'I've been busy.' The words fall from my lips so easily, but the guilt and shame attached to them remain unsaid. I've been reflecting on the last year as so many of us do at this time, ticking off our achievement's and ignoring the days, weeks or months where I did nothing. I berate myself …
Love and Grief
‘It seems to me that if we love, we grieve. That’s the deal. That’s the pact. Grief and Love are forever intertwined. Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable'. Nick Cave open letter to fan article This quote seems to keep showing up and …
The Worth of Failure
I’m inside Tom’s head these days, struggling with Book Three and how it will conclude, but I keep returning to one thought, failure. Tom fails. He fails spectacularly at lots of things. And to his mind he’s even failed at being a cat. When he and Zachariah are in the Orphanage Tom mentions about prospective parents …
The Stories We Tell Ourselves
What story are you telling yourself that isn’t nurturing your soul? I’ve been thinking about this question recently as Tom and Zachariah have been running around in my mind. The time is drawing close for me to enter Tom’s world again as I begin to write the third book in the Thomas Angel Trilogy, and …
Helmuth Von Moltke and the Words of War
In Thomas Angel and the Clach Na Cait, Felix says to Tom ‘No battle plans survive first contact with the enemy’ when Tom has an outburst at Felix’s lack of plan when facing Sophia in battle at Dunnottar Castle. And I’ve been thinking a lot about this quote, in the light of what is happening …
Failure and Empty Spaces
It’s been a while. It wasn’t meant to be this way, but sometimes the words just fail to come, and you have to listen to your heart and leave the space empty. Give it time to heal and expand once more. I’m musing on this today after reading an article on the failures of writers, …
I hate you Euphemia Mowbray! And other tales from NaNoWriMo
NaNoWriMo... The opportunity to write a novel (or at least 50,000 words of it) in a month. I wanted to get away from Tom Angel and his friends for just a little bit, see if I could still write something that wasn’t fantasy so I thought NaNo was the perfect month. First rule of NaNo is having a plan. …
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No Goodbyes, only Au Revoir Tom
Saying goodbye is hard. Sometimes it’s so bad that it becomes a physical pain, like your heart is actually cracking and breaking, but then somehow you manage to put one paw in front of the other and keep shuffling through life until one day it doesn’t hurt quite as badly as it did the day …
The Season of the Cailleach
Cailleach As it’s now the season of the Witch, I thought I would visit the Cailleach, their history, who they are in my novels and what is the meaning they bring to our everyday life. The Dictionary of Scots Language gives the following definition of Cailleach: Gael. Cailleach, an old woman, a nun; the last handful of standing corn …
Fear and Loving in Tom Angel
Whenever I think of my little one Tom, I always think of him being fearful of everything. When the story begins, he is scared of the wide-open spaces of Edinburgh, the sky above him and the grass beneath his paws. Tom can’t visualise the opportunities and adventures that lie in his future, he only imagines the things …
V.S.MINOU 