Kick Ass Girls!

If you’re not aware, my debut novel The Doors was published by Fire and Ice, an imprint of Melange (you can find the link below if you’re interested in taking a look at a YA with a twist!)

Today marks the promotion of the new project by Fire and Ice #kickassgirlsofya. We’re celebrating the strengths of our female heroines and you can get involved too! Check out the calender below and hold steady for more info. I’m running the Instagram event from 8th April and it’s one that you won’t want to miss!

If you want to take part, here’s the link for my Instagram account and I hope to see you there: https://www.instagram.com/alicejblack/

 

 

Granville

You may remember me chatting about a co-written novella a few weeks ago. This was co-written with David Owain Hughes and came to fruition last year after a lot of early morning Facebook conversations. It grew and grew and gained a life of its own and now, lo and behold, it will be released sooner than I could imagine!

From Stitched Smile Press, you’ll meet Granville. There’s a new killer in town…

 

Saying Goodbye to 2015

There’s always something quite nice and refreshing about a new year. I always find myself gearing up ready for exciting things. I make goals for myself and put in plot points to reach them. I relish the idea of starting afresh and while 2015 has not been a particularly arduous year, I feel like 2016 is signalling great new things to come.

Already I have had news that a co-written novella by myself and David Owain Hughes has been accepted for publication. I have a novel in with Dark Chapters Press which I hope to hear about come February and already a couple of short stories lined up to be in anthologies.

I have plans to finish writing a series of novels that I’m working on. This year I wrote two which means I’m challenging myself to write five novels next year in that series. I have another idea brewing that could possible be something in the middle grade/YA range which I’m excited about and of course I’ll try and keep up with short story submissions.

In other things I want to challenge myself to read more. Although the latter half of this year has gotten relatively better, I’ve picked up an actual reading challenge and started compiling a list of books that I want to acquire.

And of course there are those usual personal goals in amongst all of that including being more organised and certainly more assertive. That’s always a hard one, isn’t it?

Whether you’re a goal setter or not, I wish you all the most happy of New Years and hope that 2016 brings everything you could want.

 

 

No Zero Days

If you read my last blog post about resolutions, you’ll know that one of mine was to have no zero days. I’ve heard it before, inspired by a friend of a writing website I use regularly, and I remember him saying to me that as long as you write something it’s better than nothing. I’ve always toyed with the idea but always thought that I couldn’t achieve it. I mean, we all have days where we’re so rushed off our feet there’s hardly time to think or so busy at work that we skip our lunch, right? But, on the same level, I haven’t challenged myself to write a certain number of words a day which makes it less daunting.

For example, over the next three days I’m at work with one relatively normal shift and then two twelve hour shifts. There’s no way I could sit and tell myself I have to write 1000 words that day. It just wouldn’t happen. However, if I sit with a bit of paper and tell myself to write the next paragraph of the story I’m working on, I’ll do it. A few words and then I’ve scored another no zero day and added to something I’m working on. It’s a win win situation really.

One thing I decided I was going to do was keep a tally of how many words I write per day. It means I can look back to it and check out when my best days were and why and also calculate how many I’ve written over a week, a month, etc. I didn’t decide this until day three and I hadn’t totalled my word counts for the first two days so they are rough guestimates but still, you get the idea.

Yesterday was so far my most productive days. I wrote 1820 words. I felt like I was on a roll, the words were flowing onto the page and I had a moment in my mind that I wanted to reach before I stopped writing. It worked well for me. Today I’m feeling a little more lost but I know I’ll write something!