Winners of RUNAWAY!

The three winners of Runaway are: Jess B, Brianna M and Rebecca H. Copies should be on their way to you soon. Congratulations! Continue reading →

Summer Holidays

So the summer holidays are nearly here. I hope LOTS of Girls Heart Books readers are planning something really nice. Not necessarily travelling far away (although if you are, that’s exciting!) but perhaps a change of scene or activity. I always go to stay with family in the summer holidays and I find a change of … Continue reading →

An Exciting Writing Week

The past week has been up and down. Writing is sometimes a strange process and can feel quite unreal. You spend months alone with your thoughts and computer and it can be hard to believe that the mess of tangled ideas and events in your head that you’re trying to set down coherently on the … Continue reading →

Parcel in the Post

I’ve always loved getting post. Even though most of what I get these days is bills and bank statements, I still get ridiculously excited when I hear the post arrive. And I got a parcel today that was worth getting excited about. Although I was expecting it, I wasn’t expecting it to get to me … Continue reading →

Romantic Novel Awards

On the 17th March, I was lucky enough to to be invited to the Romantic Novel Awards evening in Whitehall in London. This was the second year I had this huge treat; this year it was because my book Smuggler’s Kiss was shortlisted for the Young Adult category of the Romantic Novel of the Year … Continue reading →

Drama Club

I’m very excited to announce that my first-ever book for younger readers – Drama Club – is going into print this May. I originally wrote it as an interactive e-book last year. It isn’t only my first book for younger readers (9-12 age range) it’s also my first book that is set in today’s world … Continue reading →

Workshopping

When I started out writing seriously, I did an MA course in Writing for Young People – at the same time as Girls Heart Books blogger Karen Saunders, as a matter of fact. I wrote my first book on the course: One of the things we learned on the course was to show our writing … Continue reading →

Happy New Writing Year!

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and New Year? I did. I didn’t get any books for Christmas *sob* so I will just have to go and buy myself some! But it was lovely to spend time with my family, talk, eat nice food and see lots of films. I also went to … Continue reading →

A Writing Challenge

Along with many others, I too set myself the target of writing 50,000 words in November. I’ve done it before, so I knew it was possible, but this year I cheated a bit. I finished a story (about 30,000 words) and wrote a middle section of another (the last 20,000). What really amazed me is … Continue reading →

Judging stories

I’ve recently been marking and judging both manuscripts and short stories. And it’s struck me all over again how subjective our response to books can be. There really isn’t good and bad, right and wrong in writing. Or at least there can be, but the lines are very blurred.   There are certain things one … Continue reading →