Blog Introduction

Photo by Angela Burn.

Hello. This blog will be talking about writing and also my favourite things of the moment which are likely to be books, food, film and TV related. But one of the best bits I’m sure will be my interviews with women who have a great story to tell and advice to share. I hope you like it.

First, a quick update on writing.

I’ve self-published The Stand-Up Mam after working on it for several years. During that time, I had interest from two or three agents but it ended up not being exactly what they thought they could sell. I probably wrote to 40 or more only to get polite rejections or no answer at all.

It was hard to pick myself up from this sometimes. I decided a year ago I needed to get the book out into the world or probably regret it. So here it is, out there.

Self-publishing has been very tricky and much more complicated than I had imagined. The various stages in range of complexity were –

Finding a cover designer – interesting and all about being brave with your choices. I could have gone down the illustration route, which I personally love for book covers. However, I think my novel has quite a bit of bite so the microphone and lips seems to suit the tone much better.

Typesetting – I wanted my book to look professional as I have worked in PR all my life and would be tortured to think there were typos spread throughout 80,000 words! I checked the text before getting it typeset, but when it came back I was mortified to find when it came back, I had missed so many mistakes. The typesetter, the wonderful and patient, Caroline Goldsmith was happy to allow me to make amendments.

I’m there. I thought. Oh no. How wrong.

There weren’t huge changes to be made but I spotted things like the names of actual organisations in a couple of jokes and changed them in case I was sued.

But here we are. My book is finally ready and ripe for reviews. If you are gong to read it I hope you enjoy it, relax with a coffee and think it must have all been a breeze.

Favourite things at the moment include Laura Pearson’s books, Dill & Bear breakfasts in Whitley Bay, Jana, a Scandi TV thriller BBC4, Slash, from Guns and Roses’ Orgy of the Damned album and Miley Cyrus’s Greatest Hits.

The next blog post will be an interview with Laura Pearson and here inspirational journey to becoming a best-selling author.