Jan 14, 2016 | Interviews Features and Reviews
Eva Xanthopoulos has just published her first book, The Escapist. This is the first book in the Sought After Blood Lines series, with book 2, The Peacekeeper, expected summer 2016. She writes in a YA Fantasy genre, with Romantic, Utopian, and Dystopian elements....
Jan 12, 2016 | Entertainment, Other, Random Musings
Dedicated to my blonde author friend, Lucy, this post was inspired by a friend commented that I was rather phlegmatic in my approach to the new baby. I wasn’t sure what she meant, as, in fact, I feel ecstatic about it. So, I looked it up. The word comes from...
Jan 10, 2016 | Entertainment
Dedicated to my author friend, Helen Jones, the conclusion to my three-part bird special has to do with my getting into the role of dad. Obviously, a crucial part of the preparation is reading parenting comics. Some of the best I’ve come across are by Brian...
Jan 8, 2016 | Blog hops tours & reblogs, Interviews Features and Reviews
This book feature is part of a blog tour organized by 4WillsPublishing. Join me and author D.M. Cain, as she explains her fascination with ravens. Why is there always a ‘Raven’ in my books? The raven: A stunningly majestic bird, imbued with both power and grace....
Jan 7, 2016 | My Publications
As you know, I switched to a self-hosted WordPress.org solution for this blog about a month ago. Since then, I have noticed that my stats have declined slightly. What’s worse, I don’t seem to be gaining new followers quite as fast as before. I attribute...
Jan 6, 2016 | Entertainment, Fun Historical Facts, Writing
Continuing the three-part special on birds that started with A 400-Year-Old Book Made Entirely of Feathers, here is a post that deals with a truly thorny issue: You’ve just spotted a bunch of birds. Excited, you rush to tell your friends. Which is great, until you try...
Jan 4, 2016 | Entertainment
This post kicks off a 3-part special on birds with a most unusual book I came across on Atlas Obscura. In 1618, Dionisio Minaggio, Chief Gardener of the State of Milan, created a series of pictures. They were images of birds and scenes from the era: hunters,...
Jan 2, 2016 | Events and Giveaways, My Publications
You may remember my recent post, Help Needed: Nominate Runaway Smile for the Best Indie Book of 2015. You very kindly responded to my request, and nominated my work. In total, over 10,000 books were nominated this year, and now the results are in. At #47, we find...
Dec 31, 2015 | Events and Giveaways
Happy New Year to all of you wonderful people – or, as we used to say in Scotland, Happy Hogmanay. A big, big thank you for being part of my journey. May 2016 bring you nothing but joy. Oh, and if you’re wondering, Lang may yer lum reek is roughly...
Dec 29, 2015 | Entertainment, Writing
I was reading the other day on Gizmodo a fascinating post about a bunch of computer scientists who have trained artificial intelligence using human knowledge of the, uh, carnal variety. Specifically, they used 14 million passages of romance novels to create little...
