Words on a Page

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 to...

  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 ...

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 ...

The past few weeks, since the publication of Missing Words , have been a bit of a whirlwind and I am struggling to keep up with everything that is happening at the moment. A few days after the online launch with my cohort from Fairlight Moderns I had my very first LIVE book signing at my local independent bookshop – the fabulous Pigeon Books . Even though Covid restrictions have been almost entirely lifted here in the UK, many people – myself included – are not ready throw themselves into a crowded indoor space just yet, so the book signing was a good alternative to a full-on event with a book reading and clinking glasses of champagne. For three hours, I sat as if enthroned in the comfy chair in the window of Pigeon Books while a surprising number people trooped through the door and asked me – ME – to sign copies of my book. It was a wonderful day, with time to chat to friends I hadn’t seen since pre-Covid days, including some I hadn’t seen for years. And more thrilling still were the ...

I’m pleased to announce that Missing Words was published yesterday, and last night it was sent into the world with a fabulous (if virtual) book launch, hosted by Emma Timpany, author of the award-winning novella Travelling in the Dark . All four of the authors published this summer by Fairlight Moderns took part in the event, reading from their books and answering questions. Covid has changed a lot of things, and book launches are one of them. But you know what? Having an online launch was okay. In fact, it was better than okay. Anyone who knows me, knows that I’m not a schmoozer. I hate crowds, and I hate social events where I’m expected to ‘mingle’ and make small talk. Worse yet, is talking about my book (note to self: I really must get over that). So last night’s virtual event came as something of a relief. Sure, I had to provide my own champagne, but I was very happy to stay home where my internet could unexpected go down if I started to panic. But the main thing that made the...

  After my interview with Fairlight Books author, Douglas Bruton , discussing his latest publication, Blue Postcards , and his approach to writing, he turned the tables on me and posed some questions of his own. Here, we continue our discussing about reading, writing, and my literary novella, MissingWords , which will be published on 5 th August. ~ Douglas:   I tried writing in my teens and then again at university – nothing I wrote was worth the ink. It was not until I got a computer (aged thirty) that I found a way to write that worked. When did you know you could write and that it was something you wanted to do? Loree:   I remember dreaming up stories a lot when I was a kid. I’m an only child, and spent a lot of time entertaining myself. I know that I wanted to be a writer long before I ever wrote anything down on paper. In that way, I think I was very typical of a lot of the students I’ve worked with who want to write, but don’t yet have the tools to do so. I...

  In the third of this series of interviews with Fairlight authors, I have the pleasure of talking to Debbi Voisey. Debbi’s novella Only About Love will be published on 5 th August, the same day as my own, in the Fairlight Moderns list of literary novellas. ~ Loree:   I’m really looking forward to reading Only About Love when it comes out in August. I believe it’s described as a ‘novella in flash’ – which sounds really intriguing. I wonder if you could say something about your involvement with flash fiction, and what it is about the form that attracts you. Debbi:   Thanks, and I am so chuffed we are sharing a publication day. I can’t wait to read Missing Words . I started writing flash fiction when I was trying to avoid working on a novel! I love it for its immediacy. It allows you to get your thoughts out, and for people to read them, far more quickly than when writing a novel. It also really helps you to be economic with words and to tighten your prose. O...