Happy Monday my bookish friends. Today I’m back at work, back to reality, urgh. But to start off my week on a happier note, today I bring to you a new author series that I technically launched as part of a blog tour last week but I want to officially dedicate a post to it.
In the Mind of an Author
…is a new author series, where I bring some of my favourite authors talking about their journey being a writer, what goes through their mind when they are writing their book, the places they write and much more. It can be anything they want to write about.
Today’s author is one of my favourite fantasy writers with her debut novel, Viper released last year. I’m desperately awaiting the sequel Venom. Bex Hogan is so down to earth and her books are just first class. If you have read it, then pick up a copy now, it’s 99p on Amazon at the moment. If I haven’t convinced you yet here is a little bit more about the book.
Genres: Fantasy Marianne has been training to be the Viper for her entire life - to serve and protect the King and the citizens of The Twelve Isles - but to become the Viper and protect the islands she loves she must find the strength to defeat her father. A new fantasy trilogy perfect for fans of Sarah J Maas.
He will make me a killer.Or he will have me killed.That is my destiny.
Seventeen-year-old Marianne is fated to one day become the Viper, defender of the Twelve Isles.
But the reigning Viper stands in her way. Corrupt and merciless, he prowls the seas in his warship, killing with impunity, leaving only pain and suffering in his wake.
He's the most dangerous man on the ocean . . . and he is Marianne's father.
She was born to protect the islands. But can she fight for them if it means losing her family, her home, the boy she loves - and perhaps even her life?
A brave heroine. An impossible dilemma. An epic new fantasy trilogy set on the high seas.
Guest Post by Bex Hogan – My Work Space
For many years my desk was squashed into the corner of our living room, and I worked under headphones trying to block out the noise of my family with atmospheric music more suited to the fantasy world I was writing. (Not that I don’t love my family and their noise, but the dulcet tones of Peppa Pig blaring from the TV was not entirely conducive to the menacing mood I was trying to create!)
How I daydreamed of having a space of my own. It would be beautiful, a sanctuary in which to escape from the rest of the house. Here I would wriggle free from the cocoon of the mundane and transform into a fully-fledged writer. I fantasized about organised shelves, books displayed with artistic flair, perfectly photo-worthy for social media, notebooks at the ready with pretty pens just waiting to turn their ink to words. In this paradise, inspiration would always be close at hand, because how could it not?
Then one day, it happened. We decided to convert our garage to create my very own writing room. Through all the building work, the many, many things that went wrong, the black dust that got everywhere and ruined everything, I clung to the fact that at the end of all this, my dream was going to come true. We decorated, moved everything in, and it looked just as wonderful as I had hoped.
It lasted about a week.
Because here’s the thing about me. For all my wishing I was the kind of person who could inhabit such a space, I am a messy human. I’m not particularly proud of it, but that’s the truth. My brain is chaotic and so are my surroundings. Glancing to my left as I write this,I can see two open notebooks with pens threatening to slide off them, two rolls (why?!) of sellotape, a pack of postcards, my diary, a couple of bank statements and a to-do list I’ll never accomplish. I have no idea what’s buried beneath, but probably something important. Rather than photo-worthy bookshelves, there’s a lot of books piled worryingly high on the floor, waiting for me to catch up on my reading. My filing system has long been abandoned, replaced by a stack of papers I know are essential, but beyond that have no clue.
Do you know what, though? I kind of love my mess. It’s my mess. I wrote books squashed in the corner of the living room, I wrote books in my briefly immaculate writing room, I’ve written books in my cluttered, messy writing room.
Which I guess brings me to my point. It can be too easy to think you need the perfect space to write. The perfect environment, the perfect setup, the perfect time. But the truth is, you just need to sit down – at a laptop, at a computer, with a pad and pen (or blood of your enemies if that’s what you prefer) – and write. That’s how books are written. One word after another. So go with whatever you’ve got, and write that masterpiece. If you need me, I’ll be looking for my phone, I’m sure I put it down in here somewhere…
Thank you so much Bex for being on my blog again. I love this guest post, it made me laugh and smile as I think this must happen to a lot of authors. I want to say that writing at a desk is what I think where the magic happens with writing but I think it’s the time and place of where your inspiration hits. That still needs to happen to me! Ha.
About Bex
Raised on a healthy diet of fantasy and fairy tales, Bex Hogan has spent much of her life lost in daydreams. Writing her stories down was a natural progression and now she enjoys sharing her time between living in the real world and escaping to her imagination. A Cornish girl at heart, Bex now lives in Cambridgeshire with her husband, two beautiful daughters and crazy cocker spaniel. She might be found riding horses, talking to her plants or eating marzipan. Or not.
