A long absence

It's been a long time since I did any blogging on here, and for that I apologise.

I haven't been completely absent from writing, however. My business has been pertty busy over the last year or so and I've concentrated a lot of my writing time on the company blog, talking about all manner of digital, IT related things and promoting the services we offer.

But I also decided to have a go at writing a novel. I've tried and failed on many occasions to write a novel, but following some feedback I got on here from my Fifty Shades of Grey post, I was inspired to have a go at it myself.

I finished my first draft about 18 months ago and I sent it off to a few choice friends to read, in the hope of gaining some honest feedback - either 'you should totally send this off to a publisher' or 'oh dear, this is truly terrible, let's never speak of this again.'

I got a few really constructive bits of feedback and made some significant changes to the story line and then sent it out again to the same people and to some new guinea pigs, because I wanted to see if my improvements had made the final plot twist more surprising than it had been first time round.

But no one got back to me. I didn't want to appear desperate so in the end I stopped asking people if they had read it and decided that, rather than waiting to see if my friends thought it was good enough for publication, I'd ask the experts and I finally plucked up the courage to send it off to 3 publishing companies, fully prepared for a long wait followed by 3 rejections.

Less than 6 weeks later I was offered a publishing deal.

I still can't quite believe it. But my debut novel, 'Inspired by Night' will be released on 22nd August 2014 by Xcite Books.


I love saying that!

*skips on the spot*