Month: April 2016

In Search of Immortality – GOLD: Panacea or Placebo?

Gold - Panacea or Placebo Pop quiz: what metals are the most conductive?

Answer: Silver, Copper and Gold. In that order.

Our planet is mineral rich. It’s like a candy store of minerals. When you look at the density across the solar system compared to our planet, we’re disproportionately saturated.

So what, I hear you say…

Well hang on just a darn minute.

Pop quiz: True or False? We have electricity in our bodies.

Answer: True. The only reason we’re living breathing story addicts is because our brains conduct electricity through neurones and across synapses, sending ‘messages’ to our muscles and cells.

I love a bit of logic, so let me rub my wannabe Aristotle hands together and ask you a question… If our brains conduct electricity and the most conductive metals are silver, copper and gold, does it not follow that having those metals in our bodies would make us conduct electricity better? Make us function better… Does that mean we need those minerals in our bodies? (more…)

8 Ways to Maximise Your Book Series

8 maximise There’s this trend… I’ll try not to be skeptical, actually who am I kidding I’m always skeptical. This trend involves finishing your novel series, whether its a trilogy or ten book epic and then promptly…unfinishing them… to ~~make money~~ because there’s more story to tell.

Take Veronica Roth and the Divergent series. She finished her books and then did a whole spin off series based on the character Four. She wrote shorts, novels and all kinds of other crazy empire expanding nonsense and of course the fans all loved it.

I hadn’t even considered writing more than my planned number of books for my Fallon series as an option. But then I read James Howell’s latest book, Guinea Pigsand realised I’m half way there anyway and I haven’t even published the first book.

So here’s some tricks on maximising your book series empire inspired by Howell’s latest book. (more…)

Nominations for Bloggers Bash Awards Are Now OPEN!

Who Nominate?

We are finally on the count down to the bash, peeps.

I am so excited I really ought to be wearing a sports bra what with all the bouncing up and down.

So far we have announced the totally-off-the-chart-gorgeous venue here. Then we announced our blogger extraordinaire and guest speaker Luca here.

But now, now after months of waiting I can officially say, that nominations for the bloggers bash awards are

NOW CLOSED

PLEASE NOTE THIS IS NOMINATIONS ONLY. VOTING DOES NOT OPEN UNTIL 19th May (more…)

Flash in a Flash – Writespiration #87

Flash Flash April brings another of those months where there are challenges coming out your ears and the usual pressures of Camp NaNo. That means time is limited. So I thought we would go old skool and do a challenge we haven’t done for a while.

Get a timer, set it for 120 seconds and when and ONLY when you are ready to do the challenge, scroll to the very end of the post to see the one word prompt. Write hard and fast until your time is up.

If you want to join in, post your flash in the comments or in a post and link back here. Mine is at the bottom under the word.

You have until 1st May to respond.

Please note, I do read every entry, but as I am taking a breather of sorts from the blog, in order to finish my book, it will take me a few days to read and reply to all your entries.
(more…)

The Great Horror Hoax – How to REALLY Harness A Readers Fear

horror hoax I’m terrified of spiders. I know. So cliched. If it helps, I am also terrified of boats – although the reasoning behind that is a little foggier given I swim like a fish – I must have drowned in a past life.

I had a date night recently and we happened to watch a film: London has Fallen. It gave me somewhat of an epiphany watching it. Horror in its most basic ‘blood and gore’ sense, is changing.

As a kid, I thought sword fights and giant spiders were terrifying. Granted kids find a lot of things scary but it wasn’t that long ago that adults cowered behind the sofa over the Blob, which barely caused me to raise an eyebrow recently, and only because it was that bad!

So why then, did I find this cheesy American action film only rated 15, so horrifying?

It’s because, horror, like society, is evolving. It’s thrown off its red paint blood shackles and picked up terrorism and child napping instead. We can learn a few lessons from it that can be woven into ANY type of genre. (more…)

Ancient Flyer – The Mystery of Ancient Aircraft

Photo of my necklace and the Ancient Flyer sculpture

I often find myself wondering about my eyesight and the quality of my perception. I mean, how much of what I see is actually ‘real’ versus an illusion. Technically we have blind spots in our vision where our optic nerve joins the back of our eye, yet our brains interpret and fill that space so we don’t actually have a blind spot in our vision. We monkeys are easily tricked by even the simplest of illusions.

Yet there is one visual mystery I just can’t believe is a trick. The ancient flyer.

The Ancient Flyer is a sculpture and carving that has been found all over the world. Said to be thousands of years old and yet, upon looking at it, appears to be an aircraft. No, really!

This post has been on my list for some time, but it wasn’t until my son poked my necklace and said ‘plane,’ that I remembered. That reaction, the ‘point and plane’ is exactly why I wanted to write this post in the first place. (more…)

4 Mistakes to Avoid When Using Mailchimp

Mailchimp mistakes If you try something new for the first time and you don’t fuck it up, you’re probably not doing it right. Mistakes are natural, normal and help us learn to get better. I’m doing a monthly newsletter full of even more writing tips, competitions, handy writer hacks and news on my progress towards publishing. If you haven’t signed up yet, you can tick that off your list by clicking here. HINT!

I made mistakes. But I’m a writer. So standing up, dusting myself down and picking up the proverbial pen again is in my blood.

When I wrote the post on creating your perfect Author Newsletter I’d already found Mailchimp hard to set up and master. But SO many people said the same thing I knew I had to regroup and share some of the lessons I’d learnt doing my own newsletter. (more…)

It’s All In The Title – #Writespiration 86

In the Title Last week I asked you for snippets of you, including the title of your current WIP and a little morsel from it to tease us.

This week, we’re playing another game.

In the post I’ve listed all the titles you gave me. Pick one (not your own) and write a story in less than 200 words, and tell me which title you picked.

If you want to join in, then post your story in the comments or in a post and link back here so I can find it.

Please note, I am pausing to write my novels and I read every entry which means I am a little slow at responding to comments. If your comment doesn’t appear straight away, it will, promise.

As a result of the blog pause, I am moving Writespirations to every other week, you have until Sunday 17th to get your entries in.

p.s all images from Amazon (more…)

Teaching Your Parents About Bedtime – Lessons from a Terror Tot

This is not me!

I’ve commandeered Mummy Black’s laptop, she would be pissed if she knew. But she doesn’t so it’s ok. Unless you tell her, in which case I’ll cry and then ~~pee~~ poo on you…the runny kind.

See, parents think they know everything. They don’t. Not really. Cause I know everything. I know every trick under the sun to rile mummy and mama up until a force 100 hurricane blows through the whole house.

Bedtime.

Yep. Bedtime is the secret. (more…)

Understanding YA, NA and MG – A Writers Bible

YA NA MG One of the most salient memories I have from childhood, was the desire to grow up. I was like the opposite of Peter Pan. I couldn’t get old fast enough.

Sixteen was this magical creature where suddenly I would be grown up and allowed to do lots of things. I’d be a ‘real’ teenager. Sixteen came and went, and then eighteen arrived and before I blinked I was twenty-one. By the time I was twenty-five, I realised I’d made a heinous fucking mistake.

Adulthood is the equivalent of being slapped daily with a decomposing Kipper infested with rabies. My life was filled with a suburban nightmare, bills, a work monotony that could make paint drying seem like the Oscars and a side order of fuck my life.

Peter Pan syndrome rapidly kicked in. I wanted to be a child forever. I rebelled against the rules, had a bit of a break down, got very fucking drunk, had my skin inked and then bitch slapped the sense back in. I had to tell myself:

That magical envelope was not going to fly down my chimney and whisk me off to wizarding school, neither would Edward Cullen fall in love with me and make me immortal, and sadly, I had neither angel nor demon blood, so I wasn’t a shadow hunter either.

I spiralled into an intensely primal binge fest of YA fiction and TV series and then I had an epiphany. If I wrote it, I could live it.

But understanding the differences between Middle Grade (MG), Young Adult (YA) and New Adult (NA) fiction is easier said than done. (more…)