Monday 14 April 2014

I'd like to open today's entry by saying a huge thank you to Brittany Campbell for giving Spiral; The Finding such a rave review on Amazon.com. My first review ! I think I might cry a little...(sniff)...but seriously, it's stuff like that that keeps us writers going, knowing we haven't put our blood and tears into something for no reason. So, thank you Brittany :)

Ok, dudes…today is Blog Tour day here at The Ink Splat! This is a little something that’s been passed on from writer to writer lately (kind of like a virus but significantly less gross) where every writer answers questions about their writing process. Last week was Liah Thorley’s turn. You can see her post here.

So here we go…this is Audrina Paisley!

What am I working on?

At the moment? The sequel to Spiral; The Finding, and it’s been slow going, to be honest. I’m doing so much for marketing with Finding that the (as yet un-named) sequel is going at kind of a stop-start pace. I am also in “post-production”, as it were, on another novel, The Buried and The Lost, set in Victorian London during the early days of Scotland Yard. Watch this space….

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

Multiple perspectives. They’re kind of like Marmite, you either love them or hate them. I personally love them. A lot of my work has a psychological thriller aspect to it, and I love getting under the skin of different characters, exploring how they relate to each other, what drives them through the external forces at work around them. I love looking at crossed wires in relationships, and how characters can be driven to do things based on what they THINK  the other person is thinking…or not, as the case may be. I’m also interested in gutsy female characters and protagonists with a vulnerable streak. I love to turn traditional gender roles on their head and have a woman who “saves” the man.

Why do I write what I do?

I write historical fiction because really I’m just a geek for a bit of visual drama…really I should be making films, not writing. But I love the challenge to create something that evokes the look, sound, smell of a place and time in all its clear, crisp, golden glory. It’s all about sensual transcendence for me.

How does your writing process work?

I’m infamous for not planning! At least not at first. I get a character, image, feeling, event or something in my head (often from dreams or stuff I’ve seen and heard around me) and then I just run with it and see where it takes me. There always comes a point where I have to grind to a stop and water (read; coffee) the lathered horses of my brain and do a bit of planning to make the arc of the story work in a practical sense. But until I get to that point, it’s rollercoaster all the way, baby!


Ok, so here’s the embarrassing bit….I’m supposed to introduce the next person in the tour now, and give a bit of a bio about them and a link to their website. However, because I am technologically backward (and frankly a bit sad) I didn’t even have a blog until about two weeks ago, and I missed out on the potential pool of candidates for my “next” out of all my writer mates…so there isn’t a next one. Unless any up-and-coming writers from the world at large would like to offer yourselves up as my “next” and I can link to you in a new blog post? (Shameless plug for contacts, obviously.)

Thanks all from me today. The sun is shining in old Blighty, so all who live here, keep on smiling :)



Monday 7 April 2014

Ok, so...it's the first day of the Easter holidays....

...it's positively wee-ing rain...

...I have an exuberant three-year-old to keep entertained...

...I am on a strict budget with which to do so...

...I still have book-launch stuff to get done...

...lines to learn for my next play...

...don't even get me STARTED on writing....

...and I haven't had any coffee yet this morning.

Oh, this is gonna be GOOD !



Tuesday 1 April 2014

Hi all :)

Hooray, my new blog is up and running at last ! A massive thanks goes out to fellow author Marissa de Luna for giving me loads of technical help and marketing pointers, particularly Twitter (me: "Marissa, what's Twitter? What does it do?")....because let's face it, I'm not the most technically minded of bods! Still, despite all her very kind help,  I hit a few snags, which resulted in much frustrated clicking and cussing at 9:30 last night. Anyway, it's all up and running....for now!

I'm also REALLY excited because my debut novel, Spiral;The Finding, went live on Amazon Kindle on the 15th of March. Immediately following this I was felled with a chest infection, and haven't been able to do much marketing to date, but I'm getting back on the proverbial horse now and starting to build an internet presence for myself, bit by laborious bit.

The Finding is the first in a series of YA historical fiction novels, set on a remote island in the Scottish Hebrides in 1446. Teenaged midwife Rosie MacBain is skilled at what she does; whether that be delivering a baby, setting a bone, or keeping her four orphaned sisters from the brink of destitution. But on the day her youngest sister discovers an ancient piece of silver buried on their land, an old face from Rosie’s childhood returns to the village. From that moment on, Rosie must decide which is more important to her; her craft, her sisters, her love...or her life.

You can order it here;

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Spiral-The-Finding-Audrina-Paisley-ebook/dp/B00IVMWXM2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396351946&sr=8-1&keywords=spiral+the+finding

The next installment in the Spiral series is is the works, and I'm also working on another, unaffiliated, historical fiction novel.

So give Spiral a read, and watch this space for all things book-related, and more besides.....