Welcome to the July 2021 roundup! Another month has passed and once again, part of it was spent in lockdown. Victoria (where I live in Australia), had its 5th lockdown this month, and we were joined by other states, South Australia and NSW, essentially putting half of the country in lockdown. If you've been following …
While my latest work in progress is off with beta readers, I turned my attention to another manuscript, the 4th book in my YA series, Blackbirch. The last time I worked on this MS was in 2017. Since that time, the first 2 books in the series have been published (in 2o20) and the 3rd …
When it comes to crafting your characters, one important thing to include is motivation. It’s not just because motivation will get the story moving forward, but because it will also help you create well-rounded characters readers will relate to and become invested in. If that sounds like something you want to include in your book, …
Welcome to the June 2021 roundup! Well, the first half of this month was spent in our 4th lockdown, and the rest living with restrictions in place as we slowly ease out of it. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the rest of Australia, with many other states, including my home state of NSW, …
While you might not be a writer of action-based books, chances are if there’s any type of conflict in your novel, you may have to write an action scene. I did, after starting my YA series, Blackbirch. For a book about teens with magickal abilities, there ended up being a few scenes that required me …
Welcome to the May 2021 roundup! I don’t know about you, but May was another quick month for me and included some non-writing-related events in the form of numerous specialist medical appointments. If you’ve been following my blog for a few years, you’ll know I had surgery in 2018 for what turned out to be …
If you’ve ever read a book you couldn’t put down, chances are one of those reasons is because of unanswered questions. This fun little writing trick usually pops up in parts of dialogue between characters, or as a throwaway sentence wedged in a paragraph that didn’t seem all that interesting until the question’s asked and …
Ah, book endings. Every story needs to have one, but not every story pulls it off. If you’ve ever read a book to the last page and been bitterly disappointed by the ending, you’ll know what I mean. It’s frustrating as a reader to be enjoying a book and then have the story fall apart …
Continue reading How To Tell If You’ve Nailed Your Book Ending
Welcome to the April 2021 roundup! Did anyone else blink and it was suddenly the end of April? As has been the theme of 2021 for me, I spent the fourth month editing, editing, and doing more editing. Hopefully, I'm still on track to release the third book in my YA series mid-year, but that …
