Author: Fiona

Holiday reading

Finished work at the uni for the year (hurrah!) so after spending the last month reading student treatments for short films I’m looking forward to catching up on some reading of my own. Here’s my shortlist of what to pack in my suitcase. Really hard to decide what to leave out!

  1. The Long Song by Andrea Levy
  2. The Smell of Apples by Mark Behr
  3. Revelation for Everyone by Tom Wright
  4. The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler
  5. The Bible

Yes I know I could take them all if I had them on Kindle (the bible though is), but I bought the rest in my pre-Kindle days and don’t want them to go to waste. Clean underwear is optional but good literature is not.

0

Guest blogging about Crafty Publishing

This week I’ve been the guest blogger on the UK Christian Bookshop Blog. It’s the second time I’ve been let loose on this forum by the risk-taking editor, Phil Groom. Thanks to Phil and the last guest blog I did, my little publishing company, Crafty Publishing made some inroads into UK Christian bookshops with our Young David books. I’m also musing about the growing e-book market and how my first e-novel The Peace Garden is faring. You can read all about it over at UKCBB website.

0

Young David book launch a fantabulous success!

I had a brilliant time at the book launch for my two new picture books, David and the Hairy Beast and David and the Kingmaker on Saturday. The kids were brilliant and really responded well to the storytelling. The adults appeared equally interested in Amy and my talk on our creative process. Loads of books were sold with some people buying up to four each! Thanks to everyone who helped and everyone who came. While the adults were listening to the grown up bit, the children were drawing their own versions of the Hairy Beast. Here are some of them:

A girl Hairy Beast (note the pink bow) by Megan Smith, 6 years old.
A smiley Hairy Beast by Harry Ridsdale, age 5 years.
A colourful Hairy Beast by 'can't read the name'. If this is your budding Picasso, let me know!
2

David and the Kingmaker

It’s here! David and the Kingmaker has arrived from the printers and is ready to ship to bookshops. It looks absolutely gorgeous. As usual, my illustrator Amy Barnes has done an incredible job. I did a reading of the book on Sunday to a lively group of under 7s and their parents. They loved the antics of the sheep and were wide-eyed when Young David was chosen to be king.

I know everyone says it, but this book and its prequel, David and the Hairy Beast, will make great Christmas presents. You can place an order through any bookshop in the world (that’s right, anywhere on planet earth).

0

Book launch for Young David Books

You are invited to the  combined book launch for David and the Hairy Beast and David and the Kingmaker at the Life Centre, Heaton Baptist Church, Heaton Road, Heaton, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 5HN on Saturday 26 November. The event starts at 4pm. There will be colouring-in activities for children while the grown-ups can listen to moi (author Fiona Veitch Smith) and illustrator Amy Barnes talk about their creative process. There will also be a sneak preview of the third book in the series, David and the Giant. The event is free.  Click here for directions

1

Writing is a Marathon

Many students on my writing courses think that only three rewrites of a piece of work are necessary: the first draft which gets the story down, the second draft which then tidies and tightens the story then the third draft which is essentially an edit. However, most professional writers know that if you can get away with three drafts, you’re lucky!

I’m currently working on the seventh draft of my play Marathon. This is not because I don’t know when to stop – I thought I had ‘cracked’ it with draft six – but after feedback from a theatre group at a staged reading I realised the story of my heroine Stamata Revithi needed to start earlier and take a slightly different direction.

I know this seventh rewrite will not be the last as now that the story is being reshaped it will need further work. However, I’m encouraged to keep going with it as there is talk that it might actually get presented on the day the Olympic Torch passes through the North East of England.

Writing is a marathon, not a sprint.

0

Copyright Fiona Veitch Smith 2025. Privacy Policy

Up ↑