Fi Phillips

May marks the end of spring and the beginning of summer, fitting in two bank holidays (if you're in the UK) and so two short weeks that makes it feel like holiday time is on the way. It's as if life is telling you to slow down for a while and take a break. Except, I don't feel like taking a break. I want to race on, head down, and get on with all the good stuff 2018 has thrown in my path. This has definitely proven to be a year of 'new' and 'motivation' so far. Murdering The Text Running along with that feeling of motivation is my plan to write two new murder mysteries this year. The first was an idea that came to me while looking back over some old pantomime photos. The second idea came from a discussion with a customer about a murder mystery they want me to write for them. Fi Phillips Copywriter This month, I'm on the look-out for new customers to bolster my income from my current customers and I'm working on a freebie for subscribers...

Last year I set myself a reading list of twelve books. I reckoned one book a month was doable  but unfortunately I failed abysmally. I managed three books over the year. Well, that's not totally true. I read three books from my list but also read several ARC books and draft novels for fellow writers. Still, I didn't meet the challenge I set for myself. This year, I'm doing things differently. Rather than setting a list of books to read and ticking them off as finished, I'm going to add to my 'read' list on the right of this page as I finish each book. I'll review the novels that stand out as special too. As writers, we need to read. It's the other side to our creativity. 2017 is going to see a lot of change in my life and committing to read as much as possible is one of those changes. Wish me luck.

Where have the last few weeks gone? I wrote September's post about my plans for the month with the full intention of posting lots more in the following weeks. Then, our house move happened and somewhere in there our internet connection was cut off for several days too.My time has been hijacked by continual carrying, unpacking, searching and way too much cleaning. I'm still surrounded by boxes but at least now they're only knee high and I can see my family over them. Yesterday, I handed over the keys for our old house and so today, I can finally sit in my new study without any immediate deadlines to drag me off my chair. So what's happening in October for me, as a writer? My Novel I'm still working on my novel, editing and polishing. I was excited to return to it this week but nervous too. Time away from my writing allows me to look at it with fresh eyes and I worried that I might have lost the thread of my storyline in all my editing but that doesn't...

As I've probably mentioned before, I tend to have several books on the go at one time. There'll be one book on my phone to read when I'm out and about, another on my bedside cabinet, and probably a third in the cavernous handbag I occasionally drag out with me. Sometimes, I'll curl up on the couch and read a fourth - the depravity of it all. I'd love to be one of those ordered people who can read books sequentially, from the first to the last of their year's assigned reading list. I'm not that kind of animal though. I hop about between books daily. Thankfully, I have a good memory so I rarely lose track of each storyline - phew. I like to think that I'm a good 'judge of character' when it comes to choosing reading material. I'm rarely disappointed by what I choose, even if I skip some parts of the book, and most of my books become happy shelf buddies in my house. For the last two months, however, I've struggled with a novel. I don...

I've just added a new page to my blog (you can see it on the Pages panel on the top right of this page) - my reading list for 2014 . I've drawn books from two intentions. Firstly, back in January, I told you that the nearest I'd come to making a new year's resolution would be the decision to read books of writers that I knew and interacted with online. Then in February, I told you how I was adding to my reading list by taking part in The Year of Reading Women . There are fifteen books on my list. After a busy start to the year, I'm lagging behind as I've only read the first two, although I have started on number three. I'll review some of the books on my blog (have you seen my review of the first book on my list, Ninety-Five Percent Human ?). What about you? What's on your reading list this year?

The intention of making new year's resolutions has always been to start anew but seeing as 2014 will be more of a continuation for me (working on my novel, writing more plays, losing more weight), I decided to make just one new effort. I'm constantly reading (on my bedside cabinet at the moment are Titania Hardie's The Rose Labyrinth and the first S kulduggery Pleasant novel) but in 2014, I've decided that I'll step away from my usual genres and authors and support some of the writers that I follow, know and converse with. So my reading list for the first half of 2014 looks something like this: Ninety-Five Percent Human by Suzanna Williams : a young adult alien adventure inspired by the 'Welsh Roswell', an alleged UFO crash in the Berwyn Mountains in 1974. A is for Angelica by Iain Broome : his debut novel, "Gordon Kingdom struggles with the fate of his seriously-ill wife while patiently observing and methodically recording the lives of th...

2000 Miles by The Pretenders

I was a reader long before I was a writer. As an only child to older parents, I was allowed to read whatever book, out of the many crammed shelves in our home, took my fancy. I read thrillers, fairytales, history, plays, poetry - making no differentiation between genre or form. As a writer now, I continue to read. I don't just read what I write though (plays, murder mysteries, fantasy). I do my best to stretch my reading choices to other less familiar genres too. This is what I've read over the last six months. The Rose Labyrinth by Titania Hardie I came to Titania Hardie through her books on witchcraft. She has a very calm writing voice so I was excited to buy her first adult fiction book. The Rose Labyrinth is a historical mystery featuring Elizabethan spies and geniuses, a family legacy and the long, hot summer of 2003. The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell This non fiction book discusses Campbell's theory of the journey of the archetypal hero as ...

I recently returned to a book I started reading years ago, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. I got about half way through before we packed up to move house and I've only now found it in a box of miscellaneous items. I packed the box in 2004. Keeping to my 2012 resolution to read more, I've re-started Shadow and in the first section came across a passage that I thought would appeal to the writers and readers in us. Enjoy. "This is a place of mystery, Daniel, a sanctuary. Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs their eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens." The Shadow of the Wind

I've been reading a lot of Hallowe'en related blog posts about everything scary recently - carved pumpkins (that's ours on the left), costumes, recipes and films - but I was surprised how few mentioned books. So I've put together a short list of reading suitable for this night of ghosts and ghouls. I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett This is the fourth Pratchett novel about Tiffany Aching, reluctant witch and the noisy but loyal Wee Free Men. Tiffany is just settling into her new home and witchly community duties. She's doing her best but things get complicated when an evil ghost fixes its eerie sights on Tiffany. http://www.terrypratchett.co.uk/ The Witches by Roald Dahl My children love books by Dahl but I've kept this one back for now as I find it quite frightening myself. The High Witch plans to rid the country of children by turning them into mice (and if that isn't bad enough, she's placed a large order for mousetraps). Thankfully...

Yes, that was me, heavily pregnant and still with book in hand. Now it should go without saying that if you want to be a writer, you should also be a reader. But you shouldn't 'just' be a reader. You should be an avid reader. Books Obvious eh? To know your genre, what's current, what's successful, you must read books in your chosen genre. A visit to the library will tell you what is popular and what the library service deem to be a book in your genre that has 'arrived'. A look around the larger bookshops such as Waterstones and Borders will let you see what is new and in the charts, who the most popular authors are and how prolific they are. Newspapers Both paper and online news will reveal current affairs, what issues are 'hot' and if you delve into the arts sections, you can keep track of the book charts. I find the Times book chart to be especially useful. Magazines What magazines do you read each month? If you're anything like me, you hav...