Fowl Parenting by Brian Gordon & Parenting Comics by Kos Og Kaos
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 Gordon, a...
Book Feature: The Phoenix Project by D.M. Cain
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. I've...
My New Old Blog
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 this to two...
A Bunch of Birds. Or is That a Watch of Nightingales?
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...
A 400-Year-Old Book Made Entirely of Feathers
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,...
Infinite Waters is Voted one of the Best 50 Indie Books of 2015
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...
…And a Happy New Year!
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 translated to "Live...
Artificially Created Romance Novels: the Next Big Thing? Nah…
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...
My Gift to You: Runaway Smile
My holiday gift is here: Runaway Smile, my award-winning children's book will be free between the 26th and 30th. A little boy wakes up in the morning and realizes he has lost his smile. After spending the entire day trying to find it, he learns the truth behind...
Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas, everyone! Or, if you prefer, Seasons' Greetings (not to be confused with Season's Greetings). Instead of a card, I thought I'd give you a very special...
Runaway Smile Wins the Gelett Burgess Children’s Book Award
I woke up to wonderful news! Runaway Smile has just been announced as the winner of the Gelett Burgess Children’s Book Award, in the Young Adult Fiction category. A lovely gold medal has been awarded (see below), and the book will be included in the Gelett Burgess...
Amazon Rewrites Review Policy
Fake Reviews Friends have been notifying me of changes in the Amazon review policy. "Are they trying to eliminate indies?" a worried friend asked me. Before I go into details, let me first explain the problem from Amazon's point of view. As the Economist points out in...