News / Journal

January 2011

Hello Everyone and happy 2011!
I realise this hasn’t been updated in a while. 2010 ended up offering our household rather more than the usual dose of ‘Life, The Universe and Everything’ and the end result is I’m behind on the writing front… a situation I mean to rectify this year! I have taken up my pen and you’ll be happy to know that book four – as yet untitled – is on track again and as it’s set during the Christmas period I’m hoping for publication by next Christmas. This means I have to get my skates on because although that feels like a long way away right now, in publishing terms it isn’t – and the festive season comes upon us sooner every year as we all know!

I’ve always loved Christmas, but I know for a lot of folks it can also be a very emotionally-charged time. We have such high expectations, don’t we? In the West, we’re trained from very young to think of Christmas as a time of magic and mystery. Indeed, it is that. Traditionally – even centuries way before Christ – the winter solstice was considered a doorway to the spiritual year. I can’t help but feel that a lot of the ‘flatness’ many people experience particularly around this time is because we’ve severed that connection. However we choose to make that connection – be it through Christianity or through paganism or indeed whatever route seems best to the individual, maybe the key thing is that the connection to the ‘time of returning of the light’ is made somehow. I guess it’s a statement – an acknowledgement – of the natural cycle of our lives; things get dark - then things get better. Maybe that’s why however much I put my characters through the mill I never leave them in a bad place at the end.

I’m often asked if writing books gets easier the more you do it. The answer to that is both Yes and No. Yes, because you learn your craft a little better with every story you produce. And No (at least, speaking for myself) because every time you strive to push the envelope a little more, take on subjects that are not so comfortable or easy to write about. Hopefully that makes for a more interesting read, though. My current book is about Loving the Enemy. It’s a challenge, as all the others were in fact, but that’s what makes it interesting to write. I’m off for one of my mini ‘Writer’s retreats’ next weekend and I’m looking forward to getting well stuck into it!    
 

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