This blog was set up to write about my own writing wrinkles. (You may prefer to call them laughter-lines but they won’t look funny in your self-published book.)

I seem to have diversified since then, but there is only so much I can write about my own writing, and I don’t feel qualified to probounce on anyone else’s.

After a career in libraries I moved with my husband and dogs to Cambridgeshire’s Fens, surrounded by flat but ever-changing fields. I still keep one foot in East London’s suburbs and can be found at some point each month across a garden fence from London’s historic Epping Forest.

I soon gave up on the idea of proofreading as a retirement occupation after not-quite-completing an online proofreading course. Instead, I began writing and joined a local writing group. While editing and formatting the group’s first anthology, it occurred to me that blog posts about common writing errors might reduce all those explanatory comments that littered the marked up Word files I returned to our writers for approval (or not). So I started this blog.

Whichhas rambled a bit since then.

I’m not sure any of the writing group read my early posts, (I’m not sure they read my Markup comments either) but our first anthology was finally published, and even sold copies, and the sky didn’t fall. That was when I found the courage to self-publish on my own behalf at Amazon and Smashwords (titles listed on My Writing page).

Since I started scribbling, my writing has been placed in six competitions, shortlisted in seven, and longlisted by the National Literacy Trust. (Always the bridesmaid. . .)*

*(Actually, that’s no longer true; I finally came FIRST in a local publisher’s competition last year, but I like that line, so I’ll keep it in there.)

I’ve also been published in Scribble, Best of British, Tales of the Forest, Flash Fiction Magazine, Writers Forum, SevenDays, and People’s Friend, as well as in anthologies from The Poet, a Hull and Back Short Story Anthology and Fractured Fiction Anthology II .

Watch this space. . .

F.A.Q.

Q: Why did you decide to self-publish?

A: Now retired, I don’t have decades ahead of me to waste querying agents and publishers.

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Q: In some stories I can’t tell if characters are male or female. Are we meant to guess?

A: What would you like them to be?

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Q: Do you have any novels planned?

A: In my twenties, I toyed with the idea of writing a novel, but life got in the way. Since retiring, I returned to my original idea and completed the first draft of a ‘practice novel’ before realising I had a lot to learn and abandoning it for short stories.

Each time I have leisure to revisit my novel, I find an online recipe I’d like to try first. My subconscious may be trying to tell me something.

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