Creating a Fantasy World
Ever since reading Lord of the Rings as a child I have always wanted to create my own special fantasy world with my own races and monsters. Recently with my Winter series I’ve been doing just that....
View ArticleBalancing Mercy and Justice
This has been brought up a lot recently in my life and it has made me think a lot about whether I am any good at getting this balance right. Unfortunately I really don’t think I am. I often find myself...
View ArticleHow to write helpful reviews
Review writing is getting more and more common for the average person with sites like amazon and goodreads for books, imdb for films and lets not forget blogs and social networking but what kind of...
View ArticleConflict: How to Create it
Yes I know that conflict is not something most people want more of, especially at this time of year, thankfully I’m talking more about writing stories than I am about real life. Conflict keeps books...
View ArticleWhat do you want to know?
This is normally my how-to slot in my blogging calendar and seeing as it’s a new year I thought I’d ask what how-to’s you lovely readers might like. So far they’ve varied from t-shirt designing to all...
View ArticleKnowing which ideas to write: How-to
I always get far more ideas than I will ever have time to write. In the last year alone I’ve had the ideas for an epic fantasy series (the Winter series I’ve already begun), the plots for the second...
View ArticleFinding Good Books to Read: How-To
This was a topic requested in my comments a while back. I said I’d do it so here it is. Good books can come from all sorts of places so I thought I’d share some of the ways I find the next books for my...
View ArticleLearning the Craft of Writing
A lot of people start out on the journey of writing a book and never finish and I’ve talked about the things I often do to help myself finish the things I start, but today I want to talk about the...
View ArticleHow to Make a Hand-Bound Book: Part 1
I have been making hand-written and hand-bound version of some of my stories lately to both sell and giveaway as prizes. I thought I’d run through how I do it so others can follow suit. The first part...
View ArticleKnowing When to Break the Rules
When it comes to writing anything there are rules. Grammar rules, spelling rules, style rules, layout rules, format rules and all sorts of other rules to do with genres, characters etc. The first...
View ArticleHow to make the most of your writing time
Often in the early stages of a writing career, and sometimes even in later stages, there can be a lot of demands on your time. This often results in reduced writing time. When you’ve not got long to...
View ArticleDRM, Copyright and eBooks
There’s been a lot of talk lately to do with DRM on ebooks. This mostly comes about because self-publishing authors get the choice to DRM their kindle books on amazon or not as they see fit. However,...
View ArticleMy Writing Method
This blog was partially inspired by the blog of a friend. All writers seem to do things differently and it can take a while to find what’s best for each person sometimes so I thought I’d share how I...
View ArticleNaNoWriMo Prep
Yup, it’s almost that time of the year again. In just over two weeks I’m going to be trying to National Novel Writer’s Month (NaNoWriMo) challenge of 50k words of a new novel in one month. I’m actually...
View ArticleHow to Increase Your Chances of Getting Your Book Reviewed
I review rather a lot of books and I’ve had quite a number of requests from people over the years in differing places and ways. I’ve also sent quite a number to other bloggers and readers in various...
View ArticleStudying Other Artistic Works
Probably the biggest advice given to other artists is study the art form you want to replicate. Want to write books? Then read. Want to make movies? Watch movies. Simple, well sorta. Watching, reading,...
View ArticleHow to do a Character Study
This is one of my favourite past times and something I’ve done so much I sort of find myself doing it automatically a lot of the time. To start with, obviously, I pick a character. I try to choose one...
View ArticleGoals, Dreams and To-do Lists
All three of the above things are a big part of being successful in any creative or business field so I thought I’d talk about all three, what they are, how they fit together and how to make the most...
View ArticleHow to prepare for writing lots in one month (or NaNoWriMo)
Yup, it’s almost that time of year again when a large chunk of the world wide writerly community goes crazy in the attempt to cram as many story telling words into one month as possible in the aim of...
View ArticleFinding Inspiration
Life often has a way of making things feel dull, routine and just downright unfun. Even when doing the thing you love for a job sometimes it feels like a chore. The constant daily grins of meeting word...
View Article
