Final Chapter of Betwixt – Now available!

Here it is folks – the final installment of BETWIXT.

I feel like I’ve come full circle with my writing in this atmospheric short story.  I actually began my writing career by writing short stories for Woman’s Way magazine, and it was seeing my words in print that spurred me on to write full-length novels.

I once heard someone say that writing short stories is like using a different muscle and it certainly does have a very different feel to writing a novel.  The scope that you can luxuriate in with a novel isn’t available in a short story.  Every scene, every word must be laced with a depth of intent that reveals so much more than your limited word-count can say.  I have to say, I really do enjoy it.  Not everything has to be explained so much in a short story.  It’s like a lightening strike – it just happens and all your left with is the afterglow, which should be bright and stunning.

I will be making this story available for download shortly, but until then, you can read it in full on Wattpad here.

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Betwixt – Chapter 3

Here is another excerpt from my new short story, available to read for free on Wattpad.  Enjoy!

“Hello? Can you hear me?” Catherine shrieked, as she rushed to her knees and put her arms around the man. He was wearing a very large, thick woollen over coat. No wonder she didn’t see him, she thought.

“Please, are you alright?” It was a stupid question, considering she had just hit him with her car, but the mind is wired towards optimism, even in the direst of circumstances. As though possessed by a person far more clear thinking and efficient than herself, she ran back to the car and flicked on her hazard lights. She grabbed a blanket from the back seat; she must have seen someone doing it on TV. She ran back and spread the blanket around him, already feeling better for being useful.

To her infinite relief, she could feel his body moving as he started to come round.

Read the full chapter here.

Amazon Best Seller!

So I woke up this morning to find that I’m currently ranked at number 16 on Amazon’s Best Seller’s List for Women’s Historical Fiction!  I can’t honestly express how exciting that is – after months of scribbling away by myself, then proof reading, editing, re-drafting and finally designing a cover and booking my release date and promotional tour… it’s just amazing.  In fact, I’m on top of the world!

 

 

Last night I took a screen shot of my ranking on Amazon, thinking it just couldn’t get any better, but then…

This morning I saw this!!  I’m just behind Barbara Erskine!  Kate Morton is number 1 and I’m 16 – it’s a dream 🙂  So I want to say a heart-felt thank you to my readers and to all of my supporters (you know who you are).  Launching a book is challenging at the best of times, but when you have a team of enthusiastic people behind you, who believe in you and your writing, it makes it all worth while.  So now it’s time to start thinking about book number three!

Get your copy of The Mysterious Bakery On Rue De Paris on Amazon now, or share the link with your bookworm buddies.

 

Write about what you love

I’ve often heard the adage, “Write about what you know”, but I’m not sure if I agree.  My own novel, The Cross Of Santiago is based around the ideas of reincarnation and past life regression.  I have personal experience of neither, but a huge interest in the area and a quirky enough imagination to write an interesting story about it.  Like all writers, I do draw from my personal experience when it comes to characters, locations, feelings and emotions in order to ‘ground’ the story in reality, but when it comes to the plot, I like to let my imagination run free.  I can’t imagine a novel written by someone who is completely limited by their own personal experience.  The creative arts are the one area where we can take poetic license to dream, to create, and live out fictional fantasies that will hopefully engage the reader and take them on an interesting journey.

At the moment I’m reading Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (who, according to the jacket, is living in Ireland).  This is a masterpiece in creating a fictional world where anything can happen.  I’m about a quarter of the way through, and it’s becoming clear that one of the characters thinks she could be the reincarnation of a male composer.  I think a well written story can stray from the conventional without losing the reader, but that requires a serious amount of research.  Or RESEARCH, RESEARCH, RESEARCH!! as I kept saying to myself when writing my novel.  Setting my novel partly in the 16th century required a tireless amount of research into medieval life – everything from what they ate to what they wore, the political environment, the contrast between the different classes, their religion and cultural beliefs.  There is also a large chunk of the book set on the sea, both in the present and in the past and I had to do a lot of research into yacht sailing and the kind of ships used by the Spanish Armada when they invaded England. 

Obviously, I wrote about something I was interested in, so the research was a pleasure rather than a chore.  I am a huge historical fiction fan and reader, so I knew I had to get my facts straight if I wanted to be taken seriously as a historical fiction author.  Now I find that a lot of my reviews include comments from readers who say they felt as though they were really stepping back in time, and that is the greatest compliment I could receive.

So my opinion is, you can write about whatever you want to write about – just do your research!