“A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.” – Bruce Lee Last November, I confessed to you all that I am a slow reader. The blog post is here for anyone who wants to revisit it. My habit is still the same one year later. I go to bed with my book and usually fall asleep reading it. However, I have been trying to read on my sofa more than before now that I am teaching less. In 2018, I set my Goodreads target to ten and read all of e

One of the most common questions people ask authors is regarding their inspiration. I can’t fully pinpoint every aspect that inspires me. Inspiration comes from everywhere. I’ve been inspired by movies, books, TV shows, stories of actual people, folktales, fairy tales, nature, brainstorming with fellow authors... inspiration is all around us if we pay attention to it. When I was in my early twenties, I moved to a town called Dalbeattie. It is deep in the heart of Dumfries and

I am a fan of Sarah J. Maas. She knows exactly how to hook readers in. But when adding House of Earth and Blood to my TBR pile, I browsed through reviews and noticed recurring warnings from readers that it is not for the YA audience—it is a new adult book and contains cursing and sex. I personally don’t like to read stories that contain too much profanity or sex, but each to their own, right? As an author of YA, I am also a reader of YA to see what’s trending and because the

In today's blog I am going to keep things light and simple. I am, at times, quite heavy in my posts. And life today feels super heavy at the moment. So I thought I'd step away from that a dive into something a bit silly: Book Boyfriends!! Do you have a book crush? Did you have one growing up? Hands down, when I was a teenager, Ponyboy Curtis from The Outsiders was my crush. I was obsessed with the outsiders in high school. I loved that S. E. Hinton was only seventeen when she

The idea for this blog came to me while I was back home visiting friends and family. I met an old manager of mine and in passing she mentioned that thought she stayed in her job longer than she should have. I responded that had she left early, she and I may never have met. She thanked me for my kind words, and I hope she went away feeling better over her decision. For you see, our meeting shaped the decisions I made in the year that followed. She planted the seed in my mind

If I think back to my early childhood, my book pickings were based on whatever I found in the school or local library. Once I started working my first part-time job, I began to buy books. But I am a child of the 80s, so in my teens, the internet was still developing and my purchases of books were limited to brick and mortar stores. At that time, I think I mostly read books that I found in second-hand stores. Prior to Kindle, there was no way I could afford as many books as I

I have a confession. I am a slow reader. My reading habit is to go to bed with the book, by which point I am falling asleep from a full day of writing, marketing and teaching and can barely finish a chapter. Occasionally, I have some time on the weekends to sit on my sofa with a book, but more often than not, I am just busy meeting friends or working on my projects. If I remember rightly, I did not meet my Goodreads challenge of 2018. I managed eight books out of my target of

Some of you might know the turning point that brought me to Korea. Some of you don’t. But now is the time to share that with you. I need to start off with some history. I grew up in Greenock, Scotland. I moved to Dumfries and Galloway in my early twenties and took on a part-time job as a barista. There, I met two people who had a greater influence on my life than they realise. One was my manager. She was studying an English as a Second Language course and later moved to Thail

Caged Birds is a short story I wrote as a submission for an anthology in Korea. They rejected the story with a letter expressing that they liked my poetic style, but didn’t think the story was right for their anthology. I understood. They wanted more of a foreigner’s perception or experience in Korea. I didn’t want to write that. I didn’t want it to become a piece containing all the things that bother me—which I feared it would be. We foreigners will always be outsiders here,

My name is Elizabeth Jade, and I’m a children’s author and animal lover.  I was born in the UK in 1998. My early schooling didn’t go well, and I was home-schooled from the age of seven.  I stumbled into writing at fourteen when I struggled increasingly with depression and anxiety, but it wasn’t until I was eighteen that I discovered my struggles in school were due to Aspergers—an autistic spectrum disorder. I always knew I had a unique take on life.  People have never made se

We’ve all heard the phrase: don’t judge a book by its cover. And we know it’s true. Sometimes covers are misleading. They can tempt us into believing we have found our next favourite read, only to wind up deeply disappointed. Covers are like the tantalising smell of freshly baked bread. We are drawn to them. At least I am. I have heard so many compliments for my first book’s cover, and I completely agree. The Watcher of the Night Sky has a gorgeous cover. I have to thank the