A Day in the Life of Lorna Windham

Posted on May 31, 2018 by Margaret Graham

I live in Northumberland. With the Cheviots Hills, Rivers Tweed, Coquet and Wansbeck and endless beaches, I have plenty of choice about where to walk and think about writing. When I won the North Tyneside Short Story Competition with ‘Spirit of the Age’ and my children’s novel ‘Toby’s Secret’ was long listed in the Times Chicken House competition in 2008, I was hooked.

Spurred on by this success, I’m now the author of three local history books ‘Crime and Punishment’, ‘Deaths Disasters & Dastardly Deeds’ and ‘Murder, Mystery & Mayhem’ and in November I was invited to BBC Radio Newcastle to chat with Jonathan Miles about my latest effort.

I often promote my writing by doing power point presentations for local history societies. One talk I did was about ‘Deaths, Disasters and Dastardly Deeds’. It was a catastrophe.

Waking at 3am with a razor blade-throat, I used an old operasingers’ trick and gargled with gin. Numbness crept over my vocal chords. I slept. Hours later I was sure someone had performed surgery with a cheese grater. I grabbed a whisky bottle and gargled. My throat was completely anaesthetised. Success.

By that evening I had a dull headache and my eyes had more bags than Louis Vuitton. It was flu, but I had promised to do the talk.

“Something’s up with the heating again,” said the perspiring IT gent as I rehearsed the presentation.

“Really?” I croaked.

The audience trooped in at 5.00 pm. Thirty minutes later I pointed the IT gent’s laser repeatedly at the screen. Nothing happened. The audience groaned. “It’ll be the USB port, we’ve had difficulties with it before,” he said as he fiddled with leads.

Should I kill him? I took a deep breath; at least he wasn’t piloting a plane. We began again. Everything worked, the audience clapped in anticipation. By 6.15 pm the talk was going really well. Emboldened by my success I started to move forwards, but couldn’t because my heel was stuck in a hole in the rostra. I was now attached to the stage. “Well,” I said wrenching myself free, “my talk is about disasters.”

Ten minutes later I was on the final furlong. My throat was raw, my head was about to explode and I was perspiring like a woman in labour. However, I was sure I’d delivered a talk which had mesmerised the audience by its sheer brilliance.

I glanced at the front row. One man’s eyelids were going down like blinds, his partner’s were closed and the woman beside him had her head on her chest. I finished quickly and thanked ‘EVERYONE’ for listening. They limped out adjusting whistling hearing aids, leaning on sticks and sucking teeth. Ah well, that’s what you get when you give a talk to octogenarians in an overheated auditorium.

A Day in The Life of Sandy Hogarth

Posted on May 29, 2018 by Margaret Graham

Sandy Hogarth is the acclaimed Indie author of The Glass Girl which Frost will be reviewing shortly.

Breakfast and a beautiful day. Perfect for the Nidderdale Show – an arch temptress. I have a lot to do today. The Glass Girl must go off tonight. I will feel a little lost when Ruth, my protagonist, goes. She has a troubled life but she’s tough.

‘Say thank you to your sister for me were his words. So Ruth fled, first to Australia, then to the outback.

Sisters. I am fascinated by families; by their honesty, their brutality, their love. And fascinated also by only-ones, so I have made Ruth’s lover an only-one: gorgeous Daniel. Everything she is not.

Music and voices from the loudspeaker drift up the hill, scrambled. Enticing

I give in, cease checking my MS and hurry down the hill with Ruth still in my head. And her sister Alexis.

Cars are queuing. I Pay my £10 and walk through the ancient turnstile.

In the first judging arena I come to is a magnificent bull with curls behind his horns. I wonder if it will win.

I remind myself that I must not stay long.

I pass a pig that is bored or asleep. They say pigs are the most intelligent of animals.

My head is still with Ruth. I especially loved writing the early part: Ruth’s time in the Australian desert. I love the deserts there with their dunes of red dirt scattered with spinifex, and occasional wild camels.

I try not to laugh out loud when I see a cow receiving a final back-combing to the last 8 or 9 inches of its tail.

Some of the sheep waiting in pens are shivering. It’s a hot day so it must be fear.

One puts up its head to me to have her curls admired.

In the next tent, I find the winner of my ‘best hairdo competition’.

Odd, this fixation on hairdos. From one who often forgets to brush her own.

I’m hungry so I get fish and chips from a van. We are almost as far from the sea as it is possible to be but they taste great.

The sisters take over my head again. And the glass girl. An old man in the desert gives it to Ruth.

“an exquisite glass girl, a dancer, with straight back and proud posture. Her body is draped in a mid-calf-length pink dress, the folds caress her long legs and her feet are encased in delicate oyster pink ballet shoes, the ribbons winding round her slender ankles. Her dark hair is shoulder length, her face tranquil and her hazel eyes as fathomless as the ocean. A brittle beauty. He says that it carries the desert within itself.’

The Glass Girl calls. I walk/run back up the hill.

The Glass Girl is available here.

A Day In The Life of Shelagh Mazey

Posted on May 25, 2018 by Margaret Graham

For years I’ve been a frustrated story-teller, never having the time or peace to be able to concentrate and hurtling through life from one crisis to another, but now every day is like a blank page, here in my thatched cottage in Somerset.

I met Margaret Graham years ago, at a writing circle in Yeovil. We have been friends ever since and good grief, the adventures we’ve had, as awe snatched moments from the home-front. I remember with fondness a trip across Ireland on a coach, enlivened by two America Baptist Ministers. We’ve seldom laughed so much, alongside absorbing the history of the place for a book Margaret was writing. It was here I kissed the Blarney stone. Perhaps that’s where the story telling began.

As time went on the sleepless nights with newborns; the back-breaking, lifting and chasing of toddlers; the homework of school years; the endless chauffeuring of teenagers, and the frantic the frantic worry of them prematurely experiencing the joys and heartache of the opposite sex, drunkenness, drugs and all-night raves became a memory.

No more renovating the derelict cottage sold long ago. No more rising at 6:30am to rush off to work as a practice secretary. At last my ship, with its rather bedraggled rigging, has sailed into a harbour of refuge. I am retired. Whoopee!

Now I listen as my husband leaves for work and lie in bed for a few more minutes, where in a state of alpha I’m able to dream. Then I soak in the bath, empty my mind and plan the trials and tribulations, love stories, intrigues, and let’s not forget the murders and rapes of my 19th century stories.

After breakfast I type out my bath-time plots. I usually write or research on-line, with a short lunch-break, until about 3.30pm and then I need to take a breather. I might do some gardening; mow the lawn, weeding or dead-heading just to breathe some fresh air.

Yes, my life has indeed reached peaceful harbour; my daughter-in-law takes the ironing each week and I take the grandchildren. I’m lucky, they’re lovely.

Of course, aside from the writing, I do have to participate in marketing the books and I’ve made many friends, particularly on Portland, through this. Every now and then I take a friend with me and drive down to the coast to deliver to my outlets there. We usually enjoy lunch at the Lobster Pot on Portland Bill.

The tales my father told, as a born and bred Portlander have inspired my writing, and my first two books are based around that area. Somehow it makes me feel closer to my parents.

I’ve now published two books with Matador. The first is Brandy Row (A love triangle and family saga set on Portland, involving smuggling and the preventive service).

The sequel is Dawn to Deadly Nightshade (continuing with the family, but adding witchcraft in Somerset to the mix).

My third novel is located partly in Dorset, Somerset, Tasmania and Australia. It tells the tale of the ex convicts who were transported to the antipodes and involves the excitement of the Victorian goldfields. I’ve finished the first draft and I’m busy doing the revisions. I hope to bring out Legacy of Van Diemen’s Land next spring.

I totally love my life now. I am a writer. It is my dream come true.

A Day In The Life of Author Frances Colville

Posted on May 22, 2018 by Margaret Graham

I’ve always been an organised sort of person; writing lists, making plans and generally achieving whatever I set out to achieve. Then I took early retirement and expected to devote hours to writing. But… But… There are, suddenly, all kinds of people making demands on your time. And there are so many things of interest calling to you.

All of this means I no longer have a typical day. But there are some typical elements.
I always make time to read. Have you ever worked out how very few books you can actually get through in a lifetime? A scary thought when there is so much wonderful stuff on my list and in my teetering pile. Then, if it is at all possible, I make time to walk down to the sea.

It takes me twelve minutes to reach my local beach of Seatown. I like it best when it is wild and stormy, when the waves crash in along the shore line and the cormorants have to battle to stay airborne. But whatever the weather, there is inevitably something different to see, something to provide writing inspiration.

And that is the other constant. I try each day to make time for whatever writing project is uppermost in my life This year there have been several main threads. I’ve organised a Story Slam in my local town of Bridport,

I’ve taken part in various performances and competitions, and I’ve been working on my Sixty List ( a project to do sixty new things in my sixtieth year and to write about them). But the biggest project and for me, the most satisfying, has been working on a local First World War story. I’ve researched it thoroughly, curated two exhibitions, talked about it on radio and TV, written about it for magazines and papers.

It’s the intriguing story of a young woman who contributed fresh eggs to the National Egg Collection for wounded soldiers and who decorated those eggs with paintings, poems and her name and address. In return she received thank-you letters from many soldiers. Now, as well as dealing with the factual aspects of the story, I’m trying to develop it as fiction.

So far, a couple of short stories have been successful and I’m working on a novel. But there’s a long way to go yet. And never enough hours in the day!

NEW BLOOD BOOSTS BRITAIN’S GOTHIC FANG CLUB

Posted on May 21, 2018 by Frostie

From Bram Stoker’s Dracula to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Britons have been devouring gothic literature for over 200 years. But after more than two centuries is our appetite for the gothic finally starting to wane? To hell it is, writes novelist Katja Brown – it’s more alive than ever.

I’m often asked why the gothic still appeals. The genre is a creation that compels everyone from a lover of romantic fiction to a lover of blood and guts. Whilst it doesn’t hinge on these elements they add to it and create something that is constantly reinventing itself. The gothic is essentially the presentation of a ‘terrible beauty’, a collection of literary conventions that come together beautifully to scare, entrance and hook the reader. In what other genre could a character such as Dracula exist? He is a character you love to hate, the greatest anti-hero that has been thought up and is so loved by readers and authors alike that he has been revived ever since in one incarnation or another.

The gothic appeals because inside every reader there is still a spark, a need, a deep desire to be scared by something beautiful, something obscure and otherworldly. I think this genre inhabits the part of your imagination that wants to see the world differently, that imagines alternate possibilities to the norm and much like a vampire it doesn’t stay down for long. Once you pick up a gothic book it’s like a budding romance: you feel as if you have to know how it ends and the truth is… no one really knows why. It happens with other genres, sure, but the gothic has something special about it. You’ve heard that girls are attracted to the bad boys? Well it’s the same idea.

Throughout history the gothic has been the mother of great tomes and literary works of genius, manipulated and reshaped to fit the changing times. From Bram Stoker’s famous fanged fiend Dracula, to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, we’ve watched as this genre has survived the stress of time and made it here to 2018. Thanks to a wealth of fabulous new gothic books, and also to the Twilight series, I’ve no doubt that it will keep kicking long after.

It has endured because we as humans want a thrill, we actively seek out the new and terrifying because we want to feel our hearts quicken, our palms get sweaty and the hairs on the back of our neck stand on end. It is the gothic that provides those sensations, every page walking the razors edge between dream and reality.

What’s so loveable is that behind the things that go bump in the night, behind the sublime descriptions, the complicated characters and the narrations I guarantee there will always be something to learn – from a moral lesson to something more practical (‘don’t go down the scary-looking corridor by yourself late at night). The gothic has and will probably always be used to impart some sort of wisdom from one person to the next and it doesn’t matter what piece of gothic literature you pick up, it’ll be there between the lines. All you have to do is look.

The gothic helps define us as people, understand our own identity by understanding what we are not. We are not immortal, so, unlike Dracula, we learn to live like there’s no tomorrow. We shape ourselves based on what knowledge we assimilate, but the gothic gives us imagination and way to step out of our lives for a few hundred pages, a chapter each night, a page between coffee and cake. That is why it appeals, why it still appeals, why it always will.

Katja Brown is an acclaimed gothic novelist. Her seat-of-the-pants debut novel, The First Bride (Austin Macauley) is out now in paperback and eBook from Amazon UK.

How To Make Your Blog Posts Go Viral Part Two

Posted on February 6, 2018 by Catherine Balavage

In the first post on how to make your blog, and your blog posts, go viral we covered content, social media sharing, titles, tags and keywords. Next up we have more advice for helping your hard work pay off.

Post at The Right Time

Doing a post on Christmas Day probably won’t get a lot of hits. Posting on a Friday evening is not ideal either. Have a think when people will be more likely to be online. You can research when people are on Twitter and Facebook. Use your Google analytics to find out when the ideal time is to reach your readers.

Share your post in your Newsletter

A newsletter is a brilliant way of making sure your great posts get another chance. Even your most loyal readers may miss a post or two. Build up the people on your newsletter list by doing competitions and having one of the entry requirements signing up to your newsletter.

Press Release

Writing a press release, and distributing it to the media, is a great way to get traffic and build on your reputation. The way to do this is to have an angle and then write about 500 words on that, along with a good pictures and then sending it out to the media. Channel Mum do this well by doing surveys and then releasing the results to the media, along with a statement. A lot of companies and publications do this. You could also write about a relevant subject, or have a personal story. It is all about the angle. Start building a media list. You can do this by signing up for Gorkana’s Consumer Alert or the Diary Directory. You can also find out who the editor of each publication is by looking on Twitter, the actual publication or websites. Getting a copy of the Writers and Artists Yearbook is also a good idea. It will be full of contacts.

Create Evergreen Content

One of the best ways to turn your blog into a success is to write evergreen posts. What is an evergreen post? It is a post that keeps getting hits. Even years later. These kind of posts tend to be informative or educational. Frost has a number of posts that are still getting hits up to seven years later. Imagine if you wrote an article and it still got thousands of hits years later. That is a great source of traffic and the only effort you had to put in was writing the initial post. Win win.

Get creative with Design

Creating pictures and graphics to go with your post is a great way to market them and improve engagement. Graphically engaging people can be done in many ways. You will get more pins on Pinterest and more clicks on other social media too. Frost writer Jane Cable uses Canva to great effect. Canva is a free design tool which is easy to use. You can also create banner ads, headers, marketing material, ebooks and documents with it. Other design tools to use include Piktochart, Venngage, Infogr.am and Visual.ly

Optimise Your Images

Optimising your images is one of the easiest ways to get more traffic and also one of the most effective. Give your images a title using relevant keywords before you upload them, then add in a few more for good measure. Fill out the Title and Alt Text. This will optimise your images and you will get a lot of traffic through sources like Google Images.

Write Long Form Content

Apparently long form content gets more shares than short form content according to Blog.visme.co in their article 10 Ways to make your content go viral. BuzzSumo did a study in which they found out that posts between 3,000 to 10,000 words were shared the most, while posts that were 1,000 words or less were shared the least. I am quite surprised at this but it is worth thinking about. It is a good idea to make most of your posts over 500 words.

I will be telling you all you need to know about blogging in a series of articles. You can also check out my book, The Ultimate Guide To Becoming a Successful Blogger which is available in ebook and print.

How Much of Yourself Should You Share Online?

Posted on January 26, 2018 by Catherine Balavage

We live in the era of information overload. People share everything from what they eat, to pictures of their children. But how much should we share online? As a writer I have to share my experiences. Well, to be a good writer anyway. But when you write an article and it goes out into the world it is not always possible to bring it back. Nor is is possible to control who reads it, or what that person does with that information. And there is the problem. I feel we are too trusting when we are throwing information out on to the internet. I believe most people are good, but not all are.

I am not talking about criminals, although we should definitely be watching out for those. Those type of bad people are why I am careful about what I post about my children online. No, I am talking about something marginally more benign: people you know. I remember I wrote an article many years ago on the media and how they report fertility, only for some people to somehow find it and use the article in a mean and bitchy way for years. This made me very sad and is one of the reasons I stopped writing as much. Then I realised the bullies were winning, so I wrote more, but was still cautious. Hard to know whether that is a good or bad thing.

In real life I am a very open person. I will talk to most people about anything. Well, except sex or money. There has to be some limits. But the truth is: there are horrible people out there that will take your words and use them against you. There are also employers who might not like what they see on social media and decide to not hire you.

So what do I do as a writer? Should I continue to share my life, or should I stop and find other things to write about? I have not decided what is best yet. I will continue to share my personal experience, but I will be wary and think about the consequences. Mostly I will write about things I think will help other people or make them laugh. I believe that human beings have a desperate need to connect with each other, to hear each other’s stories, to know they are not alone. That is what is most important to me. Sharing and connecting with my fellow human beings.

Please share your thoughts below.

A Day in the Life of Kaira Rouda

Posted on January 15, 2018 by Catherine Balavage

My life has changed a lot over the past six years. Not only because I finally became a full-time author, but also because my nest has been emptying year by year. Our four kids are five years apart, so that’s made my life filled with a lot of goodbyes lately. Without daily kid duties, life is certainly a lot less complicated. And, apparently, a bit darker. I’m not sure if Paul Strom, the protagonist in BEST DAY EVER, popped into my mind because of my empty nest, but maybe it gave him room to appear. I’ll blame him on the kids’ departures into the real world.

So now, a day in my life is quiet. I’m blessed to live at the beach, in Southern California, and most every day is sunny and warm. I try to hike or go for a walk everyday and soak up the sunshine. I have two dogs and they are both my walking and writing buddies. In fact, Tucker likes to sit ON my desk as I’m writing. (photo of walking desk and tucker)

I don’t usually start writing until the afternoon. I’m a night owl, so mornings are for exercising, emailing and drinking A LOT of coffee. My husband also has a second act of a career, deciding after the most recent US presidential election that it was time to get involved and be the change you want to see. I’m proud to say he’s running for congress as a first-time political candidate. That makes me a first-time political candidate’s spouse. I’ve been having fun meeting so many new people, and helping him as he follows his dreams.

All in all, it’s a blessed life. And, even though the kids are all busy young adults living their own dreams, they all live in Southern California, too. So I get to see them often. (family photo). And, they’re all doing super interesting careers. My oldest is in commercial real estate, but also is an amazing photographer. My daughter is a screenwriter in Hollywood, my middle son invented an app while in college that let’s you round up spare change to a charity of your choice and my youngest is a singer/songwriter pursuing his dreams in LA with his band, Firstwave.

So, it’s a busy, creative fun life. I hope yours is, too. And I hope you’ll give Best Day Ever, my first UK published book, a read!

Frost Magazine

Books and Lifestyle

Tag Archives: writing