In the 1970s someone gave me a photograph of a man in uniform, supposedly my great-grandfather. I found it interesting but then put it away. A decade or more later it re-emerged and I began a search for my ancestors. It took over twenty years to find what had happened to the man, a journey […]
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At last, my first newsletter is available here
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A Patient Man, fourth in the Inspector James Given series, is now published Amazon.
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Readers of these posts will be aware I’m a great fan of Scrivener as a writing tool. It enables detailed planning and has a really good system of structuring folders, text, research and notes. The writing target options help keep track of progress on a document by document and on a project basis (Scrivener 3 […]
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I’m a big fan of Scrivener as a writing tool and recently began outlining a new novel (the fifth in the Inspector James Given series). As always, procrastination took over and I searched for ideas on how to make the process easier. I found an exceptionally good video on outlining from Abbie Emmons, which is […]
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When I was half-way through A Patient Man, the third in the Inspector James Given series, I decided I’d kill him off. I’d had enough of him and wanted to move on to pastures new. I’d a long-term project I wanted to finish and an outline for the first in a possible new series I […]
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I don’t profess to be an expert with mind maps, but there are plenty of posts out there to help if you need detailed info. However, I do use a mind map in the early stages of planning my novels so hope the following might be of some use. What is a mind map? A […]
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A year ago today ‘The Beast from The East’ had blown through and we were able to move home from Ireland to England – and traumatic it was too. This weekend I’ve been moving my web site from one host to another. It was also traumatic but the nice people at FastComet did everything they […]
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Back in June 2018 I received a contract for a third novel in the Inspector James Given series (it didn’t start out as a series but has just grown that way) and, despite my slackness until I agreed a deadline, I completed the first draft by the last week in November. Hurrah! I even got as […]
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