Writing and publishing a book can be overwhelming. So if you are thinking of writing a book in this new year of 2025 then here are the elements you must consider:Research. You will need to research details relevant to your world and story. You can do...

I've been a fan of Tolkien's works ever since I read The Hobbit as a child.I remember going to watch the 1970s animated version of The Lord of the Rings with a couple of friends after school back in the 80s. In some ways the new The War of the Rohirr...

Today one sees all manner of fancy books and methods employed by authors to attract people to their work — maps, bookmarks, foil blocking, artwork, jewellery ... you name it. These may be of worth to dedicated fans, but what does the average reader l...

Around the middle of September (2024), so about a month ago, I started a new project in a totally new genre for me — a murder mystery novel. A whodunit set in 1920s London.The planning of it has certainly been a different experience to my normal genr...

I'm not going to dwell upon the debates and controversies of AI (Artifical Intelligence) here. What I am going to do it simply describe how and why I use AI during my writing process.AI ARTWhen I start a new book I often generate AI images for the ch...

I've written three works of humour (that's 'humor' if you're in the United States!), all of which have been parodies. Parodies can be very silly. Mine are. There's something satisfying when you read a review, as I have with my own Pied & Prodigio...

My latest novelette, The Old Woman of the Stones, is a fantasy romance inspired by a semi-historical Scottish legend, richly woven with threads of Highland folklore. At its heart lies a tale of love, betrayal, and supernatural fate—drawn from the st...

Today I have launched my very first serialized work of fiction, releasing at two episode per week (Monday and Fridays), on Ream Stories and Royal Road. It's called The Elderley Scrawls: Skewrim — The Unmodded Truth and is a parody of the main questli...

I started writing my first novel, The Serpent in the Glass, in 1997. Aimed at the Middle Grade audience, and the young at heart, it is a portal fantasy set in the borders of Scotland.Although the writing of the book was certainly later influenced by ...

"Before I buy a novel I like to know more than what can be gleaned from the cover and blurb. It might not be hard to work out the genre, even the subgenre and intended audience, but other properties of a work of fiction are not so easily discerned.On...

Generations have been enthralled by Tolkien’s epic fantasy, “The Lord of The Rings”. Its pages have been studied alongside the works of C.S. Lewis in Christian-literature classes, a society exists dedicated to preserving it in the spirit of its autho...

One persistent group of enemies in Song Child is the rusalki. In Slavic folklore, a rusalka was a woman who had either died a violent death in water or committed suicide in water. These malevolent night-time creatures haunted rivers, lakes, pools of ...

“The peculiar quality of the ‘joy’ in successful Fantasy can thus be explained as a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality of truth.” Since my childhood, I've had an interest in myth, folklore, folk tales, and even legends — not in the mythos ...

My interest in Slavic culture and myths began in earnest in 2020 after I started listening to folk (and other) songs from that part of the world. Having had an interest in folklore and myth, chiefly Irish and Norse, since childhood, it was perhaps in...