words ‘n stuff

Argleton and Queen of the May by the numbers

July 5, 2013

I finally sat down and trawled through all my website stats and Kindle sales reports for Argleton, which I published in August 2011 on my website and then the next month on Amazon. The results are interesting, to me at least, because the numbers are far higher than I had anticipated. I counted downloads of […]

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Queen of the May reading at the Brixton Book Jam

July 1, 2013

I have been invited to read an extract from my upcoming novella, Queen of the May, at the Brixton Book Jam, 7.30pm, 8th July, at the Hootananny in Brixton. It’s free, so there’s no excuse not to come along! Each reading is about five minutes long, and I’m hoping to be on in the first group of readers (so that […]

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Left at the lights

June 23, 2013

Sometimes, just when you think you’ve got everything nailed, when your plans are coming along nicely and all the pieces of the jigsaw are slotting neatly into place, something comes along and blows everything out of the water. For some years now, Kevin and I have been plotting our move to the US. A few […]

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Queen of the May Kickstarter pitch video: What should it include?

June 12, 2013

I’m slowly working my way through the final stages of preparing Queen of the May for publication. At the moment, I’m thinking about the new Kickstarter project whilst my beta readers get back to me with typos and other bits of final polish for the manuscript. I have to say that I’m very excited about […]

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New short story: The Lacemaker

April 9, 2013

Right at the end of last year, I wrote the first draft of a short story, The Lacemaker. It’s had a good ol’ polish and now it’s an ebook – in mobi, epub and pdf format. It’s now available for 99p from my ebookstore or, if you fancy getting it for free, you can join my mailing […]

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The Lacemaker, Queen of the May, & Tag

January 20, 2013

Towards the end of last year I had an idea for a short story. I scribbled it down in my notebook – see my blog post on Forbes for how I’m trying to get the best out of my notebook – and promised myself that I’d get it finished by the end of the holidays. […]

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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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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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The law of unintended consequences: How barbed wire inadvertently fenced in the faeries

March 13, 2012

Until the end of the 19th Century, the faerie and human realms overlapped quite considerably. The soft places, where the skilled can walk two paths at once, were once common. Clearings in the woods, hilltop earthworks, faerie rings and even the bottoms of gardens hid gateways to the Summer Lands through which faeries came and […]

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Queen of the May Kickstater project launched – please help spread the word

March 10, 2012

At last, Queen of the May is up on Kickstarter and ready your support! We have 31 days to raise $10,000, and already have $1071 pledged. Even if you choose the lowest support level, which is $3, please do consider taking part as every little helps! You can also help immensely by telling your friends about […]

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Lessons from Kickstarter Part 4: Promotion

March 1, 2012

This is Part 4 in my series of blog posts looking at the lessons I learnt doing a Kickstarter project. See also Part 1: Don’t Go Off Half-Cocked, Part 2: Rewards, Part 3: Budgeting. Whilst there is, for me at least, some pleasure to be derived from working out reward levels and toying with Excel spreadsheets in […]

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Lessons from Kickstarter Part 3: Budgeting

February 28, 2012

This is Part 3 in my series of blog posts looking at the lessons I learnt doing a Kickstarter project. See also Part 1: Don’t Go Off Half-Cocked and Part 2: Rewards. Budgeting. For many people, budgeting is the worst part of any project. The tedium of researching suppliers, figuring out numbers, minimum runs, working out […]

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Planning my next novelette: Queen of the May

February 3, 2012

It’s amazing how much you can achieve through creative procrastination. I finished up the first draft of my next novelette, currently titled Queen of the May although that might change. The transcription from my handwriting wasn’t too bad, but it has resulted in a lot of errors because my writing has a tendency to get […]

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