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2019 – what a year!

Another highlight of 2019 – visiting one of the filming locations of Peaky Blinders

This year has truly flown by for me. It has been a whirlwind of wedding planning, writing, publishing, and engaging with my readers. 

On Christmas day last year, my boyfriend proposed to me. It was such a magical day. Me being me, I had the venue booked just three days later and had bought my dress just a week after that – I'm a bit of a control freak! 

And so, 2019 began full of excitement for the coming year. After sorting out initial wedding plans, I moved on to writing The Cradle Breaker, the first book in the Convenient Women collection. It was funny writing about a scorching summer in the depths of winter! I worked on this book into February, then sent it off to my trusted first reader for feedback. 

Meanwhile, I revised and sent off to the editors my other two books which I had written in 2018 – The Promise Keeper and The Button Maker. During this time, I also designed my own book covers in Photoshop, which was a pretty steep learning curve, but I think the covers have come out rather well. 

Then it was on to writing the free novella, The Butcher's Wife, in time for a June release. I loved creating this short book and setting it near to my home. I was watching a lot of Peaky Blinders at the time (binging on the box set) and I wanted to get a real sense of menace and grime into my own piece. It was a slight rush to have it finished on time, but I managed it, and on a sizzling summer afternoon I attended my first ever literary event at a local primary school. Feeling completely out of my depth, I talked to anyone who would listen about my work and handed them flyers because I had no physical paperbacks at the time. If you were one of those people who I met that day, thank you for taking the time to say hello. 

It was a case of polishing and formatting manuscripts, publicising my work, and growing my newsletter group over the following months. During this time, I began the first draft of the last novel in the collection, The Little Wife

And of course, while all of this was going on, I was designing wedding invites, tasting food options, booking suppliers, having hair trials and dress fittings. 

With The Little Wife on pre-order, I decided to challenge myself in November. I completed the NaNoWriMo challenge of writing fifty-thousand words in a month. I wrote something completely different – a contemporary psychological thriller. I am still to finish it, but I hope to have it completed by the new year. I'm unsure what to do with it at the moment, but it is safe to say it won't be out for a good while – I want to concentrate on my historical mysteries in 2020. 

Finally, on December 2nd, The Little Wife went live, and today the paperback also went live, marking the end of the Convenient Women collection. If you would like to find out more about this collection, either visit my Amazon page or my website.

I want to say a huge thank you for joining my newsletter and for reading my work. Thank you for taking a chance on a new author. I truly hope I have managed to entertain, delight, shock, or surprise you. An even bigger thanks goes to any of you who have written a review – reviews are terribly important for authors just starting out. 

So, what does the new year have in store? Well, I shall be referred to as Mrs instead of Miss, for one thing (if you want to see any wedding pictures, please follow me on Instagram as I will no doubt be posting news on my stories). 

On the writing front, I will be releasing the box set of the Convenient Women collection. The first book in a new series will follow, which is a time slip novel which takes place between 1900 and 1957. It solves the mystery of why a woman was put into and left in an asylum nearly all of her life. This novel is already drafted but needs editing, and I will be writing the second book in this series at the start of 2020. 

So, that's it for this year. 

Here's to a wonderful 2020. (Lifting my imaginary flute of champagne to you) Cheers! 

About the author

Delphine Woods

Delphine Woods

Delphine Woods is an author who loves to write historical mysteries and thrillers. 

Don't forget to claim your free books - The Butcher's Wife, The Last Flight of the Ladybird & Persephone's Melody.

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