Thursday 30 December 2021

Delilah has a job and a personality now

My muse smacked me over the head with a name 11 days back, which is very very rare, so I wrote the name down and saved it to my desktop.  My muse has just woken up again and given me that character's job, personality, and pretty major spot in the novel.  She's not the MC but she appears in a pretty significant way in the majority of chapters so I've just edited my chapter plans slightly so that I can include her name so that I don't forget before I start writing on Saturday.


A huge creative weight has been lifted and I can go into the writing challenge full steam ahead as soon as I wake up and come downstairs for the first day of JanNo22.


Thursday 23 December 2021

I've decided to...

...start off with the break from the news from today until I've finished JanNo.


Thank you so much for all of your support since I've been doing it and I'll restart in January... at a guess it'll be at least the 10th before I start again, but it might be a couple of days before then if I finish JanNo early and bump back to reality sooner, like I did with NaNo.  I'm aiming to write at least 5k words a day again, which will take me to the 10th, but I'm just gonna keep writing and writing until bed time each day, which'll hopefully be more like 7k or even 8k a day which'll take me to about the 8th so that I can refocus on coming out of the head of my characters and back into my own.  I'm gonna take each day as it comes though and I'll be happy as long as I write at least 5k a day.



Sunday 19 December 2021

Need your help please?!

Delilah Jaywurth is gonna be a character in my JanNo novel but I know literally nothing else about her.

Could you help me out with an age range she would be and her relationship to the MC pretty please?  It only needs to be "early 20's and she's the MC's accomplice" or "late 70's and she's the MC's mentor" or something like that pretty please?

Thank you!

Monday 6 December 2021

Just found out about a competition

I've just uploaded the information about the competition for my members.  The closing date is Christmas Eve and for UK authors who are unpublished and unagented.  I have a very good experience with the agency who are running the competition and highly recommend you enter if you meet all the requirements!


Thursday 2 December 2021

Review of "A Spectacular Story from the Future" by Katie Lally


⭐ out of 5

If you've read any of my other recent reviews, you'll already know that I start 'em all off by saying that every book starts off with the full 5 stars and I'm always hopeful that they will still be firmly in place by the time I close the book.

The Amazon page says that the publishers have said that it's aimed at 2-12 year olds which is a huuuuge variety of abilities but because it's only 32 pages long, it sounds like it's a picture book, so I'm gonna read it in that headspace.

Oh dear, the second word of the entire book is waaaay too advanced for such a young audience.  I reckon the word choice is why there is such a huge age range, but a 12 year old wouldn't read a picture book and a 2 year old would already be confused after only two words, so the first star is already incredibly wobbly unfortunately.

The eighth word is also waaay too advanced for such a young audience, so the first star has dropped off after less than a sentence.

The third word on the second page is equally advanced but I've already knocked a star of for that reason, so can't knock the second star off yet.

The story has been decidedly tepid and the white words are incredibly hard to read on the blue illustration.  There's no way a young child would put up with that so the second star is also incredibly wobbly unfortunately.

On a positive note, the illustrations are good and might appeal to slightly older readers of maybe 8 or 9 years old so maybe that's another reason the author has chosen such a huge age range?

Now Granny May is talking to the main character as if she's older than she appears and I'm fed up of giving the author the benefit of the doubt for all these things, so we're now down to three stars.

That's better!  The author has used white highlights behind black text on a bluey-white cloud, so that's considerably easier to read than that first time she made that mistake.

Oh boy, Mother Nature is topless on this page, so the third star is instantly coming off because that really isn't child friendly at all.  I've only got one more star left to remove and over half the book to read... this isn't looking at all good unfortunately.

Now the text is barely readable again, so after half of the book, the fourth star is being removed and I'm officially giving up on this book.  The author should stick to illustrating IMNSHO.