Happy Thursday and welcome back to my weekly Meet The Blogger slot! This week I’m chatting to author and fellow blogger Sue to find out all about her book blog. If you are an avid reader it’s certainly one to check out.
Tell us a bit about yourself and your blog
The first nine years of my life were spent in the Midlands. Then, my dad’s job took the family to Yorkshire and I’ve been here ever since.
I write books, and blog about books, with my friend Susan Pape. We’re both former journalists, who, via a brief stint in PR, eventually found ourselves teaching journalism to university students. Me at Sheffield Hallam and Susan at Leeds Trinity.
After writing two journalism textbooks together – Newspaper Journalism: A Practical Introduction; and Feature Writing: A Practical Introduction, both published by leading academic publisher, Sage – we decided we really wanted to write novels and A Falling Friend, the first book in our Friends trilogy was conceived.
It took us eight years to finish it – full-time jobs, family, life kept getting in the way – and we launched our blog Book Lovers Book List soon afterwards. It was somewhere to write about books, and share book news and opinions.
How long have you been blogging?
A Falling Friend was published in April 2016 and our first blog post was posted a couple of months later – a review of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. In July! It’s the earliest we’ve ever written about a Christmas book.
What or who inspired you to create your blog?
Like most book bloggers we started the blog so we could talk about books. We like reading them and we like writing them and writing about them.
What’s your favourite thing about running your blog?
Getting to know other book bloggers. The book community is amazingly generous and supportive, and we’ve made some great new friends.
How do you stay motivated?
It’s all about the readers – we love hearing what they think about our posts.
What’s been the most challenging part of your blogging journey to date?
Getting to grips with WordPress. Neither Susan nor I are particularly techie – we belong to the sit-up-and-beg typewriter generation – and, though WordPress is reasonably idiot-proof, it’s been a bit of a learning curve.
Tell us about your favourite blog post
Susan is a big fan of the BBC quiz show Pointless and, during a telephone conversation, made a throwaway comment about how much she’d love to be a contestant. I can’t say it was top of my ‘must-do’ pile, but it sounded like it might be fun, so we filled out an application form and a few months later found ourselves facing hosts Alexander Armstrong and Richard Osman…
I love the blog post Susan wrote about our Pointless journey.
Describe your blog in four words
Reading, reviewing and writing.
What are your future hopes and dreams for your blog?
We want to add audio content and to launch a subscriber newsletter.
QUICKFIRE GET TO KNOW YOU QUESTIONS:
Early Bird or Night Owl?
Actually, I’m more of a midday sparrow.
Night in or night out?
Mostly in…
Ketchup or mayo?
Ketchup.
Summer or Winter?
Summer.
Tea or coffee?
Tea. Weak Early Grey – aka what Susan calls gnat’s piss.
Bath or shower?
Shower.
Pizza or Chinese?
Pizza.
Dog or cat?
Neither. I prefer people to animals.
Movie or box set?
Box set.
Sweet or savoury?
Savoury
I’d like to say a massive thank you to Sue for taking part. Check out next week’s post as I welcome another fabulous blogger.
