This week at MyriadLifeBooks.

First of all I would like to say a massive thank you to all of my new subscribers. I’m super happy to have you here and hopefully you will find yourself a lucky winner on 30th August of one of my Gavin the Gull notebooks! Apologies that this giveaway is UK only but over time I will think up giveaways that can be downloaded wherever you are in the world.

If you haven’t subscribed yet and you love books or writing or both, please do. My ambition is to make this a site where readers can enjoy being introduced to new authors (indie and traditionally published) and writers can pick up tips and information I am learning as an indie author or share their own. My intention is for this to be a positive, supportive and interactive site.

If you are a new author and would like to be featured here, please email me at myriadlifebooks@gmail.com – check out my currently featured author Angie Bardot here. My aim is to build a Select 20 group that will rotate every three months. I love to do interviews as it’s always fascinating to find out more about authors/writers and how they work, so don’t be shy, get in touch!

I create notebooks because I love photography and design and enjoy using a nice luxurious notebook myself and it helps fund my writing ambitions. As the collection expands I will share my latest notebooks with you and create giveaways or competitions. Gavin the Gull has his own collection of course. He’s always willing to keep you company, especially if you have chips… If for any reason it is easier for you to buy my notebooks from Amazon (this is likely for overseas visitors) please visit the collection here or if you see a notebook you’d like on this site, just email me and I will send you the Amazon link.

This week I have been also been working on being an affiliate for Bittern Books who promote books from Norwich and Norfolk. As well as local history they also stock fiction set in Norfolk. I have had the good fortune to meet the brilliant Elly Griffiths in the past and recently I have discovered David Blake as I was kindly gifted The Wherryman. There is something very special reading books set in the county in which you live so I enjoy both these authors and can recommend their work, wherever you are located. Hopefully if you decide to read their books it will encourage you to visit Norwich (the city of stories) and Norfolk. Please don’t think it’s a permanent crime scene here!

In fact, Norwich is a beautiful city with medieval architecture, many historic happenings and stories abound. It truly is an inspirational place to live. If you love history, I know you would love it here. Further out the Norfolk Broads are magical waterways again brimming with stories as well as wildlife. Then of course there is the coast, wild and sweeping beneath those famously big skies. I sound like tourist information I know, but I am passionate about this place and I love to share it.

Gradually I am adding a collection of secondhand books to this site. Reading is for everyone but not everyone has the budget to devote to books so it’s always good to find something a little more affordable. If you buy a secondhand book and want to review it, please get in touch and I will publish the best reviews here. That goes for new indie authors too. If you see a featured author and enjoy their work, please share your review with me and again, the best reviews will get posted.

I mostly hang out on Twitter so come say hello there. You can also find me at Instagram and Facebook too. I look forward to hearing from you!

Author: Petra Kidd

Norfolk UK is my home, I live in Norwich by the River Wensum where everyday there is something different to see and learn. I feel a big affinity with the river as I grew up in Cambridge, another great river city. My childhood and teens involved many walks along the Cam where we would watch 'The Bumps,' raft races and as we grew older we enjoyed adventures on our punting pub crawls. Growing up in a multi cultural university city definitely influenced my reading choices, I am a big fan of Japanese fiction, love French literature and enjoy Shakespeare. As a young teen I entertained myself with Jilly Cooper and Dick Francis and then became quite obsessed with Henri Charriere's Papillon. At school all I cared about was English, Art and French, in that exact order. When I finished with school I went to live and work in Greece for a wonderful year before returning to study English Literature and Sociology. At this point I read more classics like the Wyf of Bath, Wuthering Heights and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man plus poets such as Wilfred Owen. My first UK full time job was with Heffer's Paperbacks where I devoured several books at a time, excited by the fact I could borrow what I liked. Bizarrely for me I remember reading The Zurich Axioms, I have no interest in the stock markets but it had me gripped. I can't remember why I picked it up but I have never forgotten it. Heffers introduced me to so many authors, via their books and sometimes in person. It was here I learned about all the genres, it fascinated me that science fiction and horror were so popular, I tried reading it all. Aside from writing letters, it didn't really ever occur to me to write anything myself for many years as I worked my way through a variety of interesting and varied jobs. Then on a visit to the London Aquarium I became struck by an idea so powerful I sat down and wrote my first novel. It went nowhere as really I wrote it because I wanted to. I wrote another novel and again, didn't have the persistance or determination to take it further, I simply enjoyed the process of writing and my characters. Then years later another idea struck me and during a severe bout of Pleurisy where I couldn't do anything physical for months, I wrote the Eight of Swords and The Putsi. This time I published them as ebooks and they became pretty popular. When I fully recovered, I had to concentrate on my business and looking after my mother who has various health issues and the writing went adrift again for many years until 2020 when the Coronavirus pandemic hit the world. March 2020 I moved to my apartment alongside the Wensum to live alone for the first time ever. During the first lockdown I began to write a diary and then the idea for a new set of short stories came to me and in February 2021 they will be published. The Covid-19 Pandemic is not simply a scary virus, it is a historical time and here we are trying to live through it. To many it will feel like a punishment but to me as a writer, in some ways, it came as a gift. Please stay as safe and as well as you can. I hope to entertain you with my stories as we all try to get through this together, even though we are apart. Petra

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