Linda Parkinson-Hardman's Blog

Self-Censorship in Contemporary Astrology – Research Project

Hello, and thank you for reading this post.

I am studying for the MA in Cultural Astronomy and Astrology at the University of Wales Trinity St David’s and am interested in astrological censorship, and in this instance, self-censorship. This initial project is part of the Researching Contemporary Cosmologies module which is designed to consider people’s beliefs about the world and how it works.

There has been a rich history of self-censorship in astrology, often for pragmatic, safety and security...

February 2025 Newsletter – updating the writing shed

If you’ve been around here for a while you will have noticed that my blog is hosted by Substack, rather than here on my website. The reason I do this is because it’s the perfect way to write long-form posts that go automatically to my Substack subscribers.

Since moving to Substack I’ve made some big changes on a reasonably regular basis, these posts were usually titled ‘All change’, and were where I announced the latest thing I was interested in or going to write about. However, since 2022, when...

Chesil Bank Writing Shed Workshops 2025

Chesil Bank Writing Shed meets twice each month on the 2nd and 3rd Thursday’s at Portesham Village Hall. We start promptly at 7 pm and finish around 9 pm. You can find more information about each meeting as they are added to the calendar on the website.

You can download a calendar marking all the dates here: Writing Shed Calendar 2025

This year we will meet on:

9th January16th January – bring and share for feedback13th February20th February6th March – NOTE DAY CHANGE20th March10th April1...

Creative Hub

The Creative Hub is my private members group on Substack. You can join by adding your email address below and selecting one of the paid subscription options.

This is the place to be if you want to make the most of the words you craft and get your work into the hands of readers. Each month we’ll learn what it means to live a writing life, and how to sell, publish and promote our work in a monthly mini masterclass and Q&A ‘ask me anything’ session. You’ll get access to everything that’s gone befo...

The importance of asking for reviews

I’ve been thinking about the importance of adding ‘about the author’ pages to the books I self-publish, especially the ebooks. It’s common practice in the traditionally published but seems to be lacking in those published by the authors themselves.

The advantage of an author page is you can include links and information about anything else you’ve written. And in 2013, when the original version of this post was first published it appeared the CEO of Goodreads, Otis Chandler agreed with me. Which...

Creating the perfect author business card

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Favourite Writing Competitions for 2023

Several years ago I used to produce a monthly update of writing competitions but it became cumbersome and unwieldy and I decided to stop doing it. I’m rethinking that decision as I know that many of the people who follow me are interested in the Hysteria Writing Competition, therefore I assume you’re interested in writing comps in general.

I thought I might ease myself in gently with a list of my favourite writing competitions for 2023. Although they are based in the UK, they all welcome interna...

Where are my readers? And other infrequently answered questions for authors.

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How to write like JK Rowling

There are many reasons given about why JK Rowling’s series about Harry Potter worked its magic in such a universal way. Much has been written about how the story and plot appealed to both adult sand children because of the core archetypal themes that ran through the series. However, I’d like to suggest there may be another, even simpler reason as to why the books were so popular.I believe they appealed to all five of our senses.

We each have preferred learning, reading and entertainment styles. ...

The Social Media Refuseniks Guide to Book Marketing

101 Handy Hints to help you market and sell your book without resorting to big tech!

It would be fair to say that for most authors the act of writing books is the bit they enjoy most. By contrast, the bit most of us find frustrating is the amount of time and effort it takes to get our work in front of a paying audience.

This is the case for all writers whether published traditionally (which in the ideal world would consist of a publisher loving your book enough to give you an obscene advance and...