Good morning, my friends! Or, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on what time of day you read this blog. I thank you for coming along, and for taking the time to see what I have to say.

I feel that perhaps my messages of late have come across as slightly aggressive, or maybe I have been complaining a lot. I won’t apologise. This is my blog, my story, my space to vent. It is important. It is cathartic. And perhaps, somewhere, you will understand my ranting and raving, and maybe even sympathise or gain support from my words. I hope so. We all need to help each other where we can.

Getting Out There, with People: the Writer’s Struggle to Talk about her Books

Anyway, back to the subject. I feel like a magpie today. Ooh, look, something shiny! Sorry, must focus. Today I am feeling positive. Life is good. Life is full of promise and adventure. I am still immersed in the consuming world of motherhood and being a housewife, but I am now allowing myself to step outside of that particular box, and just be me. I took some time away from my children at the weekend, and I feel so much better for it. I stopped worrying about the state of my house. We are a busy family. We make mess. We survive. It will all get sorted in time.

Right now, I have other priorities to attend to. I need to be known. People need to read my novels, to enjoy them and to share them with others. My supernatural world is bursting to be revealed, after years of secrecy, hidden beneath the cliffs of a beautiful, seaside town in Cornwall. The wolves are hungry. The vampires are bored. The witches are discovering their powers after years of living lives as ‘normal’ humans. Have you met Jessica Stone and the Mason brothers yet? Well, maybe I should introduce you.  

How do I get my books “out there?”

Part of my difficulty in being recognised for my books, is that I do not presently have the means with which to advertise sufficiently, and in the right places, to get my name known. I have so far been unsuccessful in securing an agent that might help me to realise this dream (but I am still working on it), and I have had to give up a lot of my time to focus on my family for various reasons. That is all beginning to settle down now, and so I have made a decision. I need to Get Out There. You know, with actual real people. I mean, like talking to people and stuff. That is a scary concept for a writer.

Put me behind my computer and I can reel off pages of prose. I can chat away in social media forums, eloquent and interesting (I hope). But put me in a room with a group of people I don’t know, and I become the shy, quiet, polite girl in the back. I am not a stranger to public speaking. I used to work in a busy theme park, entertaining families with young children. I danced on a stage with Barney the Dinosaur, for goodness’ sake, in front of 500 people, three times a day! But for some reason, when it comes to my precious books, I freeze up. I cannot articulate the beauty and passion of my novels. I worry that people think I am being big-headed, or that they don’t want to hear it. Well of course they don’t, because I don’t share! I know what I need to do. And it will take a lot of guts to do it. But, my work deserves to be seen and appreciated. Here I go…

Did you enjoy this article? Download your FREE copy of LGBT fantasy short story It’s Complicated (The Redcliffe Novels) and meet the werewolves of Cornwall, England.  Click here.