Category: Uncategorized

• December 31, 2023

  Finding Meaning in Challenging Times – My 2023 Review

  As 2023 draws to a close, I find myself looking back on the lessons another year has offered. Looking back often comes more naturally to me than looking forwards – in reaching back, I find meaning that enables me to find myself anew. In previous years, I have chosen words like growth and curiosity to…
• December 21, 2023

  My Favourite Books of 2023

  Towards the end of December, I like to share my favourite books from the year preceding. In the past, I’ve kept track of the number of books I’ve read, but in 2023, in common with a few other things, that practice has been lost. Suffice to say, I’ve read a lot of books, a mix…
• January 21, 2023

  Beginnings – Ice and Rain

  January, the month for setting goals and intentions. The new year brings opportunity – thoughts, ideas, plans. I’ve always struggled with new year resolutions, of committing myself to targets that feel contrived and anchored to a sense of scarcity. Resolutions seem to involve giving up on things or pledging to do things I don’t enjoy.…
• December 21, 2022

  Writing, Life and Joining Up the Dots – My 2022 Review

  Back in January, I posted about my writing plans for the year (generally, I find, a good way to engender some sort of personal accountability around intentions). December feels like a good time to revisit some of those intentions – if only to remind myself that I’ve probably achieved more than I might think. 2022…
• November 30, 2022

  My Ten Favourite Books of 2022

  Towards the end of each year, I tend to write a round-up of my ten favourite books from the twelve or so months preceding. However, 2022 has been a different sort of year for me in terms of blogging – a new job and changing domestic arrangements have meant that many of my old blogging…
• August 28, 2022

  Lost Solace: Tourism, Social Media and Our Shifting Sense of Place in the North Highlands

  Earlier this summer, my husband and I made an evening visit to the harbour at Dunbeath on our way back to Caithness after a day of appointments. In the preceding days, I had been reading Neil M. Gunn’s Highland River and wanted to reacquaint myself with the information boards on Gunn – who was born…
• July 26, 2022

  Pieces of Sky and Stone Author Q&A

  In 2021, Isla, a student of creative writing at the University of the Highlands and Islands, asked me to share my experiences of writing my first novel Castles of Steel and Thunder in this author interview. I’m happy to say that Isla also seemed to enjoy the follow-up book, Pieces of Sky and Stone, and…
• July 14, 2022

  On Coping With Rejection As A Writer

  One of the surest things about writing, or indeed any kind of creative pursuit, is the experience of rejection. Offering work up for any kind of scrutiny, be it through books, competition entries, submissions to agents or publishers – all of it entails the risk of someone saying ‘no’. Rejection isn’t as clear-cut as the…
• June 15, 2022

  Launching Finn and Friends, A Collection of Verse and Stories

  Earlier this month, myself and fellow writers Andrea Wotherspoon, Ian Leith and Charlotte Platt launched new book Finn and Friends at John O’Groats – A Collection of Verse and Stories. The launch marked the culmination of almost a year’s worth of work, which started with us meeting at John O’Groats to discuss how three new…
• May 13, 2022

  In the (Fieldfare) Press

  Implicit in my writing plan for the year (which I wrote about in this post back in January), was a desire to focus less on social media and more on the other writing I could send out into the world. As engaging as social media is, events towards the end of last year made me…