About two years ago, I wrote a blog post saying I had finished a manuscript for a novel. Well, here’s the deal. It’s not yet… Read More »Project Update: That novel I said I had finished two years ago? Ha! Ha! Ha! Not even close
Every year, a group of volunteers in Western Massachusetts organises the Write Angles Conference at Mt Holyoke College in South Hadley. I was there for… Read More »8 things new writers should know (notes from the Write Angles Conference 2019)
It’s been about 18 months now since I finished the manuscript for my first novel. In April last year, I started sending it out to agents. To lots of agents. But no one wanted to nibble at that hook. You know that feeling when you’re dancing your heart out on the dance floor and no one else will join you? Ya, that’s what hit me. Was I at this party alone? Would I always be alone? Somebody join me! Please! This song rocks!Read More »How not to get an agent for your book
In 2005, I won a poetry competition and the prize was an all-expenses-paid writing residency in Devon in the UK. One of the mentors at the residency was Trinidadian-born British poet and painter, John Lyons. One of the things that Lyons told us, the fresh-faced and eager participants at the residency, was that he and a group of four or five friends who were also poets had one every major poetry prize in the United Kingdom between them.Read More »The underrated power of a writers’ circle