‘The storytelling talent is sharp, pulling the reader on the journey and bringing on the unpredictable as the story twists and turns with neither a bore nor a snore.’ John Hudspith
Available as an e-book first week of March – a debut historical fiction by Australian fantasy author
Danielle Blanchard Benson, Author of The Vamp Saga and The Beautiful People series, is a fellow Indie Chick and brings her story to us with a no-holds barred look at her life.
“Write or Die”
2010 was the worst year of my life.
As you know, I was invited to join a special project called the Indie Chicks. It’s an anthology of true inspirational stories from 25 female indie authors (as well as a sample of one of each woman’s books). All the proceeds (every bit) are being donated to the Susan G. Komen Foundation to help support their search for the cure to breast cancer.
A Thousand Glass Flowers is giving me the time of my life. Initially it took off like a rocket on Kindle on Amazon.com and then I signed with a digital publishing group called MWiDP for Amazon.co.uk. Last week I was rattling away on Facebook that I was excited ATGF had managed a .co.uk #ranking at least once a week for the four weeks that I had been on MWiDP’s lists. Anything from #15 onward!
Sometime ago I was invited to participate in an anthology designed to captivate, inspire and celebrate. Honoured and amazed, I can only say it underlines my feelings about being an independent writer: that friends and opportunities would never have arisen without me following a dream.
My latest guest was born of academia, wanted to be a cat burglar, got high through the seventies (one is desperate to ask was it good?) hates diets but has never ever had a surfeit of life and in addition writes killingly observant blogs on the world of writing. Not only that, her latest book, Food Of Love, is amongst other things an homage to chocolate.
My guest today, Stuart Aken, says that he was born against the odds to a widowed mother in a neighbour’s bed. Then raised in a number of homes by an artist mother who knew what love meant and a step-father who lacked imagination but made up for it with affection and education in things natural. Stuart maintains he wrote all the wrong things for a lifetime until he learned who he was and I thought that apart from the initial burst into the world, all we writers have done exactly that: written all the wrong things until we ‘grew up’. Stuart welcome,
At last!
A Thousand Glass Flowers is published!
And what a celebration!
It can be purchased from Amazon.com:
and at
Amazon.co.uk:
And don’t forget that it will be available in print later in the year from all the online sellers and from bricks and mortar stores. More exciting news on that later.
Louise Wise is another writer who is reaping the benefits of the e-revolution. She and I ‘met’ at YouWriteOn.com as part of their print-published stable and I’ve always enjoyed her wit, not only in the forums but in her novels as well. I thought it was time she sat in the Big Red Chair, so here she is…
The Twilight Saga has just been read. Yes, I know I’m very late to the party but I seemed to subconsciously want the hype to go away so that I could draw my own conclusions.
My opinion of the books is of little matter to anyone but myself. But what I will say is how much I preferred the other male protagonist, Jacob Black, 
the Quileute werewolf. This prompted me to think on Finnian of the Færan, the male protagonist in A Thousand Glass Flowers and I felt the need to compare him with Edward Cullen (blasphemy) and with Jacob Black (secondary blasphemy).
