I’ve been getting quite a few hits lately from search terms such as “when do I self-publish my novel?” and “when does a book need to be published for the Christmas market?” I already pontificated on the issue of self-publishing for Christmas in this post, but that only dealt with one time of year. Now I’d like to talk…
Lights… Camera…. READ! How Writing Goes Live
One thing which made the transition from my business brain to my bookish brain lately was a certain trend in the music industry, which now seems to be making inroads into the book industry. It’s all becoming more and more about live performance. Part of what I do for a living (my actual living, which pays…
What A Blank Page Says To A Writer
Blank pages. You know what they look like, right? Empty, white space? Wrong. A blank page can be full of things. Daft people – optimists and the like – might say they are full of possibility. But a blank page can be chock-full of insults, jibes, and taunts too. Just look at what a blank page says to a writer. You can tell…
Unbelievable New Tax Reforms For Writers in Ireland
Yup. That’s what I said, folks. Unbelievable. The Irish government issued its annual budget on Tuesday. In it, there were plenty of teeny-tiny measures to please almost everybody just a teeny-tiny bit, but nothing targeted at the artistic community, or at writers in particular. I reckon the government missed a trick here (particularly if, as I suspect, every second…
Look Away Now… It’s Irish Writing Kryptonite
Tell me. Have you breathed any air, lately? Got up in the morning? Smiled, any time in the last 6 weeks? Yes? Well, pull up a pew, then, because you need to listen to this. I don’t want to be the girl who cried wolf, here, because that could possibly ruin my cheap and nasty…
I WON AT THE BLOG AWARDS! And, um, this outfit happened
So I wasn’t expecting that! (Obviously, or I never would have promised you a photograph.) But I won the award for Best Newcomer at the Blog Awards last night. And I’m so delighted I don’t even mind jeopardising everything I hold dear now, by showing you just how seriously I took the 1980s fancy dress theme. It was marginally funny…
The 2014 1980’s Blog Awards Are Here! Wait. That’s not right
The 1980s Blog Awards 2014 are here! Hang on, that still doesn’t sound… Oh yes. It’s the Blog Awards Ireland 2014, and on Saturday night, it’s the 1980s! This Supreme Do takes place this Saturday night, and the theme this year is the 1980s. In two day’s time, I will be dressed in what I thought was the…
Is Funny A Gender Thing?
I found myself saying something utterly woeful the other day. I was describing a book I’d read to a friend. “I think it’s for men,” I said to her. “I mean, it was good. But it didn’t grab me. So I think it was probably written for men.” To my credit, I whacked myself in…
Self-Publishing: It’s Not For Christmas
There’s a reason that the ‘airport novel’ or ‘airport paperback’ was defined as category of books all by itself. It’s the same reason that there are large bookshops in airports, and why newspapers publish pathetically useless holiday reading lists. It’s because on holidays, everyone reads more than usual: regular, occasional and infrequent readers alike. And…
Tark And Mara Do Fashion… And Scottish Independence
Mara was spitting fire. “Please stop spraying lighter fluid on that naked flame, my little pyronymphomaniac,” said Tark, lounging against the Baby Grand in the open-plan concert kitchen of their Dublin penthouse, a post-flight gin and tonic in his hand. He had been expecting his wife to explode ever since their private jet had touched down. “If a second Damien Hirst…
Tara Sparling writes 