Sharon Stephenson

There was no August blog--I was deep in the process of editing Stealing Thunder, now available through Amazon. And now it's September. Ahh September. I’ve written about this…

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Stealing Thunder, my latest book, is finally finished and I’m halfway through the editing process. One would think with all this social distancing I should have written half a dozen books since we entered lockdown in the UK. In fact, you could make the point that self-isolation would be a writer’s dream and for…

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May was not a month I necessarily want to remember. There was a couple of highlights—my husband and I celebrated 20 years of marriage and our dog Abbey turned 6. But by the end of the month we had been under 10 weeks of lockdown, my godson had coronavirus and was in a hospital in Portland, Maine, (and is doing very well) and George Floyd had been killed by the Minneapolis police, inciting peaceful protests but also igniting looting and many injuries. I lived…

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I started a journal when ‘lockdown’ began. I hope when I re-read it (if I do!) in ten or fifteen years this whole period feels like a hazy story—with highs and lows. I hope I remember the good things about this ‘lockdown’ period and take to heart the things I’ve learned. I have had moments of real joy—where a simple thing like bird song or talking with a grandchild is…

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In the far reaches of my mind—the part that files everything away for my writing—are constantly emerging plots, characters, locations. But no part of my imagination could have dreamt of a plot where a microscopic particle kills millions of people and brings most of the world to its knees. Not even James Bond in ‘Moonraker’ went this far. And yet here we are. 2020. We are all paying for the hubris of governments who thought pandemics were the stuff of bad dreams—they happen somewhere else, and should we have to we, can close the barn door after the horse has escaped and it will be just fine. I look outside and no airplane contrails thread the skies.…

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I didn’t write a blog for February. After receiving a lot of advice about this, I spent time advertising my books on Facebook for December—stepping WAY out of my comfort zone. When the ‘campaign’ was over I really felt I needed to pull back a bit. Please don’t get me wrong—I do want my books to be read, but the reality is I prefer ‘word of mouth’ to purchased advertising. I want to directly connect with my readers, and so I am back to a monthly blog.…

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Today is the first day I have had since the first of September when I didn’t have much of the day planned—when there wasn’t a list of ‘jobs’ that needed to be done straight away. This is…

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As we near the winter solstice, the sun barely makes it over the top of our back hedge (okay, it’s a pretty tall hedge) before plunging out of site like a nightshade…

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I’m a day late, but I THINK I have a pretty good excuse. Yesterday, November 1, I finished the first edit of my new Breaking Camp Mystery, CAUTION TO THE WIND. I’m really, really happy with it and am especially fond of the ending. I wasn’t sure how it was going to end until it ended. And this brings me to this month’s blog. I have no idea how other writer’s work. Truth be told, I don’t want to…

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My husband and I have recently returned from a wonderful trip to the USA. We visited places I had been before—the Teton Mountains, Yellowstone National Park, Durango-Silverton Railway, Mesa Verde, Monument Valley, Flagstaff and finished in San Diego with a couple of days at Balboa Park and…

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It’s the first of September and as usual I find myself ‘seasonally stimulated’. When I was young, September was all about the…

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Who is this person? This is a question I kept asking myself as I worked my way through the thousand photos—printed and slides—that I was determined to digitize. Once I was finished with this project, there’d be no…

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