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When Words don't Come... Writing is a strange thing.Some days, the words

Writing is a strange thing.

Some days, the words arrive faster than I can type them. The characters shout, the scenes unfold, the world feels close enough to touch, and I can lose hours without even noticing. Other days, I can sit in front of the screen with every intention of writing and somehow feel like I’ve forgotten how stories work entirely.

Lately, I’ve been in the second place.

I’ve been struggling with writer’s block, and not the gentle kind where you just need a cup of tea and a quiet...

Book Three Is Finished — And the Saga Is Far From Over I can finally say

I can finally say it: Book Three of The Horn and Flame Saga is complete.

The Crown of Teeth and Flame will be coming to Inkitt and Kindle on Sunday 7th June, with the paperback releasing on 9th June, and honestly, I still don’t think I’ve fully processed that yet.

This book has been an absolute beast to write. It pushed the characters, the world, and me as a writer further than I ever expected when I first started Aeloria and Caelan’s story. Book Three is darker, heavier, more emotional, and...

When the Story Runs Away With You I think it’s safe to say I’ve fallen

I think it’s safe to say I’ve fallen completely, hopelessly, ridiculously in love with writing The Horn and Flame Saga.

When I first started this series, I knew I was excited about it. I knew I loved the characters, the world, the dragons, the war-unicorns, the politics, the danger, the romance, and all the messy emotional chaos that comes with writing epic fantasy. What I perhaps didn’t expect was just how much it would take over my brain.

And by “take over,” I mean I have raced ahead at a...

Bringing the New World to Life One of the things I’ve been doing while

One of the things I’ve been doing while planning my new fantasy series is creating images of the characters, creatures, dragons, unicorns, cities, and all the strange little beasties that live in the world. Not because I need everything perfectly nailed down before I write — let’s be honest, my brain will change half of it at 2am anyway — but because seeing them makes them feel real.

There’s something magical about finally looking at a character who has been rattling around in your head for...

Am I Typecasting Myself with Military Thrillers? I think I may have

I think I may have accidentally typecast myself.

Not in a bad way. Not in a “someone stage an intervention” way. More in a “oh look, here I am again throwing soldiers into emotionally devastating situations with rifles, trauma, banter, and questionable survival odds” kind of way.

And honestly?

I love it.

Military thrillers, military romance, military horror — they are very much my comfort zone. Which is a slightly concerning sentence when that comfort zone usually involves mud, blood, bad...

Finally Finishing the Book I Still Hate There comes a point in every

There comes a point in every writer’s life where you stare at a manuscript and think, I have rewritten this so many times I no longer know if it’s good, bad, genius, unhinged, or a war crime against literature.

That point, for me, is now.

After what feels like a million rewrites, false starts, plot overhauls, character changes, dramatic deletions, and several moments where I genuinely considered launching my laptop into the nearest body of water, Dust of Babylon is finally finished.

And yes, in...

Rewriting the Same Book… Again So, apparently, I enjoy suffering.Yes, it is

So, apparently, I enjoy suffering.

Yes, it is happening again. The folklore horror. The Iraqi desert. The 2003 setting. The book I literally blogged about last week. The one I thought I had finally beaten into shape.

I got to Chapter 70 this time.

Chapter. Seventy.

And then I sat back, looked at the whole thing, and thought…

Nope.

Still not right.

Again.

There is a very specific kind of writerly despair that comes from realising the book you have spent weeks, months, or possibly several small...

 The Pros and Cons of Using AI to Edit Spelling and Grammar When Writing

AI editing tools can be an absolute lifesaver when writing books. They can also make you want to launch your laptop into the nearest body of water. As someone who is terrible at spelling, I genuinely do appreciate having something there to catch the obvious mistakes. The missing commas. The words that are nearly right but not quite. The repeated phrases that somehow slipped through because, after reading the same chapter seventeen times, my brain has decided it knows what the sentence...

NATO Standard Nightmares Is Out Now — and Thank You There is something very

There is something very strange, very exciting, and slightly terrifying about releasing a new book.

NATO Standard Nightmares is now officially out in the world, and honestly, I am so proud of this one. It is gritty, sweary, dark military horror packed with British Army gallows humour, awful conditions, terrible decisions, forbidden romance, and the sort of creeping dread that makes you want to shout, “Absolutely do not go into those mountains.”

Set during a NATO deployment to Kosovo in 2000,...

Almost at the Finish Line: Werewolves, Squaddies, and a Lot of Bad

I’m almost at the end of writing my werewolf horror, and honestly, it’s been an absolute beast of a project — pun very much intended.

This book started with one of those simple horror questions that immediately gets out of hand: what happens when a British Army patrol, already cold, tired, wet, and fed up, discovers that the thing stalking them in the mountains isn’t just an enemy combatant, a smuggler, or something they can neatly write up in a contact report?

What happens when the thing in...

The Bane of Writer’s Block: When Fifty Chapters Suddenly Feel Wrong There

There is a very specific kind of pain that only writers understand.

It’s not the blank page. The blank page is rude, yes, but at least it’s honest. It sits there, empty and smug, waiting for you to do something with it.

No, the real horror is when you’ve already written the thing.

When you’ve spent weeks — sometimes months — building chapters, shaping scenes, dragging characters through emotional devastation and plot twists and dramatic turning points… only to wake up one morning, look at the...

Back to the Sand: Writing a New Military Horror Set in Iraq, 2003 I’ve

I’ve started work on something new—and it’s taking me somewhere very different.

My next project is a military horror set during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, told from the perspective of Captain Declan Heyes, SAS, embedded within a Mobility Troop operating deep in and around Basra. It’s a story that’s been sitting in the back of my mind for a while, but I knew if I was going to write it, it had to feel real. Not just in the action, but in the atmosphere, the pressure, and the moral weight of the...