Words on a Page

  There is something about the open spaces of the American West that tugs at the wanderers among us. Whether we've explored it first-hand or paid only brief visits via the cinema screen, the western landscape – in places devoid of human habitation, with a harsh and rugged beauty – intrigues our vagabond spirits and draws us in. The eight stories in Diane Simmons'  Little America  are set amid this vast and unknowable backdrop and populated by a cast of rootless wanderers, some trying to escape their pasts, others searching for a future somewhere beyond the ever receding horizon.  In the title story, we join Hank and Lorraine, a pair of small-time fraudsters moving from one town to the next. With them is Hank's young daughter, Billie, from whose perspective the story is told. As we travel beside her, we see that the story is not so much about Billie's relationships with the adults in the car, but instead about the unknown territory of her own identity: “Billie…knew [Ha

When Missing Words  was published, I thought I could sit back and let the marketing folks do their business, watching the reviews roll in and the sales figures mount. I quickly learned, however, that's no longer the way things work in the publishing world. If you've been taken on by an independent publisher with a small marketing team and an even smaller budget, you'll already know how difficult it is to get your books noticed.  Within a short time of publication, I'd spent my advance - and more - on Facebook ads and ads in print magazines, doing book giveaways, and speaking to librarians and booksellers on two continents. But it's never been clear to me whether that effort and expense resulted in actual sales.  The situation is even more precarious for authors who've gone down hybrid or self-publishing routes because even more of the burden of promotion falls on their shoulders. Yes, there are indeed self-published authors who have had very impressive sales - b

  Photo credit:  Amanda Slater  cc 2009 It's Sunday morning, and still the August Bank Holiday weekend. Jenny has spent the night at a B&B on the western edge of the Isle of Wight. She has just one more day to find Deborah, but is there, perhaps, something else she's looking for as well? ~ The old road from The Needles to Freshwater Bay rolls along in waves as if the land were a solid sea, cresting and falling with a frozen tide. The sea, itself, has turned a steely grey, whitecaps punctuating its surface as it churns in the wind. As she joins the A3055 again, following along the southern coast, she catches glimpses of the chalk cliffs crumbling into the waves. The whole island, it seems, is being consumed by the sea. She keeps to the edge of the road, squeezed between the grassy verge and the last of the summer holiday traffic. Now and then, as she climbs the long hill to the top of Military Road, moving slowly in her lowest gear, cars grow impatient and push past too clos

  Photo credit: Dominic Alves cc 2011 It's the August Bank Holiday weekend, here in the UK, and in Portsmouth, the Victorious Music Festival is in full swing down on Southsea Common. Over on the island, it's the weekend of annual Isle of Wight International Scooter Rally, and yesterday hundreds of scooters made the ferry crossing from Old Portsmouth. On this very day, in 1984, Jenny crossed over with them - her last chance to find Deborah before the end of the month. ~ It is Saturday morning, the start of the bank holiday weekend, and this time she is taking the car ferry to Fishbourne, a few miles to the west of Ryde. A veil of fog hangs over the water, and the seam between sea and sky, crafted anew each morning, is stitched so finely that from the bow of the ship Jenny cannot tell where one ends and the other begins. Everything is white and empty and thick with silence. Lost in the mist somewhere off to the right of the ship, a foghorn cries out. A moment later, a muffled

    Jenny’s life is at a crossroads. Her  marriage has grown silent since the sudden death of her youngest daughter, and now her eldest and only child has begun pushing her away. Nobody at home seems to need her anymore. At the Royal Mail sorting office where she is the only woman to have stuck with the job, her position is equally precarious. Though her boss can’t fault her work, he has made it clear he wants her out. Undermined at home and at work, Jenny is desperate for something to change.  So, when a postcard from Australia, begging the recipient for forgiveness, but with an incomplete address on the Isle of Wight lands on her sorting table, she does the unthinkable – she slips it up her sleeve and sets off on her bicycle to deliver it herself. If she can’t save her own faltering relationships, perhaps she can help someone else save theirs. Set in Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight during the turbulent summer of 1984,  Missing Words  captures Thatcher’s Britain at a moment of  natio

If you've attended the Winchester Writers' Conference in the past, you'll know what a fabulous opportunity it presented to make face-to-face connections with agents, publishers and other writers, as well as opportunities to learn more about the craft of writing and how to get your work noticed. While the conference has now been taken over by the good folks at I Am in Print , and has been redubbed the I Am Writing Festival , it offers people the same chance to build their knowledge of the industry and make those valuable connections. I'm excited to be taking part in the inaugural year of the new Festival, working alongside novelist and short story writer Helen Salsbury as we lead a workshop on writing literary fiction. Space is limited, so we encourage people to sign up asap. And do check out all of the other workshops, discussions and events as well. To check out the full programme, click HERE . To book tickets for our workshop on writing Literary Fiction, click HERE .

Since Missing Words  was launched in the UK last summer, time has sped by, with book signings, interviews, and plans to take part in a number of presentations and discussion panels including three events at this year's  Portsmouth BookFest .  And now we have the American release to celebrate. To mark the occasion of Missing Words  heading across the pond, I've teamed up with fellow Fairlight Books author Debbi Voisey for a virtual book launch. Debbi's beautiful novella Only About Love  will be published there on the same day. Please join us on Saturday February 26th 2 p.m. - Pacific Time 3 p.m. - Mountain Time 4 p.m. - Central Time 5 p.m. - Eastern Time 6 p.m. - Atlantic Time 6:30 p.m. - Newfoundland Time 10 p.m. - UK If you're on Facebook, please follow this link to say you're coming or to register your interest, and we'll send you a reminder and Zoom link at the end of the week: Virtual Book Launch . If you're not on Facebook, please send me a message and

  As the old year passed into the new, last night, I celebrated by cycling along the seafront. It was a warm, dry evening, and half the city, it seemed, had turned out for a giant, midnight beach party. There were bonfires on the shingle, and family groups of revelers stretched out along the prom. In the minutes coming up to midnight, faces glowed in the darkness in phonelight anticipation as people checked the time. Then, in an unsynchronised fashion, rockets began shooting skyward over the sea. Across the Solent, as if in response, the sky above the Isle of Wight was filled with bursting bouquets of light. And at the stroke of twelve the boats in the black water that divided us from them sounded their horns in a discordant and mournful drone. Were they crying out in celebration? Or were they grieving over another lost year? Once more, a new year has crept through the dark days of December and taken me by surprise. Only yesterday, it was Christmas. And a week before that it was Bonfir