  I feel that I just need that kick start, that nudge that sends sales cascading.  The book itself is a new venture for me, being urban fantasy / detective story, written in a humorous style, rather than my usual science fiction.

For the full blog follow this link

Inspector Kirby and Harold Longcoat - A Northumbrian Mystery

Launching today!

Inspector Kirby and Harold Longcoat - A Northumbrian Mystery.

Here’s the link: http://smarturl.it/inspectorkirby1

A pair of shoes - how weird can that be?

Inspector Jonah Kirby ends up with the cases other officers don’t like to handle, the weird ones. When a young girl is reported missing all he has to go on is the pair of shoes. To Kirby it doesn’t feel right and in his experience things not feeling right often lead to things not being right. Little does he realise that his weirdness scale – weird, very weird and extremely weird – will soon need extending.

Meet Inspector Kirby

Inspector Kirby, Jonah to his friends and 'old school' to his junior colleagues, wandered out of the cottage.  He crossed the road and headed down the lane, with thorny hedge rows either side, that led to the sea.  He’d put this off for days, wondering how it would make him feel.  Still there was nothing quite like a walk along the coast with its prevailing North East breeze and the smell of salt and rotting seaweed in the air to clear the mind.  And let’s face it there was a lot to clear.

To meet Inspector Kirby follow this link