Creative writing update.

Cover update! I commissioned a new one for A Friendship of Thistles and have updated the description on Amazon to help people find it. Seems to be working as immediately had six sales and a new review. I shared news on Facebook about the new 4-star book review.

October has been a great month, writing-wise. First, I won second place in the Just Imagine Short Story Competition with A Traveller’s Daughter. You can read it for free if you sign up to my mailing list here. I was impressed by the entries in the children’s and young adult category, enjoyed reading out an extract of my story, and chatting to the winner, Angela, afterwards for the refreshments portion of the evening.

Second, I won first place in a beta-reading contest from @everything.writing on Instagram for my forthcoming book Clashmaeclavers and Fisherlassies.

Here is the blurb for my new book

Can you tell lies from truths? We’ll see.

Scotland, 1815. After her mother’s arrest and father’s abandonment Mairead, a Traveller’s daughter, only has one choice: to marry. She can wed the Gypsy lad, Ned, who’s been courting her, or Lachlan a Scottish fisherman she meets by the campfire.

Impatient to grow roots Mairead agrees to be the fisherman’s bride. She arrives at the village as a Gypsy, a storyteller, and as her in-laws soon make clear an outsider.

Two years later a pair of hands drowns her. Who did it? And why?

Wife, daughter, sister, witch, whore … as the gossip of the village begins to steer her life towards ostracization there are plenty of potential suspects.

 Writing grant

I was awarded a writing grant from Curtis Brown, for a free place on one of their creative writing courses.

Lastly, I had the pleasure of chatting to Pranika Sharma and Aakriti Patni the founders of Saga Fiction about future works and the possibility of republishing my book A Friendship of Thistles with them.

 Beta-reading

So, full of motivation I recommence the edits on my forthcoming work while awaiting @everything.writing’s comments. I am also working on the structure of the book after that, which will be based in a miner’s community in Scotland.

And, if the publisher works out I should probably move this website to a proper one, as blogger keeps introducing different fonts in the same post and getting on my nerves. But, you know us writers, too busy writing to do any social media thingies … or at least that’s my preference.