Are you a writer? Have you ever wondered if you’re doing social media ‘right?’ My talk at Artful Scribe’s Play on Words festival on October 26 could help you make sense of things. It’s not designed to force you into making lip-synching TikToks when you don’t want to. Instead it’ll help you figure out what you want to say, what platform you want to use to say it, and how to reach the widest possible audience.
This is my first time at Play on Words which takes place in New Milton, Hampshire. I love the informal sociable feel to the event. It’s for readers, writers and lovers of words, which is basically me in a nutshell. Tickets to my talk and others are available here. Alternatively, you can attend the whole day of talks and workshops for just over £25. Pay-what-you-can and pay-it-forward options are also available. If you are planning to come to mine, please do bring a notepad and pen, I’m having great fun figuring out exercises and learning quite a bit myself in the process.
If you’re based anywhere the New Forest I hope to see you there!
Yes, it’s the most murderous time of the year again! I have been hard at work on a new festive mystery. MURDER AT THE CHRISTMAS EMPORIUM will be released in hardback on 24th October, and somehow the artists at Zaffre managed to make it even more gold and shiny than THE TWELVE DAYS OF MURDER.
This is what it’s all about:
Christmas shopping can be murder.
It’s Christmas Eve at the Emporium, a bespoke gift shop hidden in the depths of London’s winding streets, where a select few shoppers are browsing its handcrafted delights.
But when they go to leave, they find the doors are locked and it isn’t long before they realise this is no innocent mix-up. The shoppers have been trapped here by someone who knows their darkest secrets, who will stop at nothing until they have all been unwrapped – and there is a gruesome gift waiting in Santa’s grotto . . .
For those that survive the night, it will be a Christmas to remember.
If you like your thrillers set in a creepy old shop full of unpleasant characters, dark secrets and tinsel, then this could be for you. Also hard relate if you’ve ever been Christmas shopping and felt murderous by the end…
It’s so brilliant to have a whole festival dedicated to writing right on my doorstep and to be a part of the second-ever Bournemouth Writing festival! This year it runs from 26th-28th April.
Genre breakfast
I’m kicking off on Saturday morning at 9am by hosting a breakfast meetup for all writers of young adult and teen fiction. I had such a brilliant time last year and met a whole host of wonderful authors (see all the happy smiling faces above.) It’s at Picnic Park Deli, which is a lovely spot, and free to attend. If you fancy dropping in to talk all things YA, even if it’s just to obsess over our favourite YA authors, you can RSVP here.
Jump Around workshop
I’m also thrilled to be running a writing workshop focused on my favourite storytelling devices. Jump Around is for anyone who loves switching POV or hopping into different timelines in their stories, which is an excellent way of messing with your reader’s heads… but sometimes hard to do without making your own head spin. So please join me for a time-bending, narrative switching hour of fun on Sunday afternoon at 4.30-5.30pm at Pavilion Dance.
I was lucky enough to attend the festival last year and it was so much fun. Workshops, talks and other events are run on a pay-as-you-go basis, so there’s no big ticket fees and you can pick and choose what you’d like to do. You can find a full programme here.
Hope to see you there… I also hope the weather’s nice for the beach writing sessions!
If you scroll back to the humble origins of this site, to when I was a freelance journalist writing a novel in my ‘spare time’ you can witness my early attempts to become a book blogger. At the time I was a freelance journalist and book editor receiving huge mail-sacks full of advanced copies of books to review for Good Housekeeping and other titles. I was reading masses of YA as I was writing The Girl Who… and like so many book lovers and journalists before me, I thought blogging would be a fun hobby to have alongside my day job.
It didn’t quite work out like that.
It turns out book blogging is flipping hard work. It takes devotion and dedication. You have to post regularly, promote your work, link up with other bloggers and support their work too, create content across different platforms including the massive time-suck that is TikTok/Reels/YouTube. You have to think about algorithms and SEO. You have to photograph lovely images of your book and re-size them across different formats. It’s hard work, especially when you’re juggling it with a day-job, looking after young, demanding children, trying to finish your own novel and promote it on social media. Added to that, reading was my refuge – the one part of the day that was about escape, with zero demands on me and blogging changed that. I found myself thinking of pithy review phrases as I read. I started wondering that I should only review certain types of book and if I should build a brand – and what that brand should be as I usually leave no genre unmolested. I fretted about accidentally repeating phrases in my reviews that I’d already used in my reviews for Good Housekeeping or the Express. I tied myself in knots about how much negativity I could include in reviews when, as an author, I knew how wounding it could be.
I came to realised that blogging is like writing a book – you don’t do it for the money or fame but the sheer love of books, words and stories. And I was already writing a book for that exact reason! So I stepped back from the reviewing and focused on the novel-writing and my book blogging days are over – for now at least.
Image courtesy of @the_books_she_reads on Instagram
But it means I have a massive admiration for book bloggers, BookTokkers and Bookstagrammers, many of whom have children, full time jobs, their own novels simmering away and/or a whole host of other chaotic life stuff going on but STILL make time to review. Including reading my book!
It took me a while to figure out that the TWELVE DAYS OF MURDER blog tour was twelve days long and dozens of brilliant bloggers took part. So this is my way of saying an absolute massive, epic, continent sized…
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!
And here they all are! Do you you have a favourite on this list? Or anyone else whose judgement and taste in books aligns perfectly with yours? Let me know in the comments!
I’m really looking forward to my evening chatting crime and sipping wine at Oxford Waterstones with fellow festive whodunnit authors SJI Holliday, author of The Party Season Alexandra Benedict author of The Christmas Jigsaw Murders and Janice Hallett, author of The Christmas Appeal. I’m a big fan of all three authors and can’t wait to hear their insights on all all things dark, stabby and festive. It’s also a lovely bookshop! If you’re in the Oxford area on 9th November do drop by. Tickets can be found here and cost £3-£5.
I’m taking part in this year’s Children In Read charity auction, offering signed copies of The Girl Who… and Dead Lucky to the highest bidder. Every year, the auction raises thousands of pounds for Children in Need. Already got my two YA books? Of course you have! You can also bid on signed books from bestsellers including Milly Johnson, Paige Toon, Frances Quinn, Lisa Jewell and more! Follow this link to find out more…
I’m going to be launching my book at The Riverside Bookshop in Tooley Street near London Bridge and will be on-site on the 2nd November (exactly a week after the book comes out) to sign pre-ordered copies. If you’d like to order from a fabulous indie bookshop and get a more personalised signed copy then drop them a line here. Tell them who you’d like me to dedicate it to – I’ll also write any short message you’d like to include. Within Reason. Keep it clean, people. Pre-orders really help authors make an impact, and ordering from an independent bookshop rather than the big river site helps keep local businesses going so please do give it a go.
My very first job in magazines was in a poky, grubby office just round the corner from London Bridge. It was very stressful – we had no budget, virtually no staff, punishing deadlines and I was very much out of my depth. When the pressure got too much I’d escape to Hay’s Galleria and the Riverside Bookshop. Browsing a bookshop or library has always helped me de-stress and the beautiful location made me feel all Londony and grown-up. Now I’m launching my book there!
When I first moved to Dorset, I volunteered at the Dorchester Literary Festival as a way of feeling part of the bookish world. I spent many happy hours ushering people to their seats, fetching tea in the Green Room and, later down the line, helping out with the festival’s social media. At the time I dreamed of appearing at the festival as an author in my own right and now, at last, my chance has come! I’ll be talking to students at Thomas Hardye School and Purbeck School about Dead Lucky, social media, and what it does to our brains on 17 October 2023. Can’t wait!
Check out the full programme for the Festival here, and the school programme here. It’s running between 14-21 October 2023.
You can find more details on my school visits here.
I’m utterly thrilled to announce that my Christmas whodunnit The Twelve Days of Murder is going to be published in the USA by Pegasus Books. I’ve never had a book come out on the other side of the pond before so I’m understandably very excited. They’ve gone a different direction with the cover but I really like it. The UK cover says festive, fun and entertaining, the US cover says it’s a dark, brooding read to curl up with on winter nights – and it’s ALL those things! If you’re Stateside and you love a twisty locked-room murder mystery in remote Scottish houses with a cast of eccentric characters then this is the one for you. It’s basically Knives Out but with tinsel.
