OK.
I have a blog.
Jolly good. What now?
Ummm . . .
You see, it’s not as easy as you might think to get started on something like this. I’ve been thinking about what I might want to say for the best part of six months now, ever since I first decided I’d need a website and a decent blog to help me to stay in close contact with those readers who have been kind enough to take an interest in me already. Driving in the car, walking round Pagham Harbour, lying in bed at night, I haven’t even needed to give it a great deal of thought – ideas have just come flying at me out of nowhere and I’ve never bothered to write any of them down because I always knew when the time came that I’d know what to write.
But that first blog – I never really thought about that. There’s a whole stream of ideas out there, fed by a never-ending supply of tributaries, but how on earth do I go about isolating one in particular without giving the impression that it’s somehow more important than all the others?
What should I tell you?
Maybe for this introductory post I’ll be better off avoiding the specific and highlighting instead the areas I hope to cover every couple of weeks or so, time permitting of course. A mission statement, if you like. It seems to me the least I can do in an inaugural blog is offer as clear a summary as possible of what it is I’ll be trying to achieve with it. And yes . . . of course I’ll be throwing in a few random posts that don’t fit into this grand scheme of things because one of the attractions for me will be the opportunity to respond as things occur to me and to go wherever the whim of the moment may take me. But for the most part, I’m quite clear about what I want to do and anticipate that most posts will be of interest to:
Unpublished writers.
I was one myself until very recently. Indeed I was without an agent until 2013 and had no publishing deal until February 2015 so my memories are still very clear of what it was like to battle on, armed with nothing more than dwindling faith and sheer bloody-mindedness in the face of all available evidence.
I’ll try to offer advice and guidance that will hopefully encourage others in that position to keep going. fellow writers. I’ve been helped enormously in the past few months, especially as publication day for The Hidden Legacy approached, by other writers who have encouraged me to learn from their own experiences and especially their mistakes. This will be a chance to put something back into the mix.
Readers.
For years I’ve been reading between 75 – 85 novels a year and every time I’ve stumbled across an author whose work has really impressed me, I’ve immediately dived into Google to try to find out as much about that person as I can. It hasn’t always been easy and it’s not hard to understand why a writer will wish to have her/his privacy respected but I hope that anyone reading this blog on a regular basis will feel that I’m doing my best to make myself as accessible as possible bloggers/reviewers.
I’ll have a lot to say about those who play such an important role in the process of bringing a book to the wider attention of the general public. I had no idea until my turn came around as to just how crucial these people are to a book’s chances of success and, just as importantly, an author’s morale. the publishing business. This was a foreign country until recent months. It probably still is for many readers. I’ll be happy to shed a little light on how things work. me. Sorry . . . but I’m going to assume that if you have come to this page you probably have at least a modicum of interest in the person doing the actual writing.
I may now be a novelist but I’ve been a reader all my life and have a clear idea of what I have always wanted to know about the author. Actually, I suspect anyone following this blog on a regular basis will pretty soon know more than enough about who I am and why I write. I started out by saying this is a new blog but that doesn’t mean I haven’t contributed to several others.
Guest blogs
Below are links to a number I wrote during the build-up to publication of the eBook version of The Hidden Legacy. I am immensely grateful to those bloggers who invited me to contribute and would urge you to visit them as often as possible because the sheer volume and quality of what they produce on a regular basis is remarkable. If I have inadvertently missed any out here, I apologise profusely and will put the omission right next time around if someone enlightens me.
Until next time . . . happy reading! These should keep you busy for a while! If nothing else, they’ll help you decide whether you want to come back for more.