Some rash decisions can change your life forever…
December 1, 2010: Completed first draft of Soulmates Saga #1June 30, 2012: Published Soulmates Saga #1 via SmashwordsAugust 2012: My sister-in-law (my eldest brother's wife, mother of two girls) died from pancreatic cancer. She was the same age as I am now. She'd been diagnosed just over a year prior to her death. Her daughters were 8- and 3-years-old when she passed away.
I wasn't ready to write about this until now…
A few months after I finished writing the first draft of my debut self-published novel — following a 10-year “writer’s block — my sister-in-law was diagnosed with cancer. The same type of cancer that her father died of a few years previously. She was given 12 months to live, and that prediction turned out to be quite accurate. …
I’ve noticed that people within the traditional publishing industry — authors, agents, editors — tend to advise authors to refrain from reading negative reviews of their books. I’ve read a lot of articles/interviews with professionals in trad pub that have said this so I am not making it up — and I get it. These authors have book deals. Their books are in Waterstones and Barnes & Noble. They’ve made it. The negative reviews will only taint the good times they’ve worked so hard for. A lot of people in indie publishing may say the same to self-published authors. …
When you meet someone new, or someone you haven’t seen for a while, do you tell them that you’re a writer or an indie author? Do you tell them if they ask you what you do or does it come out in passing? Do you like telling people? Do you worry that they’re going to judge you in a certain way for self-publishing? Or worse — that they’ll read your book and see you in a different light because of the things you made your characters do? LOL.
I don’t tell anyone. Writing is a part of my life that I don’t want touched by my personal life. I also would rather not see that shift in some people’s expressions when they go from feeling excited that I’m a writer to sceptical when they learn that I’m self-published. …
The story behind my epic fantasy trilogy
In July 2020, I released the final book in my first ever epic fantasy series, the Heir to the Throne Trilogy. It was also the first time that I published an entire series in the same year (if you’ve read my #Storytime posts, you know that my life keeps getting in the way and I don’t get to complete my series in a “timely manner”. Sigh. In 2020, Covid 19 tried to interfere).
Nothing went to plan in 2020 — for anyone — but at least this series is complete.
To this day, I still can’t believe that I may not have written this trilogy if it wasn’t for a stock image. Yes, a stock image got me writing high fantasy fiction for the first time in my adult life. …
I have a life threatening condition and I had no idea until I was in my 30s…
A single sneeze could have been the thing that killed me. For someone that sneezes a lot (hay fever in the summers, cold and flu in the winters), it was a frightening prospect. My gravestone could have read “Sneezed a lot. The Xth sneeze killed her” if I was destined to go that way. I still might, actually, as this condition can come back…
And I wouldn’t have found out about it if I didn’t have chronic back pain.
Sitting Pains
Imagine writing when it kills you to sit down. When your lower back aches and throbs, feels sore. Burns. When it feels like your bones are falling apart, hanging loose inside your skin. …
As readers, we become highly invested in our favourite fictional characters. When these heroes succeed in their endeavours, we rejoice. If they fall apart at the seams, our hearts break with them. And if they make what we think is the wrong choice, we can feel deflated, disappointed.
Sometimes, when an author takes their character(s) in the direction that we don’t want them to or if it’s a little bit controversial, it can affect our enjoyment of the book — to varying degrees. We might rant about it in our reviews, shake our heads whenever we remember it, or even ask ourselves if we want to read another novel by this author ever again. …
Writer’s block. Some people swear by it. Others scoff at it. I thought I had it for 10 years…
These days, most creatives don’t believe that writer’s block is a thing. There are several articles online explaining why writers might come to feel as though they can’t lay down a single word for their WIP. A lot of it makes sense: Poor or little plotting, overdoing the outlines, lack of belief in the story, uncertainty over the characters’ destinations, and so on.
Basically, the issues with your manuscript prevent you from continuing it.
The solution is to go over everything you’ve written, identify the problem, and fix it. I agree that this sort of stumbling block crops up, and I agree on how to go about removing them from our paths. …
Let’s get this straight first:
Adultery is wrong.
Personally, I think that one of the worst things a loved one can do to you is be unfaithful to you. The pain it causes, the lives it ruins, the leftover broken trust and inability to trust again, and so much more…
I wouldn’t wish it on an enemy.
But it does happen. All the time. In all corners of the world.
A study in 2015 revealed that 45% of British men admitted to betraying their spouse or partner at least once, with 32% of women confessing to the same.
Rather high percentages! …
If you read my Release Day Ramblings post on the day that Keys to the Realm (Heir to the Throne Trilogy finale) came out, you know that one of the many inspirations behind that series was a bedtime story that my mum used to tell me when I was a child. While I was explaining this to my husband, we started reminiscing about the other tales that our Bangladeshi parents shared with us.
Turns out, one of the stories that my mum used to insist was a “true story” is actually believed by many to be a real event from Bangladesh’s history! …
When we say “special needs” these days, thankfully, most of us know that it can encompass a wide range of difficulties that children might be facing in their development.
At my secondary school, the kids thought it meant you couldn’t speak English because you’d recently emigrated to the UK from Bangladesh or India. Well, I had emigrated from Bangladesh. At the age of eight months old. Not 11-years-old. Yes, I’d enrolled halfway through Year 7, the first year of high school, but it wasn’t because I’d only just come to live in the UK.
I was the shy, quiet kid that did well in all her lessons and got bullied for it, got teased when teachers used her classwork as an example of what stage everyone else should be at. …
