Many books. Many pen names. One author.

I write.  A lot.

Sixteen novels, ranging from magical realism to historical romance, from cozy crime to young adult. For over ten years, I’ve tried to squeeze myself into the pigeonholes built by print publishers’ editors and their marketing teams, contorting my writing to fit. I’ve trailed my favourite themes and settings across genres, and I’ve adopted voices that weren’t my own. A couple of times I got it right. But otherwise it hasn’t worked out all that well.

Like most writers, I just want to connect with readers. And e-publishing makes that directly possible.

allonymbooks is the umbrella under which all my novels shelter, mingling with the various authors I’ve created to write them. In the coming months my books will become available on Amazon Kindle, and I’ll be blogging here about my experiences of writing, e-publishing, and print publishing too. I’ve published a couple of novels with a leading UK print publisher, and maybe down the line I’ll be able to rescue them and their author from mid-list obscurity and bring them under the allonymbooks umbrella.

I’ll be writing more novels as well, and I hope that whether you find just one of my books to enjoy, or like my writing and want to see how it changes across the different genres, you’ll come and visit now and again to share your responses to my books, and your thoughts about what e-publishing means to you as a reader and/or a writer.

In the meantime, here’s something I’ve learned.

A mentor is worth their weight in royalties.

I was lucky enough to find one who was generous with sharing his decades of experience as a published writer. And I was intelligent enough to listen to what he said. Without him, allonymbooks would just be a figment of my electronic imagination, or, as the wonderful writer Jasper Fforde would have it, just a shelf in The Well of Lost Plots.