I’m a writer. I write no matter whether I am making money or not.

Mostly I’m not.

I publish them because there are people out there that like to read and I love enabling them.

And because I don’t make money from my books, I have to choose wisely what to spend what little money I have available for publishing. So I tend to spend it on Covers. I know some wonderful Cover Artists.

I have a lot of anxiety around my books. I’m very sensitive about them and I loathe people who insult my CA’s.
This is what happened this morning. I was rash enough to open up to a group of people about my books and ask for their help on making the latest cover for The Angel’s Crown to be the best possible.

Clearly it was the wrong group of people to ask. I ended up having a meltdown and upsetting my family (they get upset when I get upset) which ruined a perfectly beautiful, sunny, summer’s day. I now have a headache and while I’m not likely to give up writing, I might give up trying to publish my work.

I’m so tired of trying so hard to do this.

It’s hard enough being a mother of 4 wonderful autistic children. It’s hard coping with the day to day effects of my own Autism, Depression, Anxiety and physical pain. It’s hard coping with the responsibilities of being a Carer to my Partner.

At some point, something will give.

I don’t want it to be the writing and drawing, but they’re the simplest to give up.

I’m not saying this because I want you to feel sorry for me or to guilt you into anything, but because I want you to remember something.

Every Author, big or small, is Human.

They all have problems that you cannot see through their words.

When you respond to an author on social media, how you talk to them affects them. They might not let it out in public (in fact most authors don’t) but if you value their work and want to see them publish more of it, so that you can read it, then be respectful, be nice and keep your insults to yourself – or you might find that they give up publishing that work forever.

This was the best dystopian book I have ever read.
I had emotions wrenched from my soul, one by one. I cried, I shuddered in pain, I was terrified… And I am not going further for fear of spoiling it for anyone else.

I couldn’t put it down once I started.

It’s a damn good picture of what could happen should the fragile, socially democratic, barely equal society as we know it goes bang. It shows who is most likely to benefit from the breakdown of that society and who is most likely to get hurt. It’s a painful look at what happens in that breakdown and I am almost certain that every woman who reads it will find something that parallels their experiences. There will be men who have parallels too – and no doubt there will be men who are offended by the pictures painted by the words within the pages.

It’s not a romantic, rose-tinted glasses dystopian story and there may be scenes that can be quite upsetting, I was in tears several times, but I couldn’t stop reading at all; I HAD to know what happened next.

I am still thinking about the story and the characters now and it’s been hours since I finished reading it. I finished reading and felt bereft that it had ended. That is what a good book does to me, and this was most definitely a good book.

Hi there, Teigr Princess fans!
*Looks around, just sees dust and hears echoes… echoes… echoes…*

I’ve taken a step into the unknown… I’ve recorded my very first Podcast! Yes, you can now hear exactly what I sound like just by pressing play on SPOTIFY!!!!!
Yes, you heard me properly, I’m on Spotify!

Before you get too excited – it’s just me, talking (actually more accurately reading) to my microphone about this website and explaining what I do… well some of it anyway. I even edited it myself using Audacity!

I’ll post the link to it below – just so you can go listen and marvel that I actually exist beyond the keyboard.

https://open.spotify.com/embed/episode/4zHWncJuE0gcGGHTZuCQGK

And now comes the moment that I ask you to all give me an idea of what I should cover!

I’m planning to do one Podcast a month at the moment; it would be difficult to do more than that with my family around, especially as this is such a fledgling venture.

To start with, I thought I would read a piece of my work out. The question is – which one? Do you have any favourites? Obviously it is going to need to be a really short story or an excerpt from one of my books… drop me a line in the comments and give me an idea!

Also I will answer one question – nothing too personal or controversial please, and do remember that my older kids and partner will be able to listen to this too, so please DO NOT ask anything too embarrassing… for me or them!

And that’s it for today… please be kind!