Kate Kelly's Blog, page 14

Giving and Receiving Critique: A few Dos and Don’ts

Eventually you will reach a point in your writing journey where you expose your words to the world. Perhaps you have joined a writers group or online critique club. Either way, giving and receiving feedback is essential if you wish to continue to learn and improve. So here are a few tips for anyone about to take this step.

Giving Critique: 

Critiquing other people’s work is one of the best ways to learn the craft. When you start to see issues in other’s work and the possible solutions it b...

A Few Thrilling Reviews.

I’ve been reading quite a few thrillers recently and here is a roundup of some of the more memorable ones. I’m always looking for more so please leave your recommendations in the comments below.

Out of the Ice by Ann Turner

Environmental scientist Laura is sent to a remote Antarctic island to carry out an assessment of an abandoned whaling station. The abandoned village is in an exclusion zone, but Laura soon starts to suspect that someone else has been here. Something is badly amiss – or is a...

Shortlisting!

Very excited that my latest novel, an adult thriller, has been shorlisted for the Deviant Minds Writing Prize run by Corvus Books and AM Heath. I don't expect to win but I'm thrilled to have got this far.

Writers as Readers

Most writers are also avid readers, and we all tend to write in the genres we love to read. There are a number of clear advantages for reading widely in the genre you are writing and I’ve outlines a few of these below:

1. Understanding the market. It is good to get a feel for what is selling and what your potential audience enjoys reading. This will give you confidence that you are on the right track.

2. Knowing what’s gone before. If you’ve read widely in a genre you’re far less likely to end...

Guest: Children's Author Cherry Cobb

Today's guest is Cherry Cobb. Her debut children's novel, Will's War, has just been published by Candy Jar.


Will is an ordinary boy who likes to build Lego models, and play with his dog Rollo. But after a stupid row with his mum he ends up at his grandad’s house, where he discovers an old air raid shelter. Will steps inside to investigate, but when he comes out he is not in his grandad’s garden but in Second World War London.
How will he get back?

Hello Cherry, Welcome to the Scribbling Sea Serp...

Ten years of Blogging

It is now ten years since I started this blog. I initially set it up to chart my journey to publication, as well as procrastinating about other issues surrounding the world of writing. Over the years the blogging scene has changed, and I guess the nature of this blog has changed, as well as my place in the world of publishing. So it seems sensible to look at these changes in a bit more detail.

1. My publication journey

When I started this blog, back in 2008, I had a total of five short story sa...

A Change of Direction

So far all my published work has been under the name Kate Kelly. These are my SF and weird fiction short stories, my short story collection, and of course my YA thriller Red Rock, the peak of my writing career so far.

But I’ve been reviewing my current work and I can’t help feeling that, without really thinking, I’ve taken a change of direction.

I’ve looked at the various novels written over the years and the ideas I’ve been running with recently and there are four projects which I feel have le...

Review: The Misper by Bea Davenport.

“I knew this girl, you see. A sort of a friend. No one thought she really mattered much, but that turned out to be a mistake. Because she blew a hole through my life – and the lives of everyone I knew.”


The Misper is the new YA thriller by Bea Davenport which will be hitting the bookshelves on the 1st March this year. It is published by Conrad Press which is a fairly small publisher, and as I result I fear this book might not get the exposure it deserves.

First impressions – the cover – the cov...

Enter the Aftermath

Enter the Aftermath, a collection of post-apocalyptic fiction from TANSTAAFL Press has just been released. This is the second in the ‘Enter the…’ series of anthologies and contains my Cli-Fi short story “A Time of Dying”.

The first in the series, Enter the Apocalypse, was published last year and explores a range of possible apocalypses that might befall mankind. In Enter the Aftermath the stories explore the height of these apocalypses and in the third, to be released later this year, Enter th...

Creating a Sense of Place: Guest Post by Kathy Shuker.

Today my special guest is Kathy Shuker, a Devon based author who writes intriguing mysteries with an evocative sense of place. Welcome to the Scribbling SeaSerpent, Kathy.

I’ve been writing novels now for around fifteen years. Most of the early ones never saw the light of day (fortunately) but three have been published and many readers have commented on their strong sense of place. It’s been a long learning curve and here I’ll try to share what I’ve learnt and how I approach the setting for a...