Writing a Synopsis Before you Start your Story by Tamsin Cooke

I am one of those unusual people who like writing a synopsis. I didn’t use to. I hated it as much as I hate marmite (which is a lot!). How can you cram the plot points, the twists and turns, the character arcs and the themes in one side of A4? I devoured websites explaining how to do it.

Then one day, I had an idea for a brand-new story. Hoping to pitch it to my agent, I scribbled it down. And a synopsis was born.

 

It was easy and natural to write.  Because I hadn’t thought about any secondary characters yet, I simply included the protagonist’s journey. I worked out what her internal and external goals were and how she was going to achieve them. And I didn’t get bogged down with worrying about which plot points to include since I only knew the major turning events. I showed the conflict that drove the book forward and revealed an exciting ending. And in very simple terms, I described what my character had learnt and how her feelings had changed. I had a character arc!

This synopsis proved incredibly useful when I was writing the actual story. I referred to it, ensuring I was keeping to the essence of my story. I didn’t lose track of my character’s goals and I made sure her motivations matched her decisions. 

 

Now of course, it was just a plan. And the story changed as new ideas came. My protagonist  took me on different journeys and introduced me to new characters.  But the spine and heart of the story remained the same. After the book was written, I edited the synopsis.

Since then, I always write a one- or two-page synopsis before I begin. It keeps me on track, giving me a foundation. Plus I have something to work with when I’ve written the actual book, so I’m not pulling my hair our wrestling what to include.

Tamsin Cooke

Author of The Scarlet Files Series and Stunt Double Series

Website: tamsincooke.co.uk

Twitter: @TamsinCooke1 

 

Architecturally Good Writing - Nick Garlick

A few years ago I was watching the 1966 film The Chase. At one point in the story, an elderly woman played by Jocelyn Brando goes berserk with anger and starts raging and howling around the town square. To call it overacting would be an understatement. Chewing the scenery came more to mind. (Readers of a certain age might get a good idea if I mention Tod Slaughter. Times 2.) Yet the person sitting next to me sighed with admiration and said, ‘Wow! That’s good acting!’

 

The reason I’m writing about a film in a book blog is this. Over the past few months, I’ve bought three novels – two Middle Grade, one adult – whose back and inside covers were thick with gushingly admiring quotes from a host of respectable critics and writers. I managed to make it through one of the MG books, but the other two I put aside after fifty pages because I simply couldn’t get past the style.

 

  

 

 

One writer described mud that ‘sucked like fingers’. Another wrote of men whose ‘shoes leaked toes’. I’ve lived long enough to know my fingers and shoes pretty well and I’ve never yet seen the fingers suck or the shoes leak body parts. Then there’s this sentence: ‘The roar of applause hit them like a solid wave. It was architectural.’ I’m still racking my brains trying to understand how a sound can be architectural.

How does all this tie into The Chase? It’s because Jocelyn Brando let you see her acting. She wasn’t being a woman consumed with rage; she was letting you see that she was acting a woman consumed with rage. She was making you aware of what she was doing, just as the writers of the three books were letting you know that they were writing. They were demonstrating how clever and inventive they could be with words, even if that cleverness meant coming up with wildly inappropriate metaphors and similes.

Some people like this. To them, it’s real writing, because it draws attention to itself. It shouts out, ‘Look, I’m writing!’ I find it an annoying distraction, one in which the author’s personality becomes more important than the story, an attitude I have to say I find a little insulting to the reader.

But  - and here’s the rub – all three of the books I’ve taken the examples from were huge bestsellers. So what do I know? Perhaps it really is good writing.

 

Jam Season by Claire Fayers

 I'm back. After a few months break, during which time I have written a book of Welsh folktales, stumbled to the end of a draft of a new middle grade novel, made the decision to move house, and the world has become a very strange place. (Does anyone know if there's a collective noun for 'Apocalypse'?)

Anyway, we have somehow made it to September, which is the traditional month of harvest and jam and chutney making. The jam cupboard is groaning again.

I like jam-making. It can be a lengthy process with all the chopping, boiling and stirring and so it gives plenty of time to think. The various smells - vinegar, sugar, the sweet-sour note of caramelising onions - conjure up memories and evoke whole scenes. And the final satisfaction of closing the lid on a still-warm pot, and then finding it unlabelled six months later and trying to work out what's in it. You're not just making jam, you're creating adventure. 

One of the best things about jam-making is that you rarely make just a single pot, so you always have some to give away. Sadly, this year, the opportunities for sharing have all but disappeared, but we've made the jam anyway. It feel a bit like an act of hope, that we will meet our friends in person again. 

Continuing to write feels a bit like an act of hope, too. Like a lot of people, I've found it hard to concentrate on writing during lockdown. But I can manage short bursts of concentration to make lists, which are my writing equivalent of pots of jam. They sit in a cupboard in the dark and every so often when I'm in need of a new ingredient I'll pull them out and see if any of them are ready to be used. 

Something I've discovered during lockdown is that, somewhat counter-intuitively, it's easier to come up with many ideas than just one. What shall I call the villain in my new book? No idea. Write down twenty villainous-sounding names? No problem. Can't think of what happens next in a story? Write a list of twenty things that might happen, from the sensible to the ridiculous. 

So, a quick writing exercise: 

Set a timer for 5 minutes and write down as many character names as you can think of.

Repeat with locations.

Repeat with items of food.

Repeat with story titles.

Five minutes is a good length of time, I find, because it's not too long, but it's long enough that you'll go through all the obvious choices and have to think outside the box a bit.

Some of the ideas may prove useful one day. Some may not. If nothing else, it's a good way to give your brain a quick jolt at the start of a writing session. 

Claire Fayers writes fantasy adventures for children. 

Embracing Procrastination - by Holly Race

"Procrastination is the thief of time. Collar him!" So said Charles Dickens.

Sorry Charles, but I’m going to disagree with you.

Procrastination is one of my core skills. The kind of skill you put at the top of your C.V.: Holly is a passionate and dedicated worker, with great attention to detail and a particular affinity for procrastination.

But we're told that procrastination is something to be ashamed of. We guiltily joke about it with our friends and use it as a stick to beat ourselves with. Personally, I used to spiral - I'd feel so bad about the amount of time I was spending procrastinating that I'd end up writing off the whole day. A proper throwing my toys out of the tub moment: 'If I haven't done anything useful by 1pm, I'm not going to, am I?'

But what if we could start to see procrastination as a Good Thing?

Over the last few months I've come to realise that there are types of procrastination that have allowed me the headspace to work up an appetite for writing when I was in a slump, or have given me the distance I needed from a plot problem in order to solve it. So I've rated my procrastination methods here, on a scale of 1 to 5, on how useful they were in helping my writing. That's right, I've done the procrastination deep dive so you don't have to (unless you want to, or unless you're already too far down to see the surface, in which case - keep going and you'll eventually come out the other side).

Browsing social media (1/5)

We all know this already, but scrolling endlessly through Twitter is not conducive to either low blood pressure or inspiration. If you want a good kick to get off social media, watch The Social Dilemma on Netflix. I guarantee you'll be horrified at exactly how these platforms manipulate our thought patterns. Some of us need to have social media accounts in order to promote our work and, at a time when we're all socialising online more, to keep in touch with friends. But this is definitely one to limit to times where you don't need to be working.

Cooking (2/5) 

Sourdough focaccia- yum!

Here's the thing. I love cooking. Love. It. My husband used to feel guilty about how much time I spent in the kitchen, until he realised that I cook as a way to escape real life. But I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that it is not good for sparking the writing bug. I become so engrossed in measuring, stirring or worrying about whether there's too much or too little cumin in a dish, that I end up replacing stress over whether my writing is any good with stress over whether my cooking is any good.

Getting outside (3/5)

If lockdown has shown us anything, it's the value of being able to get some fresh air. Whether you prefer to jog, cycle, walk or garden, getting outside is so important to mental health. I don't think I need to say much more about the health benefits of some daily outside exercise. For writing, I find it less useful. A long, lonely walk is the only type of exercise that tends to give me plotty brainwaves, but most of us can't spare several hours a day. I've taken to puffing away with Couch to 5k or taking a scenic detour on my bike on the way back from dropping off my daughter at nursery - they don't tend to give me the headspace to work out writing problems, but they do give a much needed energy boost.

I embroider more slowly than a sloth

Doing something creative, badly (4/5)

We spend so much of our time as authors trying to perfect our craft. We spend months, sometimes years, tweaking our writing until we don't think we can make it any better. And then we send our words out into the world to be loved and rejected, and the rejections always hit harder than the compliments. So it can be liberating to do something creative that isn't going to be judged. I've recently taken up embroidery and writing poetry (I heartily recommend How To Grow Your Own Poem by Kate Clanchy). Am I good at either of them? Absolutely not. But I try to do one of them every day, just to remind myself of the simple joy and sense of achievement of making something for myself. Lifting that pressure of trying to do something perfectly has meant that I'm more willing to get stuck in to my 'proper' writing - because I'm less afraid to fail.

Journalling (4/5)

Bullet journalling has become a real trend of late. When Buzzfeed starts making videos about something, you know you're in the zeitgeist. A friend tempted me over to the dark side a few months ago, and I now have drawerfuls of washi tape. I've leaned in hard. If you're a to do list kind of person, you might find that journalling helps your sense of organisation and control. It's been a game changer for me: I was getting daily headaches and couldn't work out why... until I started to track my water intake in my journal and realised I'd been drinking two glasses of water a day on average. My brain was, as a friend so kindly put it, a desiccated husk. Now that I'm ticking off my water intake as I go, thereby making sure I'm drinking enough, the headaches have cleared up, I'm not as tired and my head is clearer than it's been in years. Instead of browsing the Internet before bed, I write out my plan for the next day, decorate it in ridiculous numbers of stickers with cliche motivational quotes. And instead of feeling as though I've eaten the equivalent of an entire tub of mini-rolls, which is what I used to feel like after an adventure through Reddit, I feel as though I've drunk a cleansing green tea.

Yoga (5/5)

I've suffered from chronic back pain since the start of the year, as though it was an omen of the awful things to come. At the beginning of lockdown I decided to sign up to a friend's online yoga course (www.nomoreshoulds.com in case you're interested!) - I'm not the biggest fan of having to travel to such classes but love the community feeling of taking classes with other people instead of via a pre-recorded, impersonal YouTube video. I've slowly built up to taking at least a short class every day, and the difference to my back pain has been remarkable. For a lot of writers, pain associated with a sedentary lifestyle is a real problem. I can't recommend stepping away once or twice a day to do some gentle twists and stretches enough. Beyond the physical benefits, the meditative quality of my yoga classes (these are gentle classes; I'm not trying to become a contortionist) has seen me come up with the solution to many a writing problem in the middle of a downward dog.

So this is my resolution for the dregs of 2020: to embrace procrastination. Guilt and shame are such useless emotions and anathema to creativity. As of now, I'm banishing them and spending more time practising my stem stitch and mountain pose. Perhaps you'll join me?

Holly Race worked for many years as a script editor in film and television, before becoming a writer.

Her debut novel, Midnight's Twins, is published by Hot Key Books. She also selectively undertakes freelance script editing and story consultant work.

www.hollyrace.com

Remembering Phyllis - by Sue Purkiss

 At the weekend, I heard that an old friend, Phyllis Goddard, had died. She was 97. I first knew Phyllis over twenty years ago, when she and I joined a new book group set up by Harry Mottram. Phyllis was the secretary, and in her quiet way, she was formidably well organised and ran the book group like clockwork. I eventually dropped out, and I think some time after so did she - but she made contact again in 2010 when I set up a writing class in Cheddar. In the first year, she wasn't able to come, because the venue wasn't suitable for someone unsteady on her feet, as she then was - but when we moved in 2011, she joined us, and came along until a few years ago when failing mobility and eyesight meant she was no longer comfortable leaving her bungalow.

This is the only picture I have of Phyllis - she's at the front, looking characteristically jolly. It's from seven years ago.

Phyllis was born in London, south of the river, and she wrote often about her childhood - her home, her family, her first job, trips to the seaside. She would chuckle as she related her stories, and we listened, fascinated. She also wrote - very movingly - about her memories of the war and its aftermath, and about her teaching and her move with her husband to Somerset, I think when they retired.

She was always very supportive of everyone else, and very encouraging. She would often say at the end of a session, with an air of great contentment: 'Well, haven't we had a wonderful time! All those marvellous stories!' We missed her very much when she was no longer able to come, but sometimes we went to her, and she was always welcoming and delighted to see us. She insisted that she was perfectly happy, and very fortunate. She was always busy, knitting little teddy bears for friends and for charity, looking back over over her writings - her son, Martin, had some of her work beautifully printed for her -  seeing her family and friends, enjoying her small, beautifully kept garden from the French windows.

When Martin got in touch to tell me that she had died, he said this, which was lovely

'...(When) in recent weeks, Mum's loss of short-term memory made other conversations difficult, Chris (Phyllis's daughter) hit upon the idea of reading extracts from Mum's 'life story' as memory-jogging starting-points. For the most part they were not directly related to your classes, but you were certainly responsible for encouraging Mum to take up her pen. You might like to know that, towards the end when her sight was poor and COVID restrictions ruled out most other distractions, hearing what she had written was one of the very last things she was able to enjoy.'

And I think that's the message I want to pass on: for Phyllis, writing was something she came to love, an end in itself: a great pleasure, and a way of revisiting a long life, well-lived. She didn't aspire to publication - though I did produce an anthology of the class's writing and some of her stories appeared in that. Here is one of them. I remember when she first read it out. We sat and listened, hushed, as she took us to London in 1940, when a young girl hurried home across a scarlet Thames as London burned in the Blitz...

A Day To Remember 

Sunday the 7^th September, 1940. The day had begun well. I was up early in order to catch the coach from Liverpool Street Station to Bedford, and I was really looking forward to meeting up with my soldier fiancé, who was stationed there.

            The day went quickly, and we had to run in order for me to catch the six o’clock coach that would take me back to London.

            Two hours later I was hurrying down into the underground station. As usual, the platforms were crowded with families seeking shelter from the air raids. Wide white lines were painted along the edges of the platforms to indicate where passengers were to walk when bedding was being used. My train came in quickly. I glanced at my watch. In about an hour, I thought, I would be home and it might still be light.

            I was very surprised when at the Bank Station we were all ordered off the train. The reason given was that during air raids, trains do not run under the Thames. I wasn’t particularly worried. I knew London well. There were always buses and trains that went my way. I continued along to the exit with the other passengers.

            But imagine my surprise and horror when, as I left the station, a blast of hot air nearly blew me off my feet.

            I grabbed the arm of the man walking next to me. Folk around were shouting and helping each other to stay on their feet. The man and I clung to each other, finding it hard to breathe with the hot wind blowing in our faces.

            “Are you going across the bridge, too?” he shouted. How glad I was that I could yell back “Yes”, knowing I would have him with me.

            In a few minutes we reached the approach to London Bridge and couldn’t believe our eyes. To the left of us everything appeared to be a seething, heaving mass of red and gold. Flames leapt up and out of wharves and buildings, and the Thames looked like a river of blood. The only sounds to be heard were the loud ‘plops’ as the fronts of buildings fell into the river, sending up sky-high fountains of water, coloured crimson by the reflection from the flames. The heat and wind together were almost unbearable.

            We made it to the other side of the bridge, the man and the eighteen year old girl – clinging to each other for support.

            We hardly spoke. I never asked his name or he mine. We stopped to get our breath back and he asked where I was heading for. He wanted to get to the Elephant and Castle and I, to Stockwell. I still hoped a tram or a bus would come along. We stayed together until the road junction, and said goodbye. He wished me luck, and I walked on alone.

Phyllis Goddard

So long, Phyllis. It was a privilege to know you.

Mind Map Your Story (or anything else) - Heather Dyer

Allowing your ideas to branch organically promotes divergent thinking; the mind thinks ‘wider’ that it might do if you were making a list or writing in a linear way. This can give rise to new and unexpected connections. 

There are all sorts of ways to use mind maps:

• Taking notes in a lecture or from a weblog or podcast, or book
• Exploring an event, process or a concept – for example, ‘moving house’, ‘sand dune erosion’, or ‘haiku’.
• Structuring a piece of writing or coming up with ideas to write about. 
• Performance. For example, if assessing a teacher, you could write down the areas for assessment beforehand – or the performance categories red, green and amber (for improvement) – before branching off each one according to your observations. 
• Designing a presentation. You could even show the mind map as a PowerPoint slide, to introduce the presentation or sum up at the end.
• Explore a character, chapter or storyline. 

How to do it?

1. Write one central word (or better still, draw a single image representing it) in the middle of the page. Then branch out, writing one associated word along each branch.
2. Draw a thick line for the first words that come off the central image, and thinner lines for more remote tributaries.
3. Branch again and again; the only limit is the number of associations you can make.
4. Tony Buzan recommends using colour, but I’ve never bothered.
5. Importantly, allocate only one word to each branch – even if you want to write a phrase.
   For example, I recently drew a mind map to explore potential income streams. One of my branches was ‘school visits’. But breaking this into two words on two branches, allowed more connections to arise. As I drew a separate line for ‘school’, universities and home-schooling groups suddenly occurred to me. Then, as I drew the line for ‘visit’ I realized I could offer virtual visits as well as real visits.

Other ideas:

• If your mind map is getting too crowded, one of the branches could start a separate mind map of its own, thereby drilling deeper and expanding further.
• Mind mapping can be done as a way to collaborate. It can be useful to do individual mind maps first, collaborate to create a combined map, then separate again and reflect further.
• Try prioritizing quantity over quality. Choose your central word or image, then write at least five words branching from it. Write another five from each of these five. Try another five, if you can. How far can you go?
• When you’ve finished your mind map, try connecting random pairs of words and seeing if any new connections arise.

Heather Dyer teaches Writing for Children for the Open College of the Arts, and provides writing and publishing advice through The Literary Consultancy, The Writers' Advice Centre for Children's Books, and privately. If you’re ready for feedback on your work-in-progress contact Heather at heatherdyerbooks@gmail.com. 

For further information, see Heather's blog at Writing for Children: Creative Inspiration for Children's Authors.

Truth and Children's Literature by Anne Booth

 Recently on Twitter, I asked this question:

Anne Booth  @Bridgeanne ·Sep 14

Can people recommend children's books, from picture book upwards, which deal specifically with the truth - including but not only - fake news - but the idea of some things being true and beautiful and good, and others not. @Booktrust  

I asked this because I am personally very interested in the idea of Truth anyway, but also I have recently become very concerned about all the fake news and the contradictory and confusing reports we see in the media. It's so hard, at times to tell what is true and what is not. I watched this amazing documentary on Netflix called 'The Social Dilemma', which I really recommend as a thought-provoking thing to watch — here is a preview and a link to an article about the documentary itself. 

It seems, whatever we think of the documentary, that this world we adults have made is certainly a very complicated world for children to grow up in. So what can children's books do to help children think about and recognise what is true and what is not, what is truly good and what we are being manipulated into thinking is good? 

I had so many brilliant answers to my Twitter question. My own children, aged from 20-24, who were with me during lockdown, have all gone back to university or work, so I am sorry that I don't have my experts to help me work out how to copy them all in a thread here, but if you go to my @Bridgeanne account and find this tweet above from Sep 14th, you will see so many interesting answers, and I have copied and pasted a selection here!

Replying to @Bridgeane and @Booktrust

The Middler by @KirstyApplebaum is an atmospheric, "quietly menacing"(!) book,
which looks at how everything you have ever known and believed about the world
can be turned on its head.

I have started reading it and am really enjoying it. 

Replying to @Bridgeanne
Hi Anne! Or @AnnaMcKerrow suggests: 

Splat the Fake Fact - Adam Frost/Gemma Correll
Scoop McLaren: Detective Editor - Helen Castles
Politics for Beginners - Alex Frith/Rosie Hore/Louie Stowell
The Truth According to Arthur - Tim Hopgood/David Tazzyman
What Lexie Did - Emma Sheva 

I have already ordered and read the next one, 'Sticky Beak', and think it is a brilliant look at advertising! 

Replying to @Bridgeanne and @Booktrust

What about persuasion and the power of advertising - everything isn’t always as it seems? 

Sneaky Beak by Tracey Corderoy & illustrated by Tony Neal Sneaky Beak is an absolute joy to read! Its bright colours, larger than life.

Rashmi Sirdeshpande is away editing @RashmiWriting 

I got news! GOOD NEWS: WHY THE WORLD IS NOT AS BAD AS YOU THINK (illustrated by @mrahayes) is out on 10th June 2021. A hopeful book (9+), covering some of the biggest issues of our time from fake news and the climate crisis to politics and inequality. 

One very interesting tweet by Dr Ann Alston @AnnAlston17    proposed a theory that ALL Children's literature is the search for a truth. 

What do you think? Do you have any recommendations?

Writing a Novel is Like ... by Joan Lennon

Theo Jansen Strandbeest 

(wiki commons)

There comes a stage in writing a novel when you need to revisit the whole thing, starting at the beginning and working your way right through to the end, looking for inconsistencies, contradictions, lumps, bumps and loose threads.  Novels are complicated beasts full of interwoven filaments that can easily break or tangle or just trail off randomly.  It doesn't take much to make something that complex not run smoothly.  Grind to a halt.  Maybe even fall flat on its face ...

Jansen said of his beasts: "I make skeletons that are able to walk on the wind. Over time, these skeletons have become increasingly better at surviving the elements such as storms and water and eventually I want to put these animals out in herds on the beaches, so they will live their own lives."

Which is what we hope for our novels too, right?

Joan Lennon Instagram

What's in a blog? by Joan Haig

I usually trip headfirst into adventures, but before joining this Awfully Big one, I thought I should probably prepare. What exactly was I getting myself into? I mean, I know what a blog is, but what exactly is a blog? It sounds sticky.

Blogging history began in the 1980s with basic webpages that acted to log website activity and encourage user feedback. The term ‘weblog’ was first used in 1997 during the shift towards more journal-like usage of these webpages. One year later, Open Diary was launched providing space for regular personal updates to be shared and with a function inviting readers’ comments on content; the year after that the shortened term ‘blog’ was coined.

So, should I treat my ABBA blogpost as a monthly diary entry? Are blogs like diaries? Not according to sociologist José van Dijck who argues for important distinctions to be made. Diaries are private spaces; online journals, by design, are public and invite an audience, the presence of which will affect what, why and how things are recorded.

The physical performance of diary-writing, says van Dijck, produces a ‘material, “authentic” artefact, inscribed in time and on paper’. Digital memories, conversely, are revisable, unreliable, ‘mediated’. This reminds me of philosopher Jacques Derrida’s work, in which handwriting embodies meaning and emotion: that is, pen and paper produce different modes of thought from typewriters (and, we can assume, from laptops and tablets).

Blogs quite quickly became politicised, used as virtual megaphones and digital homing pigeons in political campaigns and crises around the world. Youth activist Malala Yousafzai anonymously blogged for the BBC; her journal-like entries provided an escape route for voices trapped in Taliban-controlled areas of Pakistan.

Though blogs can function as overtly political spaces, most don’t. According to an important piece (and when I say important piece, I mean cartoon) in The New Yorker, blogs can be broken down by function, as follows:

©Roz Chast, The New York Times

[Purely in order to fit into this pie chart, I should say that my debut novel Tiger Skin Rug is out with Cranachan Publishing and available online and from all good book shops, and my next book, Talking History, is coauthored with Joan Lennon and out with Templar next year.]

As well as being political and promotional platforms, blogs are also heavily monetised, being prime advertising spaces in what one study calls the ‘attention economy’. And the blogosphere is a crowded market these days, accommodating photologs, microblogs (social media-like beasts) and vlogs. Back in the Year 2000, there were around 30 blog sites on the Internet. Now there are around 500 million.

Apart from book blogs (which, along with indie bookshops, make the world go round), the blogs I’m drawn to are the ones that read a bit like essays. (Can you tell?) I was a fresh-faced first year at university when I got hooked on the essay form. Not writing the things - reading them. I love a good essay and access them mostly online, sometimes on blogsites. According to one technology historian, however, the blog version of an essay is not quite an essay, taking a more ‘informal, conversational, sometimes even off-color tone’. Some are so ‘off-color’ that digital do-gooders have devised a Code of Conduct for Bloggers.

That such a code exists supports the position taken by my favourite of the articles I came across. In ‘Chaos Theory as a Lens for Interpreting Blogging’, readers are assured that in the ‘apparent random and complex phenomenon’ of the blogosphere, there is, in fact, a sense of order. People within the sphere, the article explains, know what they are doing. Based on the evidence immediately before you, you may well beg to differ.

So, all this prepping leads me to conclude that a blog is not exactly a log, diary or essay. It’s not always political and only sometimes (not in my case) an income stream. I know what a blog post isn’t; I’m still not entirely sure what it is. And yet, I’ve managed to come to the end of my first one on this adventure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

www.joanhaigbooks.com and social media @joanhaigbooks