Bashful Blagger
A blagger is bold and gets what they want by brashly saying things that are not always true. A bashful blagger is the same, but shy with it. Sounds weird? Well, yes: but that’s me, both a bold extravert and a shy introvert, only I tend to tell the truth, even in fiction. Here in the Bashful Blagger blog, I post boldly on my life as a sapphic author writing for a universal audience—anything to do with writing, publishing and marketing books—and rather more shyly on my real life. Happy reading!
The author with her inhouse editor, Chino
CAPital pleaSURE or PUNishment?
One capital pleasure of my real life is the license my day job—English language editor for Dutch academics—gives me to goof off on Google. Or, to put it in terms the taxman will accept: the time I spend online looking up terminology is justified. For sad nerdlings...
Q&A – Lara Zielinsky on editing the pitfalls of sapphic fiction
Lara Zielinsky has been a journalist, technical writer, educator, and fiction editor for more than 30 years. A member of the LGBTQ+ community, Lara is also an award-winning author of five sapphic...
Two rogues recommend thumping good reads
Please join me this week in giving a warm welcome to a couple of newcomers to the Rogues’ Gallery of Janice Readers. First up is Ineke Sterringa. Her snapshot shows her relaxing in her garden in...
Booklover Lisa Day and the BookTime Q&A
Lisa Day loves books—owning them, reading them, writing about them and talking about them. She carries at least one, maybe two or three books with her at all times and when she isn't reading, she...
The importance of plain language in fiction
How important is plain language in fiction? Here two frontrunners in promoting the new Plain Language Standard discuss the pros and cons blah balh My dear old Dad loved language. Besides Dutch,...
Blurb your enthusiasm
Wouldn’t you love to get a blurb for your book as nice as the one Groucho Marx bestowed on Dawn Ginsbergh’s Revenge, by his fellow humorist S.J. Perelman? Short, sweet, and killer conclusion....
Fiction: fake or real?
Don't get me wrong. I’m not opening this post with a clever cartoon just because I love the artwork. Nor is it because I’m bratly comparing my sapphic tales (say hi to Philippa and Janice) to a...
On “chronicles” and the craft of writing
Can you remember when you discovered the word “chronicles”? For me it was when I was about ten (I think) and a weekly visitor to the Dunedin Public Library in New Zealand. There I came across...
Abi Daruvalla teaches writers how to KISS
Would I ever have become editor of ES World, the in-house magazine of the biggest science publishers in the world, without Abi Daruvalla? No way. She was my first 'real' editor. Recently Abi and...
Media for the Mass Age
Forgive me Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) for riffing on your famous line to head this post, but (true confession time) i couldn’t resist. According to Wiki, the Canadian communication theorist...
Getting a grip on that “glint of light”
Everyone quotes the Russian playwright and short-story writer, Doctor Anton Chekhov. “Medicine is my lawful wife” he once said, “and literature is my mistress.” But perhaps his most famous quote...