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Revisiting Past Work by Neil McGowan

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This past month has been quite introspective for me. I’ve been looking back through some of the short stories I’ve written over the past thirty-odd years with a view to seeing if there’s anything in there that still engages me. I will say, I don’t write anywhere near as many shorts as I used to – the books have kind of taken over, there, meaning the time to write something small and self-contained has shrunk – so the majority of them are earlier works. I’m also, for obvious reasons, not revisiting those stories that have been published. I think they can stand on their own merits. This started four or five weeks back, after a conversation with a work colleague who was asking me about writing (surprisingly, not the usual questions about ‘Where do you get your ideas’ and so on). We were discussing how it’s possible to see a writer’s style and voice develop over the years with each book they put out – we started looking at the development of the Harry Potter books, funnily enough, and
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Self-publishing journey - yep, still going!

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 Last month I told you about my MS woes when I discovered that I'd sent the wrong draft to my editor. Well, you'll be pleased to know that I sent the right draft to my copy editor/ proofreader in April. She's working on it at the moment. In the meantime, I've sent uncorrected digital proofs out to crime authors to get some quotes. The cover is almost ready - just waiting for an author quote to go on the front. All sounds positive, right? Well, yes and no. There's still a lot to do that I'm avoiding, like buying ISBN numbers and working out how I'm going to format the book when it's ready and I don't even want to talk about marketing! Breathe, Joy, breathe.  I think self-publishing has taught me just how much a publisher does and how little I know about it all. Gone are the days when an author could just 'write'. Even with a traditional publisher, there's still an expectation on an author to help with the publicity. It still all feels over
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Guardians of History by Debbie Bennett

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So I’ve been conspicuously absent from this blog – and life in general for a few months. If 2023 was the year of health and getting my teeth done, then 2024 has so far been the year of death and the major life-changes that death brings to those of us left behind.  In January I lost my dad after a long, and slow decline into dementia. He’d been existing (I don’t use the term living, because he really wasn’t) for 18 months in a lovely care home, but passed away quietly in his sleep one night – a week before my 60th birthday and the party I’d planned.  My mum was in hospital at the time – she’d been admitted after some blood tests – and we didn’t realise then that she’d never live on her own again. After a terminal cancer diagnosis, she was in and out of hospital, respite care, her own home with carers 3 times a day (and me living with her on and off) and then she declined rapidly over a period of days and was suddenly gone. Overnight. No real goodbyes. My adult daughter and I spent her l
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Exploring the Possibilities (Cecilia Peartree)

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One of several virtual writers' groups I am part of is called Campers' Canteen - we first 'met' via one of the NaNoWriMo events and have stuck together now for several years, though not on the main NaNo website, which has apparently become rather toxic - not that I've witnessed that for myself, but I've received several emails from them apologising for things I didn't know had even happened, and sharing their plans and promises to do better in the future. The point of Campers' Canteen is that we mostly communicate with each other during NaNoWriMo events and share our anxieties about writing and (mostly) our regular failures to keep up with our various goals. April brought one of these events and I am happy to say my writing went almost exactly as I had hoped. I finished drafting and editing the latest book in my mystery series (book 27), and it's now live on Amazon etc - see cover pic at the end of this post. But I'm also happy to add that I foun
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The Weird and Wonderful World of a Writer – Sarah Nicholson

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I went to see a play last month, written by a local Suffolk author, Suzanne Hawkes, with my friend, Virginia Betts, in the lead role. Pat and Ron – Writers in Crime was an exploration of the friendship between American crime writer Patricia Highsmith… “I write thrillers!” she interjects with an exasperated drawl. …and fellow author Ronald Blyth. He was Suffolk born and bred and they met when she stayed in the county. The play was brilliantly written and acted and I found out much about two authors who I confess I’ve not read. However, the most surprising thing I learned that evening had nothing to do with their literary works, or character creations. I discovered that Patricia Highsmith collected snails. Maybe not too much of an odd fact on its own, but her penchant for these slimy creatures went even further as she used to keep them in her handbag with a head of lettuce when she went out and was even known to stick them inside her bra! She did have more usual writerly hab
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As Time Goes By

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 Dooley Wilson, Ingrid Bergman, "Play it, Sam." 1942 I turn 87 on the 16th of this month. That means I was five years old when Ilsa Lund asked Sam to play As Time Goes By . No wonder I've been a lifelong romantic (who writes about time travel a lot.) I vaguely remember first seeing Casablanca at a theatre with my mother. She elbowed me from a Hershey-bar stupor to see one of her Hollywood bit-actor friends, Frank Puglia, as a Moroccan vendor selling Ingrid Bergman a scarf. I posted about Puglia here in 2020. (See " The Phantom of Dream Streets .") It was 1943. I was a precocious kid who could read the funnies and the headlines of newspapers delivered to our front steps every day. I hid under a marble-topped coffee table during air raid drills, laughing at the game of sirens, closed drapes and wardens waving hooded flashlights.  My mother, wth my Nonna Rosa, c. 1960 My Rome-born Nonna Rosa, still kept milk in an "ice-a-box." She didn't own an elec
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Location: London, UK
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When the Drugs Don't Work

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                                                         When the Drugs Don't Work                                                                                                                                                                            The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai                  I have always suffered from high levels of anxiety and sleeplessness, so when offered a change of medication I welcomed the chance to try something new. Now that I had completely retired from work, I felt that I could afford to take a chance and so began the new prescription. The side effects were clearly displayed on the accompanying leaflet, and they would pass, I thought.   Except that they didn’t. Within three days of starting the new medication my anxiety had quadrupled. Likewise, the sleeplessness; I had no appetite and all my bodily systems seemed to be rebelling against me.   Most concerning though were the chest pains that I began to suffer from. I went to
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