Have you got a story inside you, which you'd like help with telling? Would you like to produce a children's book, Art or science book, or just any sort of book, but don't know where to start?
I'll help you write your book, with my artillery of publishing knowledge and experience. I love to write. Writing is fun - as, is the laying out of a book and putting it all together. Having the final product in your hand, is the most gratifying part.
I'm a Bloomsbury published author and illustrator, have assisted others with getting their debut novels or other works into the market, and have self-published on Amazon. I have over 20 years' worth of experience of writing.
I love nothing more than to tell a story, and to tell it well. Having done extensive publishing work both for mainstream and independent publishers, and having observed the rise of some, specifically biography-writing services, I decided to offer my own, more generalised, book- and document-writing service.
For example, I don't just write biographies. If you want help with producing anything from children's books to your own how-to manuals, teaching materials, Art books, or essayist pieces, then I can help you put them together into a tangible format.
I've always been fascinated by Peter Settelen's interview of Princess Diana, and being something of a life veteran, am not scared of tackling tough subjects. I have an eye/ ear for a catchy, snappy phrase, am fond of using hard-hitting text, and writing articles which may be more than a little provocative. Alternatively, if you'd prefer a more toned down approach - I can do that, too!
I've also done my fair share of document writing, editing and proofreading in my time, so can help out with policy and procedure documents, financial documents, thesis writing, research, and fact checking.
I made the Hornblower website, in a day. How did all this come about, I hear you ask yourself? I’ll let you into a secret: if it seems, that this site suddenly popped up like a fairy-ring, in the middle of the night - a lot of my ideas, do. And sometimes, you just have to go with them - because, they are (or, seem like) good ideas!
I published 4 art books of my own on Amazon this year, no less - yet, I was still turned down recently, for a ghostwriting job at a publishing house, doing biography writing. Just another job rejection, I thought - never mind, what the hell - I’ll create my own writing empire!
I’ll tell the story, of how my gift of the gab, came about in the first place. To begin at the very beginning, I was one of those annoyingly precocious children who learned to read, at 1 3/4 years of age. Mostly, I was top of the class in English, and generally got good grades at school, except from one lousy teacher, by whom I was stuck being taught, for a seemingly interminable 4 years. She was the spitting image of the Beryl Reid character from St. Trinian’s, and was a real dud. Our hatred of each other was mutual, and I despised the fusty choices in English Literature we were given to read - endless Shakespeare, Dickens, Hardy - you get the picture.
I myself, have always been a fan of a number of American writers. This teacher, would never have allowed these in her class, since she was anti-American - whereas I could not imagine life without Mark Twain, Ayn Rand, Sylvia Plath, Washington Irving, and countless others. Perhaps - because her knowledge of these authors was scant - she couldn’t understand why, in spite of the fact that I had a good command of vocabulary, I completely failed to understand the drivel we were set to study in class. The truth was, that I wasn’t interested. I don’t think I even opened Middlemarch. I tell a lie. I think I opened it once, and quickly closed it again.
Since I was, in fact, not a bad creative writer, and this teacher realized she couldn’t mark me down on that pretext, she tried to convince me, in her booming voice, that I would be the next Iris Murdoch. I didn’t see why I should be compared to an old bat with a bad haircut! Still, it was something of an inevitability, that my writing in later years, would go on to bear its own kind of fruit.
In my 20s, I went on to sell, and write, advertorials for a local paper, an online microscopy magazine called Micscape, and, eventually, my own book on botanical painting. My 30s saw the publication of several fashion and culture books, as well as independent projects - which I either authored, or collaborated on. I also made a lot of music around that time, and wrote poetry. Thus, it is, that I have experience of writing in a variety of styles - whether they be dryly scientific, factual, or research-based; emotive, creative or expressive; or gut-wrenching, philosophical and psychoanalytic, as my output has been of late.
Why, The Hornblower? By way of explanation: once I had decided to go ahead and create the site, I gave some thought, to the name I might want to use. The first name I thought of, was already taken. The second one, was also, already taken. Then, the Alice Evans/ Ioan Gruffudd story, caught my eye. Aha! I thought. Why not, The Hornblower? I checked to see, if the site name was taken. It wasn’t.
I lost no time in acquiring it, as to me it seemed the perfect name for a writing site, and especially, one offering biographies. No matter how inconsequential a smidgen of an ego we might have, at the end of the day, we all like to toot our own horn!
The logo was easy to make. I found a reference image of a straight, Roman trumpet on the Web, and redrew it. I was pleased; it was simple, but worked. It gave the impression of being the title of some early newspaper; or of having an ear trumpet, or megaphone, close to hand. Certainly, it created the impression of there being something, people wanted to hear; the re-claiming of one’s voice, perhaps?
To reclaim your voice - or, to make it even better still - get in touch, at the Hornblower: hornblowerinfo@gmail.com. A price guide is here, but as with any bespoke project, this will need to be adjusted to fit.
Let’s write some books together!
