Your debut novel, The Vagrant, came out last year and received much praise within the SFF community. Mark also loved it and said it was the best thing he’d read in quite a while. So while preparing for this interview I was astonished to find out that despite starting to write in your early twenties you stopped for almost ten years following criticism you received from friends. As someone who also writes and critiques I have some understanding of both the importance of giving/receiving feedback and of the havoc it can have on someone’s self-confidence. Even gentle criticism can come as a big blow sometimes, but to think that whatever you’d been told led to you putting it aside for such a long time is terrible. How did you eventually find your way back into writing? (And may I say we are all glad that you did!)
Thanks…
View original post 1,093 more words
bookwraiths.com 
I wrote my first piece as a teen. My vocational training counsellor pretty much said, “don’t give up your day job.”
I started writing again almost 20 years later. She recently called me up to say how much she loves my work, and how great it was that I’d obviously found my calling. She had no memory of her putting me down – at all!
So, my advice to any wannabe writers out there is simple: ignore critics 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person