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Looking Back at 2018
As we slowly roll towards the end of the year it often comes to us to start looking towards the things we might want to achieve in the coming year. It’s a time for making plans, dreaming, wondering how we can shape the future; it’s time to spring clean the mind. I’ve always found the…
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Hunting Jack Hits the Cyber-Shelves
My new novel, a tense thriller set in Glasgow and Edinburgh in 1995, was released yesterday by Blue Sea Publishing. HUNTING JACK is the story of a young Scottish lad brought up in London by his Aunt and Uncle after his parents were both killed in a car crash. On finding a hidden letter from…
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GDRs 2018
It’s not been the best start to the year, in fact this posting is already around two weeks late, but I’m back up and running and in the midst of kicking off my GDRs (Goals, Dreams & Resolutions) for the new year. I’m not taking things easy and I’m not going hell-for-leather, but I’ve laid…
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Hunting Jack Cover Reveal
Attention! Here’s the new cover of my next novel, HUNTING JACK, out in February next year with the terrific Blue Sea Publishing. It’s a tense crime/thriller/gangster story set in Glasgow and Edinburgh and based on the Ice-Cream Wars of 1984. Right up your street, basically. Col
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Wrapping Up 2017
Now that the first draft of the novel I began writing during NaNoWriMo is over and done with (out next year hopefully), it’s time for me, as a writer, to take stock of the year that’s drawing to a conclusion. Did I meet my goals? What were the highlights and lowlights? What went wrong and what…
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NaNoWriMo: Done, Dusted and Over For Another Year
It’s all over! NaNoWriMo is complete, at an end, finished, over, caput, at an end, over and done with. It is no more. Fin. And I completed the challenge! Tired and just a little surprised with the monumental effort it took to get myself over the 50k line, I’ve found that I still have the…
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NaNoWriMo: The Half Way Mark
It’s half way through November and NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is at its outward most point. We’ve reached the turn and already I’m heading back to the clubhouse with only one aim in mind: to reach the 50,000 word mark. By this point I should be on 25k or more, averaging just under 2k…
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National Novel Writing Month: The Debate
This November will see the 19th annual National Novel Writing Month take place. Otherwise known as NaNoWriMo, the basic idea — if you haven’t heard of it — is to write 50,000 words of a novel in the 30 days of November. It sounds easier than it is, and in fact, requires a fair amount…
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What Makes You Think You’re Any Good at Writing?
There’s a common misconception that if you’re a writer, it logically follows that you must be loaded because you obviously sell a lot of books. It also seems to be the common perception that if you’re a well-known writer you must be a millionaire because all your books are likely being turned into TV or…
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Greece Provides the Inspiration Yet Again
We arrived back from the beautiful Greek island of Rhodes in the early hours of Sunday morning, after a wonderfully relaxing (lazy) and productive holiday. It’s the first two-week vacation we’ve had since we visited Sri Lanka in 2015, and with all the recent change and upheaval that 2017 has seen — new jobs and…