Image Credits:-
All images from Pixabay/Pexels unless otherwise stated with many created in Book Brush. Book cover images from Chapeltown Books and Bridge House Publishing. Screenshots taken by me, Allison Symes.
Hope you have had a good weekend. Nice one here. So pleased my book order for Seeing The Other Side is now in and am looking forward to receiving these. Lovely Zoom with writing friends and a great meal out with family made the weekend especially nice. Lady doing well too though we will have to watch the temperatures again this week.
Facebook – General
Pleased to share my latest Writers’ Narrative post – How Using Nature Can Enhance Your Fiction.
Nature inspires so much fiction but it can also help inspire ours too. You can also show so much about your characters just by revealing what their attitude is towards the natural world around them, no matter how fantastical a setting they might be in.
I share useful tips as to how you can use nature effectively in your own work.
I hope you find the post useful.
Hope you’ve had a good start to the week. It was okay in the park this morning for Lady but for the rest of this week, it will be back to the early shift. So hot this afternoon so we’re staying in. None of us will be sorry.
Writing wise, I’m delighted to share my Substack story which I shared on that platform yesterday. I hope it makes you smile. Hope you enjoy Melting. The fact it is due to be another hot week where I am inspired this one though there are other circumstances where melting can occur.
Mind you, just looking at the image I chose for this story makes me feel a bit cooler and I hope it does the same for you!
Hope you’ve had or are having a lovely Sunday. Starting to warm up here so will have to be careful with Lady again, though we did get her out earlier today when it was fine. Having said that, we now have a hot weather routine to follow and she was fine with that. We had wondered if she’d be restless, not being able to exercise as much, but not at all which tells us we got this right. She did briefly see her Rhodesian Ridgeback pal in the distance earlier. Think both dogs were wondering why the other was going the wrong way!
Writing wise, I’m cracking on with various blog posts, will be getting on with flash fiction Sunday shortly, and other writing tasks such as my next newsletter. I’ve found it helpful to draft the latter over the whole month so there is no last minute panic. Had a lovely Zoom meeting with writing pals last night, which was fabulous. A good boost to morale.
Pleased to say I was invited to submit a blog post by another author where I talk about flash fiction formats. Hope to share the link for that next weekend.
Blog Tip: It’s not a bad idea to have, say, up to 500 words prepared on what you write and why you love the writing you do. There is always a home for this – on your own website, guest blogs and so on. It also means when you meet up with other writers for the first time you have a rough idea of what you will say when folk ask about your writing, as they do.
I found networking easier to handle on realising it is talking about something you love – writing – with others who have the same love. And it’s not long before good conversations start because naturally you will ask about what they write and things take off from there. It has always been my experience this is the case and it is such a positive one.
But having something in mind to say here is useful. Helps against your own nerves especially if you’re going to a writing event for the first time.
Hope your weekend has got off to a good start. Not bad here. Busy evening so am posting early.
Will be sharing Marketing and Writing on Chandler’s Ford Today next week. Will be sharing thoughts and tips as to how balance these two halves of the writing life. Both are very much in my mind right now given the imminent release of Seeing The Other Side, of course.
Writing Tip: I use an old school diary to plan out when I must have work in by when. It’s not fool proof. It is still possible to miss things (guess how I know but I also suspect this happens to most writers at some point!) but it reduces the chances of you doing so considerably. It also means when there are extra competitions I’d like to try, I can figure out how I could do this around my existing writing commitments.
Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again
Am thrilled to say the paperback of my Seeing The Other Side is now available for pre-order on Amazon. Woo-hoo! Delighted to see that now on there. Am expecting my copies to come in either later this week/early next week.
After 16th July will come the work of setting up events, updating my records on the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society, updating my records on The Society of Authors website, updating my own website and much more.
I also hope there will be a blog tour.
Watch this space as they say and the great thing with all of this? It will be fun!
It’s Monday and another hot one where I am so that led to the inspiration for this one. Hope you like my latest here on YouTube – Too Hot.
Sometimes arrogance can cross dimensions but it still doesn’t pay off. Find out how and why here.
Beginning to get seriously warm again. Am grateful I write in the cool (or relative cool anyway). Will be writing some flash fiction shortly.
I sometimes decide I will write to a specific word count on my flash fiction Sundays. At other times, I know I’ve got a topic in mind so will focus on that. I have found that for Substack and YouTube, both work best if I keep my tales up to about 100 words (also known as drabbles).
Suits me. Keeps me working on the form of flash fiction which led to me discovering what a great format flash is and to now having three books to my name. Let’s hear it for the drabble!
Nice day here. Looking forward to flash fiction Sunday tomorrow. Will shortly be penning a guest blog about flash fiction formats. That will be going out on another platform and I will share the link as soon as I have it. Am very pleased to have the opportunity to do this (and a huge thanks to the author concerned for inviting me on – more details later).
I always like to celebrate flash fiction, not least when I have a new book out (can’t imagine why!), and I still think it is a great form for drawing in the reluctant reader or those who prefer short reading sessions. Flash is ideal for these.
And even if you write longer works, flash is also ideal as a warm up writing exercise. The great thing here is you can polish these stories up and get them out there too if you wanted to do so.
Goodreads Author Blog – Ordering New Books
I’ve had the great joy this week (first week of July 2026) to put in an order with my publisher for my stock of my new flash fiction collection, Seeing The Other Side. The book is due out on 16th July and the ebook version is already available on Amazon for pre-order (and since this post went out on Goodreads originally, the paperback is now up there too). I should receive my paperbacks in a week to ten days’ time. My publisher’s delivery system is very good. Last time I was able to do this for my own collection was for Tripping The Flash Fantastic back in 2020. It has been a while then! (All sorts of reasons for it too and the pandemic didn’t help).
All of this led me to wonder about ordering new books. Now I do use the online retailers including people like Waterstones, Hive, Bookshop.org, Bridgetown Cafe Bookshop (which is my publisher’s online shop) and others.
Now in common with all indie presses, my publisher uses print on demand. It’s a great idea. No storage costs, no distribution costs, kinder to the environment and so on. One slight snag it is can show up on screen as not being in stock. Please ignore this. If you order it, the retailer will get it in quickly and then the book is on its way to you.
I wish they didn’t do this. Print on demand books are never in stock so to speak but they are readily and easily available. I’ve never had any problems when I’ve ordered books like this from other authors.
It is a joy to order new books of mine as a writer. I enjoy ordering books from other authors whose works I know I’m going to like I often use ebooks by them as a way of finding whether I like their work or not incidentally.
I do like the fact there are online retailers such as Hive and Bookshop.org who also help independent bookshops. Every purchase you make on them has a proportion going to an independent bookshop you nominate – fabulous idea. You can also arrange for your ordered books to be collected from those bookshops or delivered straight to your home. Lovely to have the choice like that.
So let’s hear it for ordering new books. I also think it is great to have a variety of ways in which to do this.
