Readers are vital to writers, who are in the business of communication. So writers should be wise enough, when writing their books, to keep the potential readers in mind, and to tell good stories that arouse their curiosity to keep [...]
On 29th March, I was giving a talk about my book, Dear Magpies, at the Blandford Literary Festival's Day of Words. It took place in the Woodhouse Gardens Pavilion. My talk was entitled: From Dorset with Love, because the novel [...]
Spring 2020. We are living in strange times. Coronavirus, more deadly than any terrorist, has attacked our world and is undermining hope. People feel threatened, frightened, challenged. Our physical horizons are dwindling but our mental horizons are expanding - people are more aware [...]
So my book, my new novel, my fourth book, Dear Magpies, has been out for a month. It was published as a paperback by SilverWood Books on 18th November - and, it seems, people are reading it. Amazing! I've been running [...]
Two weeks tomorrow, on Thursday 21st November at 6.30pm for 7pm, I am having a Book Launch for my new book Dear Magpies, at Winstones Books in Cheap Street, Sherborne, DT9 3PX. I will be giving a talk about my [...]
Creating a book and getting it out into the world is a little like having a baby - though it usually takes far longer. It grows more erratically and more slowly and its birth involves many people of different skills. [...]
Magpies are magnificent. Distinctive by their black and white plumage, they are intelligent and inquisitive - and more superstitions surround magpies than any other wild bird. The most common one is that it is unlucky to see a lone magpie but two [...]
This time last week it snowed. Snow can be a big problem for elderly isolated people and stranded motorists but I defy anyone, when they open the curtains on the first morning after snow has fallen, not to gasp with [...]
I have recently returned from a short holiday in 'Paradise' - or to be more accurate a tiny island in an isolated atoll in a wide ocean - or to be more precise: Fonimagoodhoo Island in Baa Atoll in the [...]
January 2018 is memorable (or rather unmemorable) for having the longest number of sunless days and hours of any January since records began, so I'm told. It was a dark, dismal, dank month - and - to add adverbs (now [...]