Just a quick post today to let you know that I have been featured as the Author of the Day on the ManyBooks website today. I was delighted to be contacted and then interviewed for the site. You can read my answers to the questions posed and find out more about my latest book Starting Over at the Vineyard in Alsace at the link here.
And if you’d like to purchase my book, you can do so here!
Having goals gives you a focusThe UK lockdown began on my 55th birthday – what a way to celebrate… At first, I found it a bit of a novelty to have the rest of my family at home, but I realised pretty quickly that I would need to use goals to motivate myself if I was to get any work done. Thankfully, I had the final edits of my latest book, Starting Over at the Vineyard in Alsace, to work through and send off to my editor and proofreader. Those deadlines are actually a lifesaver if you’re a full-time author. Without them, I might not have got so much done. But I gave myself those deadline goals, knowing that they would motivate me, and I published my book on 14 July, 2020.
As an indie author, I’m very familiar with self-discipline anyway. After reading some good advice from marketing guru, Nicholas Erik, I have always aimed to spend one hour a day writing or editing, one hour a day on marketing, and one hour a day reading non-fiction books associated with my writing. I also work part-time as a freelance proofreader and self-publishing consultant, so I factor in at least one hour’s freelance work every day as well. I’m usually doing some kind of training associated with my writing or other skills, so that adds another hour. And so you can see, I have pretty full days, and that’s what gives my day structure.
However, as you’ll know, being stuck indoors all day during the lockdown was very hard. Thankfully, I wasn’t someone who had to shield and so in the beginning, I made sure to go out for my one hour of exercise every day. I started with a daily walk, and often my younger daughter accompanied me. Then one day, when no-one could see us (!), we tried running for a short distance as part of our walk. No-one was more surprised than me when I found I could run for short bursts without collapsing in a heap. So I decided to download the Couch to 5K app and to give it a go, never expecting to finish the 9-week course. But I liked the format of running every other day and building towards that final goal, and I liked the fact that I could do it even more! The last time I did any running was under duress at secondary school (37 years ago!)
After my very first run
My Couch to 5K graduation message
As I write this post, I have just started my 20th week of running. I run three or four times a week now for a minimum of half an hour, sometimes longer as I chase the elusive 5K. I’m almost there but I’m not despondent about it because at the beginning of April, I couldn’t run for five minutes, let alone 5K! After all these years, I’ve realised something that they don’t teach you at school – it’s not about being the fastest. It’s about building your stamina and sticking at it, qualities that have also stood me in good stead as an indie author as well. So I know I will crack 5K eventually because I have the persistence to keep showing up.
This month, to give myself extra motivation, I signed up for a Race at your Pace challenge to run 35 miles in the month of August. When I complete it, I’ll get a medal, which is motivation enough for me! Seriously though, it’s about finding interesting ways to keep challenging myself because I really want to continue with this habit and as we still don’t have the full freedom to go wherever we want yet, it’s important to keep finding new ways to motivate myself. I have also been eating more healthily and this has helped me to lose some weight as well, which was an even greater bonus, and certainly helps with the motivation.
So, just like writing a book, I’ve had a goal and I’ve had motivation to achieve it, despite the conflict the lockdown has brought. I still walk on the days when I’m not running and I thank goodness every day for the countryside where I live, and I appreciate how lucky I am to live here. I miss travelling but I’m grateful for all the wonderful places I’ve been in the past that I can look back on. And I can look forward to visiting new places again in the near future, I hope.
I hope you and your families have found a way to get through lockdown, and that you’ve all been keeping well. Let me know in the comments if you’ve found a way that works for you.
The book that started it all
We’re just a couple of weeks away from the end of 2019, and also from the end of another decade. When you’re in your fifties, these years and decades seem to pass more and more quickly. But when I look back to 2009, I hadn’t even started writing at that point, so it’s been a particularly eventful decade for me from a professional point of view. I started the decade as a full-time teacher and I’ll be finishing it as a full-time author. This gives me a lot to be happy about, and it proves that persistence can pay off.
Next year, it will be five years since I self-published my first book and I have just written the first draft of my 9th! (You can see all my published books here). I never expected writing to become a career for me, but I’m very glad it did. Being able to work full-time as an author, doing what I love, and making a decent living from it, is something I’m truly thankful for. I’m looking forward to publishing my next book in 2020 and also to starting work on the one after that.
And… I have an idea for the one after that! Here’s how it came about. Every year since 1996 just after he first set up his business, my husband has gone to Los Angeles in January to attend the NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) show. That was the first and last time I went with him before we had children and now that my eldest daughter has properly left home and my youngest is taking a year off before going to university, I get to go again! And I decided that if we were going to fly that far, we ought to go to San Francisco as well – we’re not getting any younger! – which means we’re off on a very big adventure in January 2020.
We fly to San Francisco first and spend a few days there before driving down the Pacific Coast Highway (a long held dream) and stopping off midway before going on to Los Angeles. I was showing my daughter the place we’d booked for the midway stop. It’s on a beach and looks amazing. And she said to me, ‘Well, that’s your next story sorted. An inn right next to the beach. What could be more romantic?!’ I’m sighing now just thinking about the possibilities. And so it begins 🙂 Look out for lots of fab photos on my instagram while we’re there.
This year has been a funny one for me in personal terms what with having to have major surgery in February, but I’ve come through it. You really do have to count your blessings when there’s so much sadness in the world. I’m lucky to have a wonderful family, and I’m looking forward to spending Christmas with them all. I also have friends who have looked out for me through thick and thin, and that makes me even more grateful. As you can tell, I’m an eternal optimist and I often feel that it’s my hope that keeps me going.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of my readers for their support every year, and the wonderful writing and blogging community as well. Thanks to all of you, I’m still writing and publishing many years down the line. Wishing you all a wonderful Christmas and all the very best for 2020!
2009
2019
As human beings we have an essential need to tell and listen to stories from the minute we’re born: from reading stories to our children, to describing our day to family and friends, from listening to music, especially songs, to writing letters, or the modern day equivalent of using social media. Storytelling is integral to who we are.
I was thinking about this when I went to a Fado evening with my husband last month in London. We’ve always loved Fado, the traditional Portuguese folk singing, since we first heard it on a holiday to Ericeira, north of Lisbon in the 1990s. Characterised by often melancholic singing accompanied by guitar, it has a soulful nature all of its own and is well worth a listen to if you ever get the chance. It’s not all melancholic though. This is one of the classics and one of my favourites too: uma casa portuguesa sung by Amália Rodrigues.
We’ve always loved listening to folk music and we’ve been lucky to see some great singers performing it over the years, including Kate Rusby and Cara Dillon. I even used to sing folk music myself when I was younger and some of those songs are still among my favourites even now. Through Bushes and Through Briars sung here by Isla Cameron and made famous in the Julie Christie version of Far from the Madding Crowd, is just one of several folk songs I used to sing many years ago!
So why do we love folk songs, and other songs that tell stories so much? I think it’s another way of passing something on of ourselves to the generations to come, which is why every country has its own form. Before education was available to all, singing was a way of telling stories without writing them down and folk songs filled that gap. Thankfully, many folk songs have now been written down to make sure that the legacy is protected for future generations.
Similarly, some of us write down recipes to pass on to our children. I know I have recipes that my grandparents used to make, although sadly, they’re not written down. But now my daughters are asking me how to make things they’ve loved from their childhood so we’re passing it on through the generations. It’s all part of our culture and our family history.
I’ve recently been clearing out our loft and apart from finding out that my obsession with keeping cards from family members is now maybe getting a bit out of hand(!), it has also been a poignant experience to find cards given to me by my grandparents when I was a child, and to see what they used to say to me. I also found all our wedding day cards threaded together with a piece of the material used to make my bridesmaids’ dresses. Reading through those cards was very emotional especially as we’ve been married for 30 years! I’m very glad that I kept them so that my daughters can see them and we can talk about what a wonderful day it was with both of them.
And writing stories is such an important part of this tradition as well. By writing about our experiences, we’re sharing our culture as well, and describing what our lives have been like in this time and place. Long may we continue to tell our stories to each other, however we choose to do it, whether through music, food, writing or another creative endeavour. It’s all important.
Standing up for what I believe inYesterday, I went on the People’s March in London – my first march of my life, aged 54 and a half. In case you’re worrying that this is going to be a political post, it isn’t, honestly. Whether you agree with my view on this or not, the point I want to make is that I believe passionately in this, and I felt that at last, the time had come to be counted, and that’s why I went. There were people much older, and much younger, than me on the march but we all had the same strong belief and the feeling that gives you to be a part of that shared view is amazing.
Of course, writing is my main passion in life and I’m pleased to tell you that I’m now in a position to try again as a full-time author. Diehard fans ( 😉 ) will remember that I tried this once before after leaving my teaching job in December 2015. Back then, I had only published 1 book and although it was going well, I was also doing freelance work to top up my income. I was also unprepared for how lonely I felt after leaving my busy teaching job, so when the chance to work part-time for a local charity came up, I decided to take it. So for the past 3 years, I’ve been working part-time in the mornings and doing my writing and freelance work in the afternoons. But now, my writing career has taken off and I’m ready to give it my all. With 8 books out now, and a whole lot more learning about indie publishing under my belt, as well as a strong network of friends and family around me, I hope that this time it will be the right time for me.
This week, I was interviewed for the Self Publishing Show’s Spotlight podcast. I wrote in and asked to be interviewed, and was delighted when Tom Ashford, the presenter, contacted me about doing it. The format is that you’re asked 5 questions about your writing, and Tom told me it would be fairly informal. I practised for days, in the car, in the shower etc, etc, but when it came to it, I was still very nervous! Anyway, it all went okay and I don’t think I said anything I shouldn’t have but only time will tell! The show will definitely air before Christmas so keep your eyes peeled for the date.
So I will be working full-time as an author from 1 November, and I can honestly say I’m really looking forwarding to it this time. I’ve started writing my new book and while I’m already being productive in the afternoons, I know I can be even more productive if I have the whole day. Suddenly, I feel energised to make this work for me, and I want to work as hard as I can to keep my momentum going.
I hope that whatever your passion is, you manage to make time for it in your life. It has paid dividends for me to do that for mine. If you’d like to know more about my writing, please sign up for my newsletter here and grab your free copy of my novella, Before You, at the same time if you haven’t already done so.
See you next time!
This month I have news about podcasts and promotions for you, as well as the latest news about book three.
As I mentioned in my last blog post, I recently gave my first podcast interview to Paul Teague for his selfpublishingjourneys.com podcast. Since then, I’ve been waiting with bated breath for the interview to go live so I could listen back and see how I sounded (good or bad!). Well, thankfully, I can now confirm that it went as well as I thought it had just after I’d finished speaking to Paul. I am even prepared to give you the link so you can listen to it yourself. You can find it on Paul’s website here. Do let me know your thoughts about it here after you’ve listened 🙂
I really enjoyed talking to Paul after listening to his podcast for such a long time, and it was great to be able to talk about our shared experience of trying to make a living from our writing. I have picked up lots of tips from Paul’s podcast diaries which he releases every Saturday, and sometimes, he has given me the courage to do something which I may have been thinking about for ages but have never got round to.
One of these was running a free promotion. In the beginning when you self-publish your first book, it’s so hard to contemplate giving it away for free, and so although I had often thought about it, I’d never actually taken the plunge. But I finally decided to put From Here to Nashville wide on all platforms and then to offer it free for a short promotion. Well, it’s actually ended up being free for quite a while now as I struggled to get Amazon to price match the other sites it was already free on.
Anyway, I got there in the end and finally, the week of promotion via various email lists arrived last Monday. I chose to promote it via five different sites, starting with the smaller sites first and rising to the biggest one on Friday. As I write this, there have been over 6000 free downloads of From Here to Nashville most of which came through Amazon but there were also a good number through Apple Books and Barnes and Noble. I have also seen some good read through purchases of my other books, especially the two sequel novellas. However, these sales have not yet been enough to cover my costs although this may come in time as people finish reading the first book in the series.
I was very glad to have given the promotion a try and the greatest thing about it was that I really improved my rankings across all the main Amazon sites but especially on the US one. By the end of the promo, I was at number 49 in the whole of the free Kindle store which was amazing. Even better than this though, I was at number 3 in the women’s fiction category, number 5 in romance and number 14 in contemporary romance. This felt amazing, especially because I had managed to achieve this all on my own. It will hopefully be a huge benefit to my overall visibility.
*****
Apart from that, my other good news is that I’ve finished editing my third full-length novel, otherwise known as my Bistro book. This book is now with my editor and I’m taking a short breather while I wait for it to come back to me. Hopefully, I will have more to tell you about all that very soon!
Thanks for reading as always. By the time of the next blog post, it will be nearly Christmas!
As some of you may have seen if you’ve liked my Facebook page, this week I gave my first indie author podcast interview. Paul Teague from the Self-Publishing Journeys podcast invited me a few weeks ago and I said yes before I could talk myself out of it! If you click on the link above and scroll down the page, you will see that my interview is coming up on 5 November. When it goes live, it will move to the top and you can listen to it there on your computer.
Alternatively, you can subscribe to Paul’s podcast on your phone or other mobile device to listen to it while you’re on the go. A couple of people told me they weren’t sure what a podcast is so I hope this makes it clearer for you.
You can listen to podcasts on all kinds of topics these days, anything from comedy to politics (you may consider these to be the same right now!) It’s so handy for the commute to work or even to while away the hours (!) spent cleaning, gardening etc. My husband listens while he’s at the gym but the thought of the gym just makes me shudder 🙂
I mostly listen to mine on my commute and while driving here, there and everywhere. I tend to listen to writing podcasts only – apart from Paul’s, I listen to the Self-Publishing Formula and The Creative Penn. If you already listen to podcasts, which are your favourites? Do let me know in the comments or by sending me an email to julie@julie-stock.co.uk. I’d love to hear your tips.
And so, to the interview. Well, I was delighted when Paul asked me to be a guest on his show. I’ve listened to his podcast diary and his interviews for a long time now. So it was a real badge of honour as an indie author to be invited to chat with Paul about my self-publishing journey. However, I was also quite nervous. Paul is a former BBC man with lots of experience so I wanted to make sure I came across as professional and not like a bumbling idiot! (Only time will tell…)
Anyway, Paul was very organised and I didn’t have to do much beforehand except to make sure that my Skype account was all set up properly. (The last interview I did over Skype was in February 2016 and you can read that post here). My husband sorted me out with a decent microphone from his own supply at his business, and once I had my earphones, I was all set. I did spend a bit of time thinking through the questions that Paul might ask me but not so much that I would sound rehearsed when it came to it. Paul advised me to think of it as a chat between us rather than an interview so I tried to focus on that.
When we finally did the interview, Paul was so easy-going that my nerves melted away and soon we were chatting like we’d known each other for years, which in a way we had. The time passed very quickly and we had a short break after the main interview where I breathed a sigh of relief. Then we carried on chatting about all sorts of things. We recorded another short interview of quick fire questions afterwards, which is for Paul’s Patreon supporters first of all but will be available generally at a later point. And then it was time to say goodbye. I was buzzing for a good hour afterwards because it had been such a great experience. I did then start to worry whether I’d said anything I shouldn’t about anyone or anything (!) but I’m reasonably confident I didn’t…
As you can see from this link, my husband now offers a podcast bundle of gear you’d need to set up your own podcast. It’s professional gear so it is a bit expensive (cheaper options are available) but since he put that bundle together, I’ve been thinking more and more about whether to do a podcast myself. I’ve thought about it for a while but always decided against it because of lack of time and skill, but who knows? Maybe one day I will give it a go.
Anyway, don’t forget to let me know your favourite podcasts and to tune in to my interview on Paul Teague’s Self-Publishing Journeys podcast on 5 November. In the meantime, it’s back to editing book 3 for me!
Holidays
I’m just back from a lovely holiday in the Lake Garda area of Italy where it was mostly hot and sometimes thundery. It’s a beautiful area though and we explored it to the full, taking in Milan, Verona and Venice, as well as some of the beautiful villages around the southern end of the lake itself.
Back home now in the UK, the long, hot summer we experienced in May, June and July seems a distant memory and instead, apple crumbles, Halloween and Bonfire Night are on my mind. There is no thought of the C-word as yet though so please don’t even go there!
New Boxed Set
I have spent most of the last few months wrestling with the creation of a boxed set of my From Here to Nashville novel and its sequel novellas, and I’m pleased to say I have finally finished it. I now have an ebook and paperback version of my From Here to You series with beautiful new covers ready to go. These will be publishing shortly and I’m going to have a special offer for my newsletter subscribers which I will be revealing soon. However, I thought you might like to see my beautiful new cover for the series which I am so pleased with. I have Mary Jayne Baker to thank for the vibrant new covers of the rest of the series and I think you will agree that she has done a wonderful job for me.
Marketing
I have been concentrating more on marketing over the summer as well, learning how to advertise my books on the various platforms with some success, and some failures of course! But I seem to have got my head round it a bit more now. I have also been steadily building my newsletter list and this has been very successful. When people join, they now get a free download of the prequel novella to the From Here to You series and this has been very popular. If you’d like to get a copy, you can do so here.
Writing
Writing wise, I have been steadily keeping up with my 12 Short Stories Challenge so that I have now written 9 this year and as soon as the year has finished, I will be editing and publishing this collection for you all to read. My next big job though is to get on with the editing of my next book which is long overdue. This is the one set in a bistro you might remember, and I really need to get on with it now. To be fair, I have had a few unexpected obstacles to overcome, including being taken into hospital at the end of June, and subsequently, being off work for a few weeks. I am feeling much better now but I still don’t have a diagnosis as yet so I need to keep myself busy! Being able to go on holiday really helped and was great creative inspiration 🙂
So that’s all for now. Look out for more updates soon!
Another month in my writing life has gone by, and at times, it feels like I don’t have a lot to show for it. However, all the marketing work I’ve been doing this past month will hopefully yield some results in the very near future.
Firstly, I gave a talk at Flitwick Library at the beginning of May, which I had been really looking forward to. Then on the morning, it absolutely bucketed down with rain. I knew that as the talk was free, this would probably put a lot of people off from venturing out. And sadly, I was right. I had the grand total of 4 people at my talk and one of those was a lady from the library! However, they were a lovely group of people and all very interested in my writing and how I self-publish my books. The lady in the front row was in her eighties and still adamant that she would finish writing the book she’s been writing all her life. She was such an interesting person and asked lots of questions about self-publishing. I wouldn’t put it past her to finally get her book out there now. Having so few people in the audience does at least mean they can stop you and ask you questions when they want to, and the time flew by. I sold a couple of paperbacks to that same lady and I enjoyed giving the talk, so it’s never wasted. But it would be nice to have a few more people at my next library talk.
Then towards the end of May, I was invited by a former teaching colleague and friend, to come and talk to her book club. They’d all bought and read The Vineyard in Alsace before I came, and they were all very keen to talk about it and my writing. This time, there were a good dozen people there and we had a great chat about writing, in general and mine specifically. It was a really good atmosphere, even when they gave me some critical feedback. It was useful feedback though and delivered kindly so I took it on the chin 🙂 One of the book club members was a man, and he made my day when he said he’d read my book in one sitting, even though romance isn’t his preferred genre. He gave me some useful feedback too so overall, it was a great experience.
My next talk will be at Hitchin Library in Hertfordshire on 28 July. My Society of Authors group is running a Saturday Series of talks at the library over the summer and into the autumn. I went to the first one given by Hugh Bicheno, a military historian and fiction writer, and he had a full house in the audience. The talk he gave was absolutely fascinating, all about the Wars of the Roses in Hertfordshire. I even got to try on a sallet, which is a medieval helmet! Here’s Hugh wearing it on the day. I couldn’t even see out when I put it on 😉
The full list of talks is very varied and you can see it here on The Society of Authors’ website. If you are nearby or in the area, it would be lovely to see you in July. There’s even a Facebook event page in case you want to show your interest!
Over the past month, I have finished off two courses I’d enrolled in from The Self-Publishing Formula team; one was about cover design and the other was a self-publishing 101 course. I took the cover design course so that if I did ever want to have a go at creating my own covers, I’d have a better chance of knowing what I was doing. I’ve worked in marketing myself for many years, either side of being a teacher, and so I have quite a bit of experience of designing things, but it’s one thing to be doing posters and leaflets, or even annual reviews but it’s another to do your own covers so that they look professional. It was a great course, led by Stuart Bache of BooksCovered, and it was very practical so I had a go at making a fair few covers of my own. But, crikey, it is really hard work! Just sourcing the photos could take a whole day. I really learnt a lot and I think I could have a good go at a cover in Photoshop now. However, I don’t think I could ever do as professional a job as the designers I have used to make my covers for me. It gave me even more respect for those professionals, and a better understanding of what they do for me at the other end.
The Self-Publishing 101 course seems a bit crazy for someone who has now self-published 5 books, I know, but after the success of The Vineyard in Alsace, I wanted to be working out how to move myself up to the next level. It was a big investment but it has already proved useful. So this month, I wrote a prequel for my From Here to You series, and I’m offering this free to people who sign up to my email list. Once written, I had to commission a cover for it, and send it round to my wonderful beta readers to get feedback on it. Then I had to advertise it in the back of all my other books and set it up on Book Funnel so that readers could download it. Then I had to advertise it on my website, and set up automated emails for new subscribers to make sure they received it! In the middle of all this, we had GDPR-mageddon (as Book Funnel called it rather wittily) and I also migrated this website over from a free site to a self-hosted one. So now you know what I mean by a crazy month! I’m very pleased with the finished novella though. Here it is in all its glory:
On top of this, I was finalising the last novella in that same From Here to You series which is now up for pre-order here, and updating all my other books with details of this new one, Finding You. The final piece of the plan will be the issue of a box set of all three books in the From Here to You series. The cover isn’t ready yet so I’m thinking carefully about when to release it but it will be soon-ish!
I have learned all these things from that course, and more besides, so it has already started paying for itself. But it is fair to say that I will be glad to get back to editing my third novel when all this is done, and you never thought you’d hear me say that! It just goes to show though how much more I could have been doing to market myself and my books. I’ll let you know how that all goes next month.
One thing you learn very quickly as an indie author is that there is always something else you could be doing. I just hope that some of this activity will pay off soon!
Thanks for reading, and if you go ahead and download Before You after signing up to my list, do please let me know what you think of it.
Until next time.
March has been another busy writing month for me but this time, it has mostly been because of so many new learning opportunities that have presented themselves to me. One of those has been being invited by Amazon to have The Vineyard in Alsace included in a Prime Reading promotion for three months. Since I signed up, my book has risen up the charts to a high point of no. 7 so far, which as you can imagine, has been fantastic to see. I am learning new things about how it works all the time and delighting in the recognition my book has been getting. I have Amazon Prime myself but I had no idea that it included books! How mad is that? So if you do too and you want to read my book for free, get yourself along to my book page here and download it! And if you could please write a review when you’ve finished, that would be even better!
*
So what else have I been up to? Well, first of all, I decided to sign up to the Self-Publishing Formula Podcast’s Cover Design course. I do some design work in my day job, and I used to do design when I worked in marketing before I became a teacher many years ago. I enjoy doing it but have never taken any courses, and as I enjoy the cover design process so much, I thought it would be useful. I don’t really have any plans to make my own covers, although there might be some circumstances when I could in the future, but I thought it would help me to understand the process a bit more. And it really has. The course is delivered on behalf of the SPF team by Stuart Bache, who designs all of Mark Dawson’s covers. Stuart’s own company is called Books Covered and you will see many familiar covers there from the romance genre. You do need Photoshop to get the most out of the course but you will then get such a lot of practice in from trying to create your own covers and seeing what goes into the process. The course is still open but is a bit more expensive now. I’m still working my way through but enjoying it immensely.
Then after I heard about the Cover Design course on the podcast, they re-opened their Self-Publishing 101 course. Hopefully, you’re thinking ‘Why would you need that course, Julie?’ when you read that! Well, that’s a good point and one I had worried over myself since I first heard about the course opening late last year. It’s quite expensive and I didn’t want to make an investment like that if I wasn’t going to learn anything new. However, even after indie publishing three books now, with a couple more to come this year, there are still things I’m not doing to best effect. I haven’t really built a proper mailing list and for that you need a reader magnet (which I haven’t written yet!) and to promote that in various ways to encourage people to sign up. One of those ways is via a landing page on your website, which is when you realise that a free WordPress website doesn’t have the scope for you to do that kind of advanced stuff. It has been on my mind for a while to migrate my website again but I just haven’t done it. So really, doing this course is about helping me to work out what I still need to do to move myself to the next level, writing a checklist and then doing it! Fortunately, you can pay monthly for the course and it is still open for a few days. If you should want to take a look, the link is here. If you can’t stretch to that kind of investment, you should listen to the podcast because there are so many useful hints and tips in each episode – it really is great!
*
Finally, this month, I went on my first ever writing retreat, just in time for the second wave of snow. It sounds terribly self-indulgent but I was given it as a birthday present from my family! Last weekend, I drove up to Warwickshire to a lovely hotel and joined about a dozen other writers at various stages in their careers for a weekend of writing and learning. The course was run by two RNA members, Alison May and Janet Gover. You can find out more about their courses here. They’re both traditionally published and have lots of experience between them.
Before I got the schedule, I was expecting to spend most of the weekend holed up in my room, bashing away at my laptop in isolation. However, that wasn’t the case. There was writing time, of course but there were also tutorials and workshops, which were really helpful. The most helpful ones for me were the ones on plotting and editing. I also had a one-to-one with Janet about there first three chapters of my next novel which I’m calling The Bistro for now. One of the things I struggle with is knowing where to start with the editing process when I get my first manuscript appraisal back from the RNA. It all seems insurmountable! But as a result of this course, I now have a proper plan to work to and I made a start on the plan while I was there so when I come back to it, I feel that I will be better prepared to make a start and not as daunted as I normally feel.
I learnt a lot from my fellow writers too, and the weekend was a very sociable experience that I would really recommend to you. I switched everything else off and just spent time on my writing, and that felt wonderful!
*
I can’t finish without mentioning that I also published a new book this month! Over You (Sam’s Story) was published on 12 March, 2018, and already has a few good reviews. It means that I now have a series – the From Here to You series – and this is book 2 following on from the end of From Here to Nashville. The third and final sequel will be out around May, I hope. If you haven’t downloaded Sam’s Story yet, it’s only 99p on Amazon and tells a story of heartbreak, love and healing. You can get your copy on Amazon now.
If you want to know when my next release is out, why not sign up to my mailing list here?
Until next time, thanks for reading!
julie-stock.co.uk 