Jon Sparks

“It is not down in any map;. true places never are”. Herman Melville, Moby-Dick. Regular readers will be well aware of my reverence for...

As the world held its breath for 'Vows and Watersheds', I found myself thinking back to the first thing I ever got published in a proper...

A few thoughts about an author who had a significant influence on me from an early age. I'm prompted to write this now because I've been...

For anyone unfamiliar with writerly jargon, there's often said to be a divide between 'plotters' and 'pantsers'. Plotting or 'outlining'...

"Write what you know." Along with "show, don't tell," it's one of the most frequently repeated pieces of writing advice. And, in both...

Looking back, I've published far more non-fiction than fiction. I'm busily trying to redress that balance, but that doesn't mean I regret...

It's often said that every writer starts out as a reader—and presumably continues to be one. I know that's true for me. From time to time...

As I related in Part 1, Three Kinds of North, and the whole Shattered Moon series, have been a long time in the making. Today I'm...

"It's been a long road/Gettin' from there to here/It's been a long time/But my time is finally near" Free copy of the print version of...

The first step was a trawl through my image collection: 30,000-plus photos to look at, though nearly all could be dismissed in a fraction...

I've looked at lots of advice on self-publishing, and the universal refrain when it comes to cover design is ‘make your cover fit your...

Everyone from literary agents to Amazon algorithms seems to like books to clearly match a specific genre. They're easier to market, but...