Random Writings

Thanks to the rise of YouTube and social media in general, book trailers are becoming an increasingly useful way of getting your novels noticed. For their biggest, most high-profile titles, publishers will sometimes fork out to have a trailer produced, but increasingly the task, like a lot of book marketing in general, falls to the author. For those with no experience of video production, this can be a hugely daunting thought, and many authors simply won’t bother with a video, and …

Happy Halloween, Fiendlings! In honour of this day of horror, I thought I’d share a little story about where one of the ideas in my Invisible Fiends series came from. So settle down, grab a toffee apple, and prepare to discover the terrifying secret of Doc Mortis’ Musical Taste! If you’ve read the fourth, fifth or sixth book in the series you’ll be aware that the villain of book four - Doc Mortis - is obsessed with the song “The Teddy Bears Picnic”, and the …

I’ve started work on a novel for adults. Not really sure why, other than that I have a story which wouldn’t work as a children’s book. Today, I wrote the first line, so I thought I would share it here. Here it comes… now: “Casey Garrett died, aged ten, alone and in the dark.” There you have it. One down, thousands to go.

As I write the headline for this post, I can already hear a thousand authors and publishers sharpening their knives. I want to make it clear from the start that I’m not defending piracy, nor am I attacking it. I’m merely posing a question, and would love to hear some answers from people on it. I’d also like to stress that by “piracy” I mean the type that involves copyright infringement, not boats and eyepatches. The type of piracy that …