Happy New Year!

Image by Vilius Kukanauskas via Pixabay

Here we are, on the cusp of the New Year, the time of looking back to what has been achieved, and forward to goal-setting and new ventures.

For Hornsea Writers the past year has meant building on skillsets learned through experience - between us we’ve plenty – and embracing different, and sometimes up and coming, areas of writing.

Shortform – in fiction, creative non-fiction, straight non-fiction, and journalism - has found favour, often for the simple reason that it can be fitted around longer projects. With judicious planning these shortforms can also be collected into longer works. No longer is creative output to be thought of as single-use.

In this respect, three members are successfully experimenting on the digital platform, ‘Medium’, where words and images work hand in hand behind a paywall. ‘Substack’, a somewhat rival platform, beckons with its integration of words, images, video, and audio.

Regardless of newer mediums, book-length works remain the mainstay of members.

After being headhunted by history publishers Pen & Sword, April Taylor is putting the finishing touches to a third title, and looking forward to embracing her novel-writing once more.

Joy Stonehouse, whose fiction springs from her genealogical research, launched the final book in her Yorkshire coast quintet, and is working on a collection of short stories and a epistolary historical drama.

Karen Wolfe is intent on completing the third novel in her Georgie Crane comi-crime trilogy, and is eyeing a non-fiction book – dog-related, of course, while Stuart Aken is currently polishing his latest SF novel.

The one sentiment that binds all members is the old favourite…

There’s never enough hours in the day,
either for the writing or reading we wish to indulge.

Perhaps that should be our 2025 priority.

How about you?

Wishing all our readers a very Happy New Year.

"Crime and Punishment in Tudor England". How I made the jump from fiction to non-fiction

 At last, some three weeks later than scheduled, my first non-fiction commission is in the world and available for purchase.

 

I have always enjoyed history, but this was the history we never learned in school. In fact, it turns out the history we were taught in school was eons away from the stark reality of life for ordinary—and extraordinary—people who lived in the Tudor era.

I learned things that surprised me, sickened me, but also things that made me laugh. The experience of researching and writing such a book proved a steep learning curve. One I wanted to keep climbing. So, it will come as no surprise that I have signed contracts for two more books for Pen and Sword, the first of which is proving just as fascinating to research as the Tudor one.

 For more details on the adventures of getting a book published, you can read my blog here: https://authorapriltaylor.blogspot.com/2023/09/schemes-mice-and-men.html

 

Crime and Punishment in Tudor England: From Alchemists to Zealots 

You can find it here: https://bit.ly/3PLEM93 and here: https://mybook.to/Bt34P5 

You can read more about April Taylor here:

 Twitter  Amazon UK  Amazon USA Facebook

Hornsea Writer, April Taylor, On Writing

Give me a 3-word summary of what you will be doing, writing-wise, in the coming year.

Reissues. New series. Non-fiction

 

Tell me more

Dangers of Destiny – the all-new first book in the Tudor alternate-history-crime series, formerly published by Harlequin, will be published by March 2023. The other books in the series will be edited and re-issued throughout the year.

Series title will be The Luke Ballard Chronicles.

New series – current working title: The Guisborough Guardian.

 

The theme for the series is: Darkness cannot claim what the light refuses to surrender.

Catalogue of Evil is the first in the series. An historical crime novel set in 1971. The action centres around the market town of Guisborough in North Yorkshire. A series of young adult girls have been abducted and killed in a ritualistic manner.

When one of her library assistants becomes a victim, librarian Octavia Otterburn and her friend, historian Jeffrey Thompson set out to solve the murders. It is only as they delve deeper they discover the true magnitude of the problems—and dangers— they face.

 

Triumph of the Heart is a romantic suspense novel set in the 15^th century Wars of the Roses. The theme is becoming who you are, despite all opposition, is the true beginning of happiness.

 

Dependent upon acceptance, a non-fiction for Pen & Sword. The subject is under discussion.

 

 

Tell me about a writing-related event from last year

I wrote my first commission for Pen & Sword Publishing. Crime and Punishment in Tudor England will be published in July 2023. This was a completely new departure for me and stemmed from the Tudor alternate-history-crime books published by Harlequin under the series title The Tudor Enigma.

The book was very intense, but, as a librarian, I loved all the research, but, not unnaturally, found some of the details distressing. While I have made every effort to back up the facts—with over 400 endnotes (that was fun!)—the writing remains informative but with low-key humour. It can be read in sequence or dipped into. There are also snippets of interesting information at the end of each section called Tavern Talk.

It has been received very positively by my editor and the dust-jacket, which will be revealed in due course, is stunning.

 

Learn more about April here.