According to the Financial Times , a new self-publishing wing is to be offered by Simon & Shuster, as their response to the large increase of consumer interest in self-publishing. However, elsewhere it is claimed that S&S intend to offer their basic self-publishing package from $1,599 USD, rising to $24,999 USD for the deluxe self-publishing package.  So that's from just under £1,000 British Pounds Sterling up to £15,618. Is this true?  Surely I can't be the only so-called indie author to laugh aloud at this.

This is the first in a series of fictional interviews with characters from the Artisan-Sorcerer series, done purely for fun.  This first is with Rowan, who appears in the novel of the same name plus the as-yet unreleased novel, Fabian.   He also appears in Intimations , a collection of five short Artisan-Sorcerer stories. About Rowan: Rowan lives with secrets. His family know nothing of his life after his mother banished him from the family home.  Rowan is attracted to the handsome and vivacious Aiden, a member of Morgan Gruffudd's secretive community of artisan-sorcerers.  But blackmail threatens to destroy the new life Rowan has been building.  People are dying - and Rowan is caught in the middle of a secret war.  Character sketch of Rowan Over to Rowan... Name:   Rowan Adshead. Age:   19. Distinguishing features:   Green eyes, sandy-auburn hair, slim build. Place of Birth:   Liverpool.   My mother still lives on Menlove Avenue, where I was ra

As I type this, the sun's shining.  When I took these photos this morning, it was raining steadily.  Still, I wanted to share this steep flight of steps cut into the rock which leads up to Mariner's Point.  The 60ft high sandstone column was put there in 1841 after the windmill which used to stand there blew down during a storm.  Sailors had used this as a point of navigation. If you climb the stairs - there's a bench at the top! - you can follow a rugged footpath into Stapleldon Woods.  The ground is pretty much a quagmire at the moment, and so I opted not to do this despite my two dogs straining at their leashes.  You have to watch your footing in places even when the ground is dry, as it's a tangle of gnarled roots and jutting rocks around slopes and dips.  When the ground is a mushy, sliding stew of deep mud and wet leaves it would be too easy to fall and injure yourself.  (And while this might amuse the Caldy fae, from my Artisan-Sorcerer series, I'd so

Emily and Poppi    Here're our two Jack Russell Terriers, once again snuggling on their favourite doggy cushion.  It used to be Richard's cushion but they had other ideas.  It's a shame about the red-eye, though I managed to tweak it and reduce it to ochre-eye.  Is it an improvement?  I'll let you decide.   Last weekend saw us in the garden, raking together autumn leaves and making a bonfire from a heap of pruned branches.  The dogs were safely indoors, of course.  The leaves were quite damp from all this rain we've had, so consequently the fire was very smoky.  But it's one of those gardening jobs which simply needs doing.    Smoky autumn bonfire   Just behind the fire you can see our two conical compost bins, which were made from recycled rubber.  They have no base, so to extract good compost  you simply slide a garden fork under them and lift them off.   They're suprisingly light to move around, yet the compost inside stops them from

So today I've decided to join in with this Feature & Follow Blog Hop , which looks like a bit of fun.  My friend Ali recently passed comment about how his blog attracts traffic from numerous far-flung corners of the world, from places where he perhaps wouldn't even expect people to be reading his site.  My own blog behaves in a similar way; though people leave comments only rarely, a surprising amount of traffic comes this way, and increasingly so. Anyway, new readers are always welcome, of course.  If you're new here today, hello! So, how does this Feature & Follow Bog Hop work?  First you leave your name here on this post, (using the linky tools — keep scrolling!) then you create a post on your own blog that links back to this post (easiest way is to just grab the code under the #FF picture and put it in your post) and then you visit as many blogs as you can and tell them “hi” in their comments (on the post that has the #FF image). You follow them, they

Sleeping dogs don't peep.   Richard and I went to Chester yesterday for a meal out.  We decided to avoid our usual haunts and try somewhere new to us.  Later, after meandering round numerous shops, we went on to have coffees which tasted like bonfire smoke smells - kind-of smoky and gritty, and spectacularly putrid.   Look, it's only the first week of November so why are most of the shops crammed with Xmas tat already?  I wish we could do as some Scandinavian countries apparently do and ban all Xmas decorations until December.  I'll freely admit I can't abide the forced cheer and frantic commercialism of the festival.  Ok, ok, so umpteen billion people disagree with me; I can live with that.  Call me Ebeneezer if you wish.  Or should that be Ebeneezella?  No matter.  But do we really need to have carols shrilled at us each time we enter shops still decorated with grinning pumpkins?   I've said many, many times before that Chester is one of my favourit