Hey everyone, hope you all had a Merry Christmas. I certainly did. I normally limit myself to one glass of wine on occasion with meals, since more than that would knock me out of ketosis, but what the hey… there are no limits for Crimbo, right?
Link to my Christmas ghost novel included with pic
We spent Christmas Eve in the pub and apart from a few photos (as above) it was the start of a family digital detox, so our phones disappeared for a few days. Yule is the season for community spirit and spending time with family, and we did just that.
Happy holidays to my family, friends and followers this Yuletide season. I will be taking a digital detox over the next few days, so just to say thanks for being with me on my author journey, for buying and borrowing my books, and keeping my writing spirits high.
Hope that Santa is good to you over the festive season. Since it’s only the fourth day of Yule, may the merriment continue for you as it does for me!
Today it’s the shortest day of the year, and that means celebrating the return of light to the world. The winter solstice is the start of the traditional twelve days of Yule, from 21st December up until 1st January. Thousands of years ago, people would have sacrificed a cow for their community to feast on for the twelve days at a time when food was scarce after the harvest season ended. For our Yule celebration, we’re having turkey. This has been picked by the Princeps in our family, aka the little dude. Let me explain.
Io Saturnalia! My Instagram story on 17th December
On 17th December, we celebrated Saturnalia, an ancient Roman celebration similar to Yule. Traditionally for Saturnalia, the social hierarchy would have been upturned for seven days of feasting, wine-drinking and merriment, and a slave or a child would have been put in charge as the Princeps. Our little literary dude is the Princeps in our family for the festive season. For Saturnalia, I made globi, an ancient Roman dish of cheesy dough balls. In ancient Roman society, a pig would have been sacrificed; since we can’t very well head on over to a neighbouring farm outside of Belfast and butcher someone’s pig, we sufficed with pigs-in-blankets, another seasonal favourite in abundance at this time of year.
Once again, time has escaped me. I haven’t been posting on here as regularly as I normally do. I’ll blame it on the season; things get busy in the run-up to Christmas with school and work full flow, before they grind to a complete halt and we have two weeks off.
Book marketing is a 24-7 job that never grinds to a halt. For me, writing ebbs and flows; I’m never too bothered if a few days pass and I haven’t written a thing, as I know other days will be productive. On the other hand, marketing is different. Books don’t sell themselves. I always try to post a promo video across my social media channels every few days or so, just to keep the sales chugging along. Here’s my latest one, promoting my ‘stocking stuffers’:
This is a random post, and the reason why is that I have been distracted and scatterbrained this week for various reasons. I had drafted another blog post but forgot to post it. What can I say? Woops for that.
I’ll post that other blog update soon, as I’m taking this opportunity while my brain has been meandering in dreamland to post this one instead.
Cold Moon over Queen’s University on 4 Dec
A mind that meanders in dreamland pretty much makes up the bulk of my day. At school I got in trouble for not paying attention in class. Now in middle-age I have perfected the art of looking like I am paying attention when in fact my brain is elsewhere. It’s like leaving a light on in your house when you’re out; I do that a lot too, by accident of course. I’m absentminded generally.
Beaver Moon over Belfast on 5 November (check out the resident grey heron on the River Lagan)
Today marks the third and final supermoon of 2025. In case you weren’t aware that there had been any supermoons, nevermind one, we had a Harvest Moon on 7 October, a Beaver Moon on 5 November and now, a Cold Moon on 4 December. The reason they were dubbed supermoons is because of the moon’s orbit around earth, making the moon appear bigger, brighter and higher in the sky than normal when the moon is at its perigee (closest to the earth in its elliptical orbit).
I really ought to know more about the moon and its phases than I do. It’s an important celestial body that affects everything from our tides to the axial tilt of our planet. I have tried to memorise the moon phases, but I don’t seem to have a brain for the information – retaining it, at least. Maybe I’ll treat myself to a moon phases notebook for my Yule present to myself.
As a reader as well as a writer, I try to read widely across a variety of genres, but I always find myself gravitating back to my favourite ghost horror reads. You’re probably going to find this odd, but nothing comforts me more than lying in bed snuggled up with a scary story. I can’t think of a better way to drift off to sleep.
I’ve been rather quiet on this blog for the past week, mostly because real life has kept me quite busy. Library and teaching work aside (like the majority of writers, I need a day job to keep a roof over my head) my writing life has been full steam ahead. While taking a break from ghost novel WIP#7, which has been stuck at 63k words for what feels like an infinity, I decided to start working on my next novel draft. Why not?
It did cross my mind that while taking a hiatus from one novel draft, it might be better to work on a short story rather than starting a new novel, mainly because working on two novels at once can significantly slow down progress on both. Since I’ve already hit a wall with ghost novel WIP#7 anyway, there really is no barrier to me starting a new project or worrying that progress will be slow. I decided to completely rewrite one of the peripheral characters in WIP#7 and this affected not only the plot, but the interactions with all of the other characters; this has caused me to totally lose the thread with characterisation of my protagonist. My solution for this was to order a print draft from Lulu, so that I can read it in book format, essentially to get the story back in my head in order to move it forwards to the end.
All of the above has left me free to start my next novel draft. Like most of my other books, this one is going to be a ghost story. That’s all I’m going to say about it for now. More updates as they happen. For now, I’m away to get more coffee and crack on with this new draft, while the excitement lasts!
What happens when your life revolves around books? It’s funny, but I’ve been a writer of some description for so long, I can’t think of my life without writing or books.
My latest video sums up my bookish journey in a snapshot that takes less than a minute to watch, but the reality is a lot more involved. I try to write everyday, though admittedly my latest novel WIP has stalled – again. Yes, I wrote a blog post back in February about writer’s block and it has happened again with the same project. I’ll write more about that saga in another post, as I have already worked out a solution, and I’ve been taking steps towards that.
Teaching creative writing is going well. My students, a group of seventeen year olds at the grammar school where I work, are a highly motivated group. I don’t need to badger them to hand in work at the end of each session; when I give them writing prompts, they produce so much for me that I could seriously do with more hours in the day to read and critique it all.
Bindweed Anthologies, the literary publication that I’ve been running since 2016 with my fellow writer hubby, Joseph Robert, has been going from strength to strength too. We recently launched our latest publication, White Witch’s Hat & other Yuletide ghost stories, and we’ve opened submissions for our next anthology for 2026, which will have a harvest theme.
As for promoting my own books, marketing is always an ongoing effort. Newspapers, radio, social media, paid advertising: the list goes on.
Leilanie Stewart 