Lorraine Wilson's Blog, page 6

A Letter To Debut Authors

Writing update! I’ve recently handed back edits on We Are All Ghosts In The Forest to my editor - if you are a paid subscriber, you’ll have seen some insider details on how that all worked. But suffice to say it is exciting to have got those edits turned around and hopefully be onto the copyedit stage (where continuity issues and commas will conspire to kill me dead).

I’m currently revising my Welsh Gothic - All The Birds Will Be Hostile - after beta reader feedback. This week that’s mostly been...

The Bone Children & The Darkness

Thank you for joining me for the final episode in this short story, where monsters are lurking!

Read episode 1 here, episode 2 here & episode 3 here. I’d love to know what you think & how many underworlds you spotted in the dark. Please hit subscribe to keep in touch.

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They went down, the air growing ancient and the walls dense with handprints, with scour marks carving long wounds into the stone above the height of Theos’ head. He knew the monster, it was as ancient and as brutal as ...

Adventures in Substack

Hi folks. Thank you so much for reading my (irregular) blogs on this page, it’s been a joy. I have been toying with ideas about how to connect better with readers though, and have decided to give Substack a go. It feels like a more natural home for the blog, giving me the freedom to add more content whilst also reaching a wider audience.

Join my Substack here

I will be blogging more regularly there – posting fortnightly blogs on writing craft, the publishing industry & inspiration, as wel...

Book Sales Aren’t On You (and lots of statistical nerdery)

I wrote a version of this blog a while ago, after some discourse about authors needing to promote their books on GoodReads because the ‘Want To Read’ count is apparently used by publishing to Make Decisions. I didn’t post it then, because I needed (ironically) to focus on my latest book release and then the moment kinda passed. But I figured the subject would come around again, as it was only the latest in a constant cycle of ‘Authors Have To Do X Otherwise Their Book Will Fail’.

And lo! This...

Mother Sea Island Tour

In the lead up to Mother Sea’s publication I did a wee countdown series of social media posts visiting various islands that inspired the island in Mother Sea. It was mostly an excuse to post lots of photos and rave about lovely places, and I figure I ought to pull it all together here just in case. (In case of what, I don’t know … the fiery death of Twitter? the need to prove ownership of the photos? validation that all my effort pulling it together was worth it? … Probably that last one tbh)

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Writing The Difficult Stuff

Mother Sea comes out tomorrow. I am so excited to share this book with you all, and so honoured at the care Fairlight Books have taken with it. I really, really, really hope it resonates with you.

Before it comes out though, I wanted to talk about some of the issues I explore in its pages because if you’ve read my previous blog, you’ll know that when I was writing Mother Sea, I never intended to seek publication. So I went into some places that perhaps I wouldn’t have been brave enough to ve...

The Road To Publication

Recent online conversations about debut expectations versus the long haul of being an author made me realise that I never wrote my version of this blog. People normally write them on signing with their agent, or when their debut releases, don’t they? Well, how about on publishing their third book & announcing their fourth? Perfect time, right?

Two disadvantages of waiting till now is a) that it’s a looooooong post, and b) I can’t be sure of exact numbers. I’m as accurate as possible, because ...

Retreats, Arts Funding & Goats

Last year I was awarded a Creative Scotland grant through their open fund to support my writing of a novel that I generally refer to as Welsh Gothic. This was my first time applying for funding for my writing (years of applying for scientific research funding scarred me for life!), and being awarded a small grant was perhaps one of more validating experiences of my writerly career so far – A group of publishing professionals thought I & this unfinished book had enough potential to be worth suppo...

Dark Academia – tropes, toffs and tribulations.

What is it, why do we love it, why do we hate it, why am I even trying? 

It’s a popular genre at the moment, isn’t it? Whether you consider it as born out of Tumblr vibes or Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, Dark Academia is doing WELL. I’ll confess now that I am both writing a DA and absolutely not writing one. I’ll explain that later.

First though, my Schrodinger’s DA project has got me thinking about the genre itself and all the various conversations that I’ve had with other writers & r...

Submission, Silence & Survival

So I’m ‘on submission’ at the moment. The joy! In case that phrase is unfamiliar (and perhaps faintly nsfw-sounding), it is when an agent has sent their client’s book out to editors and they are waiting to hear back. It is, traditionally, a time of silence and secrecy. We aren’t supposed to talk about being ‘on sub’ too much, and we aren’t supposed to talk about (or to) the editors we’re waiting on. This is so we avoid sounding defeatist & potentially undermining our book’s chances, and also so ...