Saturday, 17 September 2016

Festival of Words

Today I visited South Molten Country Market for their Festival of Words event. I went with my husband and four boys to hear some of our favourite local authors talk about and read from their new books.

Authors included Victoria Eveleigh, Claire Barker and Dan Metcalf. It was a real treat meeting and listening to Dan. It was the first time we met him and we fell in love with his books immediately.

Dan writes the Lottie Lipton series. Lottie Lipton is based in The British Museum and she is a nine year old investigator. There are six books in this series, you can find out more about them on Dan's website.


Our signed books from Dan!
Dan reading from 'The Catacombs of Chaos!

We also had the privilege of seeing the lovely Claire Barker again. We try to attend events where Claire is because we are the biggest fans of her books. The Knitbone Pepper series is truly amazing and beautifully written with awesome illustrations. I highly recommend these books to both kids and adults. We recently attended the book signing for Claire's final book in the series 'A Horse Called Moon.' That completes our signed collection. 

Claire Barker and A Horse Called Moon!

Our awesome signed collection of The Knitbone series!

I love these kind of events. If you get an opportunity to attend a local authors book signing, go along. They're always happy to meet you and sign your books. Support your local authors!

Keep writing, keep chasing your dreams!

Steph on Twitter

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Tuesday, 14 June 2016

Sidmouth Literary Festival

Hello to you all!

Last weekend I had the exciting opportunity to attend my first literary festival in Sidmouth. It was amazing, I learnt loads and met some wonderfully talented authors.

One of my highlights was having a one to one with a literary agent about my novel 'A Woman's World.' She gave me amazing advice on what direction my book could go and she said "come back to me when you've finished your book," which is more than I could have hoped for.

I heard talks from published authors such as Kate Hamer and Jane Corry, I enjoyed a Bronte tea party with Juliet Barker and heard an inspiring talk form Dame Penelope Lively. But my favourite event from the weekend was Chic Lit and Chocolates with one of my favourite authors Veronica Henry. I got to meet her and bag myself a signed copy of her latest book, 'How to Find Love in a Bookshop.'



The lovely Veronica Henry and 'How to Find Love in a Bookshop'


The whole weekend was an amazing experience. I walked away feeling motivated, inspired and excited for the next literary festival I'm able to attend.

Keep writing, keep chasing your dreams!

@stephlottwriter

Saturday, 23 April 2016

World Book Night

Last night was amazing. I attended World Book Night at Bideford College Library and got to hear lots of talented authors talk about and read extracts from their new books.

The authors included Victoria Eveleigh, C J Busby and one my favourites Claire Barker. I should mention here that they're all children's authors, but you're never to old to get lost in a children's story.

Claire Barker has series of books called Knitbone Pepper Ghost Dog and last night she was signing copies of the second in the series called Knitbone Pepper Ghost Dog and The Last Circus Tiger.

I always love meeting Claire. She's super friendly and always has time to talk, so if you're lucky enough to go to one of her events, stop by and say hello!

My mainly happy family with Claire and our signed copy of Knitbone


In addition to purchasing Claire's book, I also got signed copies of Victoria Eveleigh's and C J Busby's new books too. There was also a selection of free books to take on arrival, I think it's fair to say I was in book heaven.

My goodies from World Book Night
If you've never attended a World Book Night, try to get along to one. I'm already looking forward to next years.

Keep writing and keep chasing your dreams!

Steph on Twitter

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Sunday, 20 March 2016

I'm a Student Again!

Hello!

I'm super excited to announce that I'm a student again! Yay! Not bad for a 32 year old.

I graduated from the Open University last year with an English Literature degree and if I'm honest, I missed having a deadline to work towards. They keep me focused and make me finish pieces of work that I'm working on.

I never planned to study again so soon after my degree, but I noticed that the OU had started a Masters degree in Creative Writing. I couldn't resist signing up for this as creative writing was my favourite module in my degree.

Having recently finished a first draft of my first novel I decided to use this masters as platform to move my story forward. I can't wait to get started and I can't help but feel like a teenager again having one of these:

My student card!

I wonder what new stories I will come up with during this course...excites!

Keep writing and keep chasing your dreams!

Steph on Twitter

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Monday, 4 January 2016

Happy New Year

Hello and happy new year to you all!

I have a number of goals that I'd like to achieve this year. I like to list them and then see how many I can tick off my list before the year is up. So below are some of the goals that I'd like to achieve in 2016:

- To get one of my children's picture books published. This is a goal I'll always work towards, plus I love writing children's stories.

- To start editing my NanoWriMo novel 'A Woman's World.' This is going to be a real challenge for me as I've never edited a novel before...I'm up for the challenge!

- I'd like to achieve something musically! After becoming a semi-finalist in the UK Songwriting Contest last year I feel inspired to enter again this year. I might even become a finalist...it could happen!

- I'd also like to try and record some of my songs professionally. Although if I can make it into the studio even once to record an original song I'll consider that an achievement.

So there we have it, my 2016 goals. Lets see how many I can tick off my list! What will you achieve this year?

Keep writing and keep chasing your dreams!

Steph on Twitter

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Tuesday, 15 September 2015

Cry

Hey! It's been a good week since I last posted on here but don't worry, I haven't been doing nothing.
I've been enjoying trying out some different ways of writing. Flash fiction has always interested me so I've had a go at that. The small word count has been a trial so I'm still working on this piece of writing but I will share it with you as soon as it is finished.

I've also been writing some poetry which I haven't done for a while and I've loved getting back into it. I've written three new poems over the last couple of weeks and I thought I'd use this post to share one of them with you. It's called 'Cry' and I'd love to know your thoughts on it.

Cry

They spy
They lie
They watch people die

Don’t let them see you cry

They openly criticize
They’ve evil in their eyes
We’re the ones they despise

A nation grieves and cries

Here to scrutinise
There to patronise
People to terrorise

Still a nation cries

Listen! Let’s unify
Dare to defy
Make a stand, try

Whatever you do, don’t cry

I hope you enjoyed this poem, feel free to leave any comments, I'd love to hear from you and I look forward to sharing a piece of flash fiction with you on my next post.

Keep writing and keep chasing your dreams!

@stephlottwriter on Twitter

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Friday, 28 August 2015

Writer's block? ...What writer's block?

'You know you're a writer when your imaginary friends won't talk to you anymore.' I love this quote, it sums up writer's block for me anyway! We all hit a brick wall in our writing at one time or another but I'm writing this blog to tell you that there are ways to break through it.

Below is my tip on how I conquer the inevitable writer's block when it hits, It requires many notebooks!


Categorized Notebooks 
OK, so my first piece of advice is to buy a pack of notebooks. I can highly recommend the ones in the photo above from Amazon. They're an ideal size for carrying around and they come in a pack of ten for a bargain price. Check them out!

Once you have your notebooks, start to categorize them. For example I use categories like Characters, Potential Settings, Potential Lines and Story Ideas. I also have other notebooks for Book Review Notes, Morning Pages and Poetry. If you have any other ideas for notebooks I'd love to hear them.

Having done this begin to fill them with as many ideas as possible, even if they sound silly at the time, It's always worth writing them down.

Now you have your notebooks and ideas you never need to be stopped by writer's block again. Start having fun. If you've hit a brick wall, dig into your notebooks and start mixing up your ideas. Choose a potential setting, pick a character to place into your setting and give them your potential lines to say. (If they sound silly even better!) 

If you've filled your notebooks enough, you'll rarely run out of ideas to have fun with. After all we should be enjoying our writing and you never know, what might seem silly to start with could end up inspiring a bigger piece of work.

Keep writing and keep chasing your dreams!