Most readers know of the power of the phoenix, its ability to re-create itself out of flame in a dire situation. 
Lizzy Ford’s life has been filled with such darkness but her unerring strength is her ability to be reborn, to struggle on, to reinvent… better and stronger ever time. Lizzy is one of my fellow Indie chicks and I leave her to tell you her story.
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.
the second of the Indie chicks to reveal herself online. I leave her to tell you her story: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.
Today I heard a radio interview with popular Australian bush-fiction writer, Rachael Treasure. In the course of the interview she mentioned writing lyrics for a proposed album by a country music band. And I thought on the variation she has introduced into her writing life. To me it sounded quite unique for a traditionally published writer.
“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read. “ ~Attributed to Groucho Marx
It’s been ages since I had the time to enter an old-fashioned bookstore. I had to go to the city the other day to have repairs run on my specs and because I was in the city, I decided to visit my two favourite bookstores. One is a café/bookstore and I spent a long time sifting through the coffee-table titles. One called The Treehouse Book.
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,
