Following up on my previous post - independent publishing is in a difficult place right now. 
The world is changing and costs have spiralled. 

There is a good article in the publishing industry's magazine The Bookseller about the situation for indie presses. 

In 2026, I will be concentrating on developing the bookselling side of Arcane Publishing and my writing has been put on hiatus. I hope to come back to it when the time is right. 

In addition to this, I need the money I would have used to print/publish a book for something incredibly important and cannot justify spending it on publishing a book which will remain mostly unread. 

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It's been a while... This place has been neglected and I have many times thought about getting rid of my two websites (Miss Gish and Arcane Publishing) because nobody really have a look at websites nowadays, right? Everything's happening on social media (apparently). 
The thing is, I just cannot bering myself to delete the websites because they go back to 2010 when everything started. These websites have accompanied me as I worked on my novels and started Arcane Publishing. They basically have recorded the trials and tribulations of someone who has always dreamt of being a writer and work with books. When I started my websites, I was at the tail end of my career as a music journalist but still wrote about music on my blog. 
On here as well, I have recorded the way I fell in love with Dorset in 2011, and wrote about starting work on a book set in this beautiful county. 
And you know what? 
Things have happened and the book is still not finished. Work on it stalled during the pandemic and I haven't really managed to start again working on it properly. 
I have recently realised that a whole chapter needs to go NOW. That I need a huge amount of work on some of the chapters because they do not work as they are. 
And sadly, I haven't had the headspace necessary to resume work on The Right Place. 

It also happens that since last autumn, I have started to feel myself being drawn back to the things that I had left behind when I moved to Dorset back in 2017. I crave culture, music, exhibitions, buzz and urban architecture. 
This shift in mindset has taken me by surprise and shaken me a little. But I have always been one to follow my instinct, and therefore I have been back in London quite a bit over the past six months or so. 
I am not too sure at the moment about how this will impact my writing. I am still determined to complete and publish The Right Place, but I know that I will be going back to it a somewhat changed person, and therefore, a changed writer. It might just be what I needed to get back to it: I have become even more daring recently, and much more devil-may-care... 

My focus over the next few months of autumn and winter will be to launch my online bookshop to sell my novels as well as my stock of pre-loved, vintage and rare books. Once that has been done, and only then, will I return to writing... 

I will try and record the progress I make on this here and on the Arcane Publishing website. 
Watch this space! 


In the meantime, find me helping Matt ArtPix on his stall (with a small stock of preloved books!) at the following two events in September:

 I am now back in Blighty after three weeks in France, including two blissful weeks in Normandy. 
I will post about it at some point, but it's already incredibly busy here at ArtPix/Arcane towers, so I will leave a longer update for later in June... 

Arcane and ArtPix will be in London this weekend for the Lazy Flea at Chiswick Town Hall!
​Come and say hi! 
​

Holiday reading sorted for our adventures in France, starting in two weeks' time (all pre-loved copies, of course, found during a recent outing!) 
I'm really going to enjoy reading this. My excuse is that my fourth novel, Hell Lane: A Barton Stacey mystery, will be an homage to the 1930s and 40s detective novels (Dorothy L. Sayers was a member of the Detection club with Agatha Christie and many more...)

There's a lot going on at Arcane/ArtPix towers, keep an eye out on the Arcane Instagram! 

I have just finished Vera Brittain's Testament of Experience. After having read Testament of Youth, her book about her experience of WW1, I had to read this follow-up, which deals with WW2. Both books are a fascinating read for many reasons, and I cannot wait to get started on Testament of Friendship, her book about her great friend Winifred Holtby, the author of the superb South Riding. 
On my visit to London last weekend, I just had to go and have a look at 2 Cheyne Walk in Chelsea, the house Vera Brittain and her husband purchased before the war - he had fallen in love with the building at first sight. 

​As I prepare to resume work on the first draft of my third novel, The Right Place, I find it inspiring to read about other writers' experience of writing. 
I am hoping that 2025 will bring me back to my books as I have struggled to sit down and complete my manuscript over the past few years (Real Life sometimes doesn't play ball and interferes with one's ambitions...) 
It is high time I published this book as I become more and more obsessed with the next two novels I am planning to write!