My Life as a Writer

As I'm in the process of writing The Poppy Garden, I'm filling you in on the major points as I go - but I'm not going to bore your with daily updates and word counts.  That's not why you are reading this and I think that would be pretty boring. Instead I thought I'd fill you in on what I hope and dream for this book, to me this isn't just a novel and by that I mean to me the goal of this book is not just a paper back or e book you pick up read, hopefully enjoy and then move on to your next purchase.  I have different aspirations for this book and at this time I'm not quite sure how to make them happen. I started writing this book as my way to honour the memory of my Grandfather and the men he flew with.  While I don't have enough information as yet to write their particular story I'm focusing on the methods they used to cope with PTSD when it wasn't recognised as a condition. The definition of PTSD is; a condition of persistent mental a...

The first part of the Poppy Garden story happens in the prologue, here it serves to introduce my two main characters and fix them in a relationship and setting.   It’s almost like a snap shot a moment in time, like looking through a window on someone’s life seeing how it ticks before the story really kicks in.   I don’t want to spend chapter after chapter building a back story before the main event occurs because the main event is why you reading the book, I don’t want readers to get bored waiting for the main event but I also want to create an understanding of how things are before to enable and create an understanding of the impact one event can have. I’ve become quite fond in my work of using flashbacks to illuminate the back story.   I’ve used this technique in my other books to explain a situation at a key point or to signpost something in the future or something in the past that will trigger connections for a reader.   My synopsis however is of...

So, right now you know I have an idea, an outline and I have two main characters. You might be interested to know what my plan for them is and how the process continues. Now it's time for me to tell you without hopefully giving too much away, this is going to be a fine balance to find!   Here we go: What would you do if the love of your life didn't know who you were? What if he forgot you? Forgot the first time you met, your first kiss, the day he proposed and the day you married?  What if six months after your perfect start it was all taken away in the blink of an eye? So this is where we start,  if you ever read any of my work you will find I spend a lot of time dealing with "What if" which are two very plain words but put them together and their impact can be volcanic.   In this story there are a lot of what if elements, it's like walking along a road and coming to a fork every mile or so with a choice that needs to be made a...

I have always been obsessed with movies, theatre and other visual media.  As a child I was bullied so I spent a lot of my time alone,  I would loose myself in movies and books, characters became my friends and every chapter my escape.  I think I started writing as soon as I learned to put pen to paper.  I developed a talent for seeing what I was writing happening in my head like watching a movie and that's still the way I approach my writing now. I sit at my computer tapping out the words describing the scene I see in my head and part of that is seeing the actors play out the characters I create.  I always have a dream cast in mind when I write, I know who I  would entrust my characters to. I'm sure if you ask anything author who wanted their book to become a movie, which I would love to happen one day, they would have dream cast in mind.  So now I will tell you how my dream cast starts out for The Poppy Garden, Leading Man -  Nick Robinso...

Follow my blog with Bloglovin I started coming round to the idea of making the Poppy Garden my priority project, after all I was getting a lot of interest from a particular friend who read similar kind of books and she was enthusiastic about what I could possible be doing.  Now as a writer I want people to be excited about my work and here was someone literally jumping up and down in my officer at my day job begging for chapters, so there had to be something to my idea that was worth exploring. To ensure a steady income and as I'm not a top selling author yet I have a day job, so a lot of my writing is done after work and in to the night.  So I took this idea home and sat at my PC, my writing style varies from book to book, but with this one it's proving to be a mix of prepared and organic styles as I like to call them; My Writing Styles Organic writing This to me is sitting at my PC with a blank document and the words just flow, I wrote my first novel this way. ...

So last summer I'm in my garden, digging over a muddy puddle to turn it in to a lawn.  I should explain I have a three year old golden retriever, called Hero, who as a puppy developed a love of tearing up my garden and digging craters which I'm sure if left to his devices would end up leading to the core of the earth!  Hence I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to repair the damage and create something that could be considered garden like.   Anyway as I'm digging away my mind wandered to memories of my Granddad Joe, who in my opinion was a great gardener.  He taught me what I know about plants and growing things.  Most of my memories of him are in his garden.  I started wondering why my granddad loved his garden so much and I slowly realised that his garden was his way of coping with stress, possibly PTSD.  WO Joseph Robinson  At 18 my Granddad had joined the RAF, war was being fought over Europe and he volunteered to do his bit,...