I’m delighted and honoured to share that Peach Blossom Spring has been selected as the 2023 book for Castro Valley Reads! Castro Valley Reads is an annual literary event where residents in Castro Valley, CA, build community and connections by reading and discussing the same book. There will be a series of events including discussion … Read more
One of the features of Start Writing Fiction is that participants will receive personalised feedback from the tutor with every module. This amounts to six opportunities over twelve weeks to develop an ongoing conversation about your work and your writing. Philosophies of feedback vary among writing tutors. Here’s mine: My philosophy of feedback is that … Read more
Teaching means a lot to me. One of those lovely life paradoxes for me is that through teaching, I often feel like I’m the one who learns the most. I designed and facilitated a lot of creative writing courses through my online business, Spilling the Ink, from 2014-2017. In 2018, I paused the courses to … Read more
The course I’m teaching with the National Centre for Writing this January is called Start Writing Fiction. I like the title (I didn’t come up with it). But it does what all the best sentences do: it makes each word count. Those are some of the thoughts that come to mind when I hear the … Read more
I thought I would update this blog more often, but somehow, time has spun away and here we are, five months after publication, and I’ve finally sat down to gather a few thoughts about having Peach Blossom Spring out in the world. Short version: It’s been incredible. I’ve loved the festivals and events. I’ve loved … Read more
It’s been just about 3 weeks since Peach Blossom Spring was released in the US and the UK. Woo hoo! It’s been exhilarating and intense! I still can’t get used to the idea of my book being in bookstores and libraries. Each message from old friends or new readers that I receive about the book … Read more
February was always going to be a short month, but this time around it came and went before I managed to do a post here! Nonetheless, it was full of a lot of book excitement in the run up to publication. The month started off with the awesome news that Peach Blossom Spring was one … Read more
This is 2022 – the year my novel comes out! I’m writing this on 17 January, just two months from my launch dates in the US and UK. I can feel the momentum growing. Behind-the-scenes planning is simmering away and there’s a lot of exciting news to come. You can keep an eye on my … Read more
I’m delighted to share that Peach Blossom Spring has been selected as one of 10 debut titles in the Winter/Spring 2022 American Booksellers Association Indies Introduce programme. Twice a year, the Indies Introduce programme brings together booksellers from all over the US to choose ten books across fiction and non-fiction to champion in independent bookstores. … Read more
Last Thursday, I went down to London to meet my publishers in person! We sold the book in early March 2020 and now it’s nearly 20 months later. It’s been some time. Seems like we should be old friends by now – and in some ways, we are. But after so many rounds of edits … Read more