Dundee and D C Thomson - My Milestone Writing Week

May 08, 2026

This week I hit a milestone when I type THE END on the first draft of The Bakery Girls. However, there's still a long way to go with weeks of editing ahead, to get the draft into shape to send to my publisher Headline.

This week I went out my author newsletter to my growing number of subscribers. You can read the newsletter online, it contains two competitions to win free goodies. Read it online here.

Also this week I started gearing up to a month full of book launches. The first one is at Featherbed books on Thursday 21 May, which is the release day in paperback of my third and final saga in the toffee factory trilogy. All events are free, do come if you can.

I'm also giving a talk at The Donnison School in Sunderland. This one has a ticket price of £5 and it's a fantastic venue and heritage centre to support. Buy your ticket here.

The full list of all of my book launches and talks this month can be found on my website here.

This week I had a short story published in The People's Friend magazine. It's a poignant story which came from a very emotional day I went through not so long ago.

And in very exciting news this week I was invited in to the publishing house of D C Thomson in Dundee in Scotland. It's where The People's Friend magazine is published, the magazine which has printed my weekly soap opera Riverside for almost 10 years. What an incredible meeting I had there.