Know The Novel: Introducing The Dancer’s Handbook To Love and Other Illnesses

Hello and welcome, my lovelies! Today, we’re only doing my favourite thing of ever, ie, participating in Christine Smith’s amazing Link Up, Know the Novel. I’ve been doing this link up since it’s creation three (?) years ago and I keep coming back to it because its just so much fun. It’s a really helpful way for me to develop my novels, and it’s also fun to give you guys an insight into what I’m writing at the moment. So without further ado, I’ll be introducing my NaNoWriMo project for this year, affectionately, and cheesily, known as The Dancer’s Handbook to Love and Other Illnesses.

1. What first sparked the idea for this novel?

A combination of two things. Number one was being diagnosed with fibromyalgia a little over three months ago. As a general rule, I turn to reading and writing as a method of understanding myself, and the world around me, but in this case I was left rather lost and alone. There were so few books about fibromyalgia. Scratch that, there were so few books about chronic pain or illness at all.

Know the Novel: The Darkest Night-Part 3, It Is Written

[My brain is fried guys, I accidently pressed Publish Immediately, instead of scheduling this for Thursday. At this point, I’m far too tired to care, so you lovely people get a Tuesday post instead of a Thursday one!]

Hello all! How are you doing? Pull up a chair and join me as I throw a log on the fireplace (I know it’s summer here, but it is dang cold, people. The coldest summer for a decade. And I’m still sleeping wrapped up in my huge winter blanket, plus two other blankets).

Today is the last day of the Know the Novel link up I’ve been prematurely taking part in! Also, this will be the last you’ll hear of this novel for a while (aside from perhaps the odd mention of how its doing). I’m keeping this novel fairly closely under wraps because I hope to do great things with it and I don’t want the whole world knowing about it.

So, now the fire is roaring cosily, let’s get into the questions for today.

1. Firstly, how did writing this novel go all around?

As I’ve already mentioned in my previous two posts (you can find them here and here), writing this novel was so easy, even though I’d been stuck in an eighteen month long writer’s block. Since I’ve already talked a lot about this point, I’ll say no more and we’ll get into the juicy questions.

Know The Novel: The Darkest Night–Within the Novel

*[Somehow I completely forgot to write an introduction for this post? Oh well, let’s get into it! Today’s we’re looking at Part 2 of Christine’s Know the Novel Tag for my 2020 NaNoWriMo novel, currently working titled The Darkest Night]*

1. How’s the writing going overall?

Overall, the writing of this book was pretty smooth going. I was very busy during the three months I wrote it, so I didn’t get it finished as quickly as I would have liked, but I can’t complain. I wrote it and I’m proud of it.

And there’s obviously been a few road bumps and pot holes (and plot holes as well), and there’s so much that needs to be fixed up in the next draft, but I’m really happy with it!

2. What’s been the most fun aspect about writing this novel so far?

How can I even choose? So much of this book was fun to write. I think though the monsters were my favourite thing. As I mentioned in my last post, there’s kelpies, green fae dogs (which really need a bigger part in the story!), ghouls, a fae queen, werewolves (obviously)…it’s all so much fun!

Know The Novel: The Darkest Night Introduction

Hello everyone! How are you doing this fine Thursday morning? Welcome to the first post of 2021!

Today I’m going to be introducing you to my “secret project” which I’ve been hinting at a bit for my last few posts. Since it was my NaNoWriMo novel and I never finished doing Know the Novel for my other novel which was supposed to be my November novel, I’ve decided to introduce it using this format.

Anyway, I’m really proud of this novel. If you’ve been following my blog for the last few years, you’ll probably know, or at least guess, that I haven’t completed a novel since my dad died in 2018. This is the first one I’ve finished for over two years! And I’m so happy with it! And I feel like I’ve finally broken through the writer’s block I’ve been suffering from for so long.

So yeah, I’m not going to be talking much about this novel outside of the three Know The Novel posts I’ll be doing on it, mainly because its very special to me, and secondly because I’m going to attempt to query some agents and I just don’t want all the details floating around the internet.

On that note, let’s get into the first post! (These questions come from Christine Smith’s linkup, in case anyone is wondering)