Starting as I mean to go on

January 2, 2013

Over the Christmas break, I had a couple of quiet days where I could pretend I was a full-time author. Having plotted out the new end of The Queen of the May early in December, and having promised myself that I would finish the second draft before the end of 2012, I spent 31st December [...]

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In memoriam: Michael O’Connor Clarke

October 14, 2012

“Brace yerself,” said Michael in a 2004 email, as he sent me a photo of himself and his three children, Charlie, Lily & Ruairi. “A tad more up to date,” he said of this snap. “Gone, the floppy fringe of my Martin Fry period. Back to the wash-it-and-leave-it version.” Back then, Michael was in PR and I was [...]

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Argleton book reading and a discussion on sock puppeting

September 23, 2012

Brixton Book Jam I’m  going to be reading an extract from Argleton for the Brixton Book Jam on Monday 1 October, if you want to come along and see my first ever book reading! Zelda Rhiando, who helps organise it, describes it as “a free quarterly literary event, where famous and not so famous authors [...]

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New cover for Argleton

September 23, 2012

I’m delighted to finally reveal the new cover for Argleton, designed by Thomas James. I asked Tom to put together something for me that was stylistically simple, informed by the effortlessness of classic Penguin designs, and which could form the basis of the covers for my next few novellas. The design also had to work [...]

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An open letter to the British media

September 12, 2012

Dear The British Media, especially Freeview broadcasters, You may have noticed that something extraordinary happened this summer, something wonderful. The Great British Public were treated to the most amazing sporting spectacular – Sportsmas, as one friend of mine puts it. We saw, in the Olympics but especially in the Paralympics, years and years of hard work, [...]

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Support women in science & tech, and have fun whilst you’re at it!

September 11, 2012

Ada Lovelace Day, the international celebration of the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering & maths that I launched in 2009, has gone from strength to strength in the last three years. I’ve been amazed at how much support it’s garnered and how much enthusiasm there is for it. This year, it has become really [...]

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How would you run a self-publishing award?

August 23, 2012

I interviewed The Guardian’s Sam Jordison about the challenges of expanding the current Not The Booker literary prize to include self-published books for my Forbes blog, but didn’t really have room to consider how one might actually run a meaningful award for self-published authors. The Not The Booker awards currently works by allowing people to [...]

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The story of an annoying sac of liquid

August 15, 2012

I’m back at my desk today for the first time since I had my grapefruit-sized ovarian cyst removed last Thursday. Although I’m not feeling particularly intelligent today, I am free from pain for the first time in months and I’m very happy with the speed of my recovery. I thought it might be worth just [...]

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Out of Office

August 9, 2012

I’m off to hospital this morning to get my ovarian cyst removed. The last couple of months especially have been a bit miserable, and I’ll be glad once today is over. It’s a general anaesthetic, which I’ve never had before, but I should be in and out today and back home by tonight. And i [...]

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Promoting your book on a budget: A response to BookBaby

July 6, 2012

BookBaby recently published a blog post entitled Promote Your Book on a Budget: 20 Thrifty Ways to Get Your Writing Out There. I was a bit annoyed by it, because some of the items were clearly not budget, and others aren’t promotional. Even more, some dodn’t seem relevant to self-published authors, whom I would imagine comprise [...]

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Birth of a book

July 1, 2012

Just beautiful!  Birth of a book from Lamartis Publishing House on Vimeo.  

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Cyst news

June 26, 2012

As mentioned in passing in an earlier post, about a month ago I was diagnosed with a 10cm ovarian cyst. Symptoms started right at the beginning of the year and since then have progressively worsened. Initially it was diagnosed as a mild urinary infection, confirmed by tests, but when antibiotics didn’t actually clear things up [...]

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What makes a book ‘Young Adult’?

June 15, 2012

I ask this question, what makes a book ‘Young Adult’?, not because I have an answer and want to ponder it at length for your edification, but because I am not sure I actually know. Out of the 14,000+ people who have either downloaded or bought Argleton, three have said that they think it’s really [...]

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A nerdy post about book sale numbers

June 7, 2012

If you’ve been reading here a while, you’ll know that I have an unhealthy fascination with numbers, particularly the sales and download numbers for Argleton. Talking about  download/sales numbers on Twitter today, I realised that there are various different ways you can finagle numbers and wondered what the results might tell us. So I had a [...]

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Slowly, slowly, catchy monkey

May 17, 2012

It’s been a while since I last blogged, so I thought I’d just update you on what’s been going on. The first thing is that after I realised that the Queen of the May Kickstarter project wasn’t going to work out, I did a bit of thinking about what it was I was trying to [...]

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