I'm pleased to say that publication day for The Almost Truth has finally arrived. I'm emerging just that bit further as an author...Sometimes pictures speak louder than words:

Ten days and counting until The Almost Truth, my debut novel, is published on the 8th April. This is, if you like, the final push in an experience that has had peaks and troughs of action and silence, while so much work has gone on behind the scenes.

When you’re close to having a book published, the online world can start to close in until it feels as if everyone is doing likewise. This can be both uplifting: ‘Wow! Look at all these great books out there, and mine is soon to be one of them!’ and dispiriting: ‘Wow. Look at all these great books out there. How will anyone ever see mine, let alone read it…’

When is a book not quite a book?

When it’s an eBook or an audiobook.

I have plenty of (second-hand) experience of eBook production watching the work of Claire Morley, author, and the whizz behind MyePublishBook.com. I can’t imagine my working and reading life without my Kindle – while nothing beats the look and feel of a ‘real’ book, the immediacy of eBook content and the convenience of being able to take an electronic pile of novels anywhere is fantastic.

In just over four months’ time, my debut novel, The Almost Truth, will be published by Legend Press. I’ve had the two-book contract for well over twelve months, but such is the world of publishing – planning ahead at least a year, more likely two – it’s only in the last few weeks that the process has started to gain momentum. First came the title. Originally, this book was called But, a title of which I was both fond and thought quite clever – one of the taglines being, ‘All life’s decisions come with a but…’ And in a great example of life imitating art, it was a good title theoretically but it didn’t fit easily on any bookshelf. It had to go. The Almost Truth was born from the fact that Alina (the protagonist’s) life is built on truth, the whole truth…and a few minor but crushing deviations of the...