“There is someone that I love even though I don't approve of what he does...someone I accept though some of his thoughts and actions revolt me...someone I forgive though he hurts the people I love the most. That person is...me.” – CS Lewis #turtlewriters🙂🐢🍀#selfcare matters❤️

"When was the last time someone read aloud to you? Probably when you were a child, & if you think back, you'll remember how safe you felt, tucked under the covers, or curled in someone's arms, as a story was spun around you like a web." – Jodi Picoult #turtlewriters 🙂🐢❤️🍀 #WritingCommunity

“This manuscript...is...precious... Don't consider it rejected. Consider...you've addressed it 'to the editor who can appreciate my work' & it has simply come back stamped 'Not at this address'. Just keep looking for the right address.” - Barbara Kingsolver #turtlewriters🙂🐢❤️🍀 #WritingCommunity

“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they really happened & after you are finished reading one you feel that it all happened to you & after which it all belongs to you.” ― Ernest Hemingway Take care & stay safe, #turtlewriters🙂🐢❤️🍀 #WritingCommunity

“...all the stories in the world consist essentially of 26 letters. The letters are always the same, only the arrangement varies. From letters words are formed, from words sentences, from sentences chapters, & from chapters stories.” ― Michael Ende #turtlewriters 🙂🐢❤️🍀 #WritingCommunity

“What is the best way to write? Each of us has to discover her own way by writing. Writing teaches writing. No one can tell you your own secret. ” ― Gail Sher Take care & stay safe, #turtlewriters🙂🐢❤️🍀 #WritingCommunity

A charming children's story from @peacefulreadings.bsky.social, with beautiful illustrations. 🥰

“You don't know what it is to stay a whole day with your head in your hands trying to squeeze your unfortunate brain so as to find a word.” ― Gustave Flaubert ...But if you do know what that feels like, you're not alone, because lots of us do too! ((hugs)) #turtlewriters🙂🐢❤️🍀 #WritingCommunity

“Don't make the editor's decision for her by not submitting.” ― Victoria Janssen Believe in your story & your characters! Take a chance & go for it! You have everything to gain! Good luck! 🍀 Love & ((hugs)) #turtlewriters! 🙂🐢❤️ #WritingCommunity

"When you finally start to write something, do not let yourself stop...even when you are convinced it's the worst garbage ever...Instead, force yourself to finish what you began, and THEN go back and edit it." – Jodi Picoult Take care & stay safe, #turtlewriters! 🙂🐢❤️🍀 #WritingCommunity

“The very reason I write is so that I might not sleepwalk through my entire life.” — Zadie Smith Good luck with your WIP, & whatever else you may need it for, #turtlewriters! ❤️🙂🐢🍀 #WritingCommunity

"All stories teach, whether the storyteller intends them to or not. They teach the world we create. They teach the morality we live by. They teach it much more effectively than moral precepts and instructions." - Philip Pullman Take care & stay safe, #turtlewriters! 🙂🐢 ❤️🍀 #WritingCommunity

“If you focus on the humanity of your stories, your characters, then the horror will be stronger, scarier. Without the humanity, the horror becomes nothing more than a tawdry parlor trick. All flash and no magic, and worst of all, no heart.” - Don Roff #turtlewriters 🙂🐢🍀❤️ #WritingCommunity

“There were thousands and thousands of forms of joy in the world, but that all were essentially one and the same, namely, the joy of being able to love.” ― Michael Ende Take care & stay safe, #turtlewriters! 🙂🐢 ❤️🍀 #WritingCommunity

“Rules such as "Write what you know," & "Show, don't tell," while doubtlessly grounded in good sense, can be ignored...by any novelist nimble enough to get away with it. There is...only one rule in writing fiction: Whatever works, works.” - Tom Robbins #turtlewriters 🙂🐢❤️🍀 #WritingCommunity

“Hardly anybody ever writes anything nice about introverts. Extroverts rule...rather odd when you realize...about 19 writers out of 20 are introverts. We have been taught to be ashamed of not being ‘outgoing’. But a writer’s job is ingoing.” -Ursula K Le Guin #turtlewriters🙂🐢 #WritingCommunity

“In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it 'got boring,' the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description & lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling.” - Stephen King Stay safe #turtlewriters! 🙂🐢❤️🍀#WritingCommunity

'We writers are always stronger when we stand together & support & encourage each other – so let’s do it!' 🙂🐢❤️ Take care & stay safe, #turtlewriters! Love & ((hugs)) 🍀 #WritingCommunity

5 down and 2 to go! My updating and release of the Forgotten Wings series is reaching towards the climatic publishing of a completely new novel in the autumn.

Absolution, Book 5 in the Forgotten Wings series is now out on Amazon Kindle. Buy it or read for free with Kindle Unlimited.

"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear — not absence of fear." - Mark Twain Have courage, my friends, and take that first step! You can do this...whatever *this* may be! Love & ((hugs)) #turtlewriters!❤️🍀 #WritingCommunity

“We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do & think & feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are & may become.” - Ursula K. LeGuin Take care & stay safe, #turtlewriters!❤️🍀#WritingCommunity

“Human passions have mysterious ways, in children as well as grown-ups. Those affected by them can’t explain them, and those who haven’t known them have no understanding of them at all.” ― Michael Ende Take care & stay safe, #turtlewriters!❤️🍀#WritingCommunity

“One must always be careful of books," said Tessa, "and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.” ― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel ...And to change our readers! Good luck with your writing,, #turtlewriters & #WritingCommunity 🙂🐢❤️

'I will not be "famous," "great." I will go on adventuring, changing, opening my mind & my eyes, refusing to be stamped & stereotyped. The thing is to free one's self: to let it find its dimensions, not be impeded.' -Virginia Woolf Take care & stay safe, #turtlewriters!❤️🍀 🙂🐢 #WritingCommunity

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” ― H. Jackson Brown Jr #turtlewriters🙂 🐢 #WritingCommunity

“The only difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.” ―Jimmy Johnson Keep going, #turtlewriters! Keep learning! Keep writing! Keep submitting! Success is waiting for you - even famous authors get rejections! You can do this! ❤️🙂🐢🍀 #WritingCommunity

"It doesn’t matter who you are or what you look like, so long as somebody loves you." — Roald Dahl, The Witches Love yourself, & love your characters, #turtlewriters! Then your readers will love your writer's voice & your characters too! 🙂🐢❤️🍀 Good luck with your #WIP! #WritingCommunity #amwriting

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." - Samuel Beckett Good luck with whatever you may need it for, #turtlewriters & #WritingCommunity 🙂🐢❤️🍀

“Only the right name gives beings and things their reality. A wrong name makes everything unreal. That's what lies do.” ― Michael Ende, The Neverending Story Take care & stay safe, #turtlewriters & #WritingCommunity 🙂🐢❤️🍀

“If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending… But if it’s a story, even in my head, I must be telling it to someone. You don’t tell a story only to yourself. There’s always someone else. Even when there is no one.” – Margaret Atwood #turtlewriters 🍀🙂🐢❤️ #WritingCommunity

“You cannot write for children. They're much too complicated. You can only write books that are of interest to them. ” ― Maurice Sendak Take care & stay safe, #turtlewriters & #WritingCommunity 🙂🐢❤️🍀

'Books are the mirrors of the soul.' - Virginia Woolf Take care & stay safe, #turtlewriters & #WritingCommunity 🙂🐢❤️🍀

"And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” ― Sylvia Plath Take care & stay safe, #turtlewriters & #WritingCommunity 🙂🐢❤️

"If you are using dialogue—say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech." –John Steinbeck Take care & stay safe, #turtlewriters 🍀🙂🐢❤️ #WritingCommunity

As an aspiring artist, you should strive for originality of vision. Have something to say and a fresh way of saying it. No story is worth the writing, no picture worth the making, if it’s not the work of the imagination.” ― Maurice Sendak Stay safe, #turtlewriters🙂🐢❤️🍀#WritingCommunity

'We writers are always stronger when we stand together & support & encourage each other – so let’s do it!' 🙂🐢❤️ Take care & stay safe, #turtlewriters 🍀 #WritingCommunity

“A novel rough draft is like bread dough; you need to beat the crap out of it for it to rise.” ― Chris Baty Take care & stay safe, #turtlewriters #WritingCommunity 🙂🐢❤️🍀

"Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly." - Franz Kafka Take care & stay safe, #turtlewriters #WritingCommunity 🙂🐢❤️🍀

24. “-Everything will turn out all right. You'll see. -I can't imagine how, said Atreyu. -Neither can I, said the luckdragon. But that's the best part of it.” ― Michael Ende, The Neverending Story Take care & stay safe, #turtlewriters & #WritingCommunity! 🙂🐢❤️🍀

“-Everything will turn out all right. You'll see. -I can't imagine how, said Atreyu. -Neither can I, said the luckdragon. But that's the best part of it.” ― Michael Ende, The Neverending Story Take care & stay safe, #turtlewriters & #WritingCommunity! 🙂🐢❤️🍀

“A story isn't a charcoal sketch, where every stroke lies on the surface to be seen. It's an oil painting, filled with layers that the author must uncover so carefully to show its beauty.” ― Amelia Atwater-Rhodes Take care & stay safe, #turtlewriters #WritingCommunity 🙂🐢❤️🍀

"Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything really good." - William Faulkner Be brave, #turtlewriters, #WritingCommunity! Let your imagination fly free and the words flow! Good luck! 🙂🐢❤️🍀

“I think I may boast myself to be, with all possible vanity, the most unlearned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress.” – Jane Austen, on self-doubt. Believe in yourself, #turtlewriters #WritingCommunity. You can do so much more than you think you can! 🙂🐢❤️🍀

"The most important thing in life is to stop saying 'I wish' and start saying 'I will.' Consider nothing impossible, then treat possibilities as probabilities." – Charles Dickens Good luck, #turtlewriters #WritingCommunity 🙂🐢❤️🍀

"The only advice ... that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions." - Virginia Woolf Take care & stay safe, #turtlewriters #WritingCommunity 🙂🐢❤️

"A poem needs understanding through the senses. The point of diving in a lake is not...to swim to the shore; it’s to be in the lake...luxuriate in the sensation of water...an experience beyond thought. Poetry soothes & emboldens the soul to accept mystery." - John Keats #turtlewriters 🙂🐢❤️🍀

"The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists." - Charles Dickens #turtlewriters #WritingCommunity 🙂🐢❤️🍀

"The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists." - Charles Dickens #turtlewriters #WritingCommunity 🙂🐢❤️🍀

"The business of the poet and novelist is to show the sorriness underlying the grandest things and the grandeur underlying the sorriest things." - Thomas Hardy Take care & stay safe, #turtlewriters #WritingCommunity 🙂🐢❤️🍀