How to obscure the title of your novel on publication day! 🙄😊

My little column in Writing Magazine. 😊

How to obscure the title of your novel on publication day! 🙄😊

Couldn’t be more delighted! 😊

Delighted to have published my website. Have a look here. gillmbarr.wixsite.com/gillbarr

So a really big thank you to the Exeter Novel Prize organisers @cathiehartigan.bsky.social @sophieduffy.bsky.social and Margaret James - it makes a big difference!

Absolutely delighted to win this year's Exeter Novel Prize for Last Castle Standing, a (mostly) true comic historical novel set during the English Civil War. www.creativewritingmatters.co.uk/2024-exeter-...

The 2024 Exeter Novel Prize Short List

Whoop! I've been shortlisted for the #exeternovelprize. Over the Moon! *Beth Does a Silly Dance*

The 2024 Exeter Novel Prize Short List

It's been a while since I talked about our 1066 anthology - 9 authors each took an event of 1066 and re-imagined it. What if Harald Hardrada had won? What if William never made it to shore? My story concerns the Mercian brothers, Edwin and Morcar... mybook.to/1066UpsideDown

At last! My debut (political bookclub) novel, The Candidate's Husband, will be out in December. News on the audiobook to follow. It's been a long journey... #BookSky #politicalbookclub #debutnovel

Thrilled to have been longlisted for the #ExeterNovelPrize! Fingers crossed for the next bit. Congratulations to my fellow longlistees and thanks to @cathiehartigan.bsky.social and all the judges and readers

New blog post: an interview with @sullyj.bsky.social about her debut historical novel set on Skellig Michael #TheLighthouseKeepersWife anneolearyblog.wordpress.com/2025/01/29/t...

It's #WomensHistoryMonth and it's #InternationalWomensDay and on the Marching through History series hosted by @abelfrageauthor.bsky.social I'm talking about a fascinating woman from history. Meet Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians: www.annabelfrage.com/2025/03/08/m...

International Women's Day. Everything is connected.

Aiming to get the end on my novel set in Shanghai this week. WW2 in Shanghai is totally fascinating as there were people from every continent in residence there. Some of my characters are dining here at Wing On Department store where there was a lavish restaurant. #amwriting #historicalfiction

King Edwin starts the new book off, but why am I grateful to King Oswiu for dying on the day he did? Murder in 7th-century Northumbria: anniewhitehead2.blogspot.com/2025/02/king...

It's publication day! Stories of blindings, beheadings, poisonings, revenge killings, blood feud, and death by scissors! But are they true? Murder in Anglo-Saxon England: Justice, Wergild, Revenge, is available in bookshops and online: mybook.to/MIASE

All Charity wants is a healing holiday. Instead she encounters something extraordinary that threatens everything she holds dear! mybook.to/FallingTide #historicalromance #ThursThruTime #paranormal #romancebooks

Check out The Coffee Pot Book Club #BookOfTheWeek: 🌟The Heretic Wind by Judith Arnopp🌟 Discover an evocative, immersive read about Mary Tudor, Queen of England! thecoffeepotbookclub.blogspot.com/2025/01/book... #HistoricalFiction #TudorFiction #MaryTudor #CoffeePotBookClub @jarnopp.bsky.social

This story is a little piece of my heart. Thank you to @theforge.bsky.social & @talesfromaspace.bsky.social for the selection❤️

'Anglo-Saxon' women with attitude - a slave who became a queen, a woman who married her stepson, and an abbess who told off a bishop when he criticised her style. Meet Balthild, Judith and Edith: anniewhitehead2.blogspot.com/2020/07/angl...

First she must fight for her inheritance. Then she must fight for her life. Epic historical fiction. Settle back and take the armchair journey of a lifetime. #BookTwitter #HistoricalFiction mybook.to/ADivided

#OTD 858 King Æthelwulf of Wessex died. His young widow Judith promptly married his son, her stepson! She eloped with her third husband after he died. Read her story in mybook.to/WomeninPower

🔫HITLER'S WAR ON POLAND: COUNTDOWN TO ARMAGGEADON🔫 🇵🇱Casting aside all his promises from Munich, Hitler takes the ultimate step of summoning President of Czechoslovakia and tells him his country is being liquidated. His eye then falls on Poland. But how will he strike?

"'Patriot' sometimes reads like a thriller in which the narrative opens with 'If you’re reading this, I’m already dead.'" And so he is, but he speaks from beyond the grave, and we should listen. @cathyyoung63.bsky.social on Navalny's posthumous memoir:

What brilliant news! Thanks @molotovlitzine.bsky.social and congratulations to everyone else in the top 10 and close but no cigars - this is such a fun competition!

‘Fascinating.. this book has proven invaluable in my work with young people, providing a wealth of topics that have facilitated discussions’ Rachael Sharrad, child and adolescent psychotherapist in Therapy Today magazine D is for Death by @sophieduffy.bsky.social #counselling #therapy #death

Start a new series! Enter the world of Giulia Tofana, Renaissance poisoner! 'Swift has an almost visceral understanding of what makes history worth reading ... a must-read for fans of quality Historical Fiction' Coffee Pot Book Club ★★★★★ #Booksky #HistoricalFiction mybook.to/PoisonKeeper

Time's nearly up to get this at 99p. Just saying. www.amazon.co.uk/Gone-Penguin...

I may have done a thing….

The best present you can give to any writer is to review (no matter how short) their books online and to spread the word to other readers. I've just posted reviews for favourite recent reads and it gave me joy to do so. Merry Christmas! 💙📚 #books

It is traditional in Iceland to give the gift of a book to be opened on Christmas Eve. Books are unwrapped and then read together. It is called Jolabokaflod (Christmas book flood). 📖 🎄 🖼 Reading Girl, Gustav Adolph Hennig, 1828.

Best wishes to all for Yule and Winter Solstice. 🪵 ❄️

New on This Itch of Writing Itchy Bitesized 34 for everyone: Ten Things That Go Wrong With Historical Fiction. "What historians write needs treating with caution: they’re synthesising a general picture from particular experience, but novelists do it the other way round" https://buff.ly/4gqAGOC

The 2024 Exeter Novel Prize is open for submissions until January 1st. 📖📚 www.creativewritingmatters.co.uk

The 2024 Exeter Novel Prize is open for submissions until January 1st. 📖📚 www.creativewritingmatters.co.uk

Headline are running A Lost Queen promotion on Instagram on 18th December.

Treated myself & LitPit to an early #Christmas pressie: 'The Process of Poetry' by @rosannamcglone.bsky.social #BooksMakeGreatGifts so why not support a small #IndiePublisher & buy one of their books! I got mine from the award-winning @flyonthewallpress.bsky.social. #WritingCommunity 🐷❤️📚🎁🎄

Went to see Conclave. Brilliant! Completely engrossed from start to finish. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conclav...

With every passing day I better understand the mothers in Victorian novels who stay in their bedrooms with the curtains closed and complain vaguely about their “nerves.”

Seeing as how its only 99p on Kindle. 😊 amzn.eu/d/bEcaAmH

Out on Saturday, 30th November The Battle Of Agincourt: Animated Episode

Authors receive a payment every time you borrow a book, audiobook or ebook from libraries in 35 countries. Those countries include the UK, Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Germany to name but a few. Borrowing a book helps the author’s pocket as well as yours.

Word of the day is ‘librocubicularist’: one who loves nothing better than reading in bed. (Not easy to say, but I’m glad to know it exists).

In The History Sit-Down, I speak with the queen of Anglo-Saxon England, Annie Whitehead, about her work. Listen now: nathenamin.substack.com/p/the-histor...

Calling all #bookreviewers! My latest novel is currently available to request on #Netgalley. It's dual timeline, partly set in India just before independence. I'd love to know what you all think of it!