Our new segment for 2022 is for new authors/writers and written by published authors, titled – Writing Tips. These posts will be shared with you every Wednesday. Our latest post is from author Annie Whitehead on the subject ‘Connecting with Other Authors’. This post contains affiliate links.

Connecting with Other Authors

Writing can be a lonely profession. For hours, over days, weeks, months, years, we work on getting what’s inside our heads onto ‘paper’. It can feel like one, long, internal dialogue, between ourselves and our characters, with no one else having access to it. It’s easy for doubt to creep in, for the silence to feel unfriendly…

But it doesn’t have to be like that.

There are many ways to connect and interact with other authors and surprisingly good things can happen when we do. Let me begin by listing a few organisations:

The Society of Authors – the Trades Union for writers, will help with everything from deciphering contracts to copyright issues [https://www2.societyofauthors.org/]

The Crime Writers’ Association [https://thecwa.co.uk/]

The Historical Novel Society [https://historicalnovelsociety.org/]

The Romantic Novelists’ Association [https://romanticnovelistsassociation.org/]

The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) [https://www.allianceindependentauthors.org/]

These are just a few, and all will help with aspects of writing but, importantly, they also offer opportunities for their members to meet up in real life, either through local writers’ groups or conferences.

There’s Swanwick, too, which hosts an annual Writers’ Summer School. [https://www.swanwickwritersschool.org.uk/]

You can also contact your local library for groups in your area. You won’t be the only one who’s walking in alone: be it a small group, or a huge conference, every writer is still nervous, no more or less than you. And they all want to connect with other authors, just like you.

What if you don’t wish to/can’t travel?

I’d still advise joining an organisation if you can, and certainly join their Facebook groups. This is where you’ll find the other members, the writers (newbies and established authors) who are experiencing the same triumphs and setbacks as you are, the ones who are seeking help and advice from those who’ve been there, done it, ripped it all up and started again.

Friendships can blossom and there can even be some accidental networking. I came to these groups as a novelist looking to connect with other novelists. Joining one group led me to discover another, which had a blog. I submitted an article, and eventually joined the editing team. We are now close friends: we ‘Zoom’ regularly, work on projects together (we recently published a short story anthology), support each other’s writing, e.g. helping with blurbs, and also chat about life, the universe and everything!

I also got to know an established author (I was/am a huge fan), who invited me to contribute to a book of short stories she was putting together. This led to an offer to contribute to a nonfiction anthology, which emboldened me to pitch a full length nonfiction book, a proposal which was accepted. I joined a nonfiction writers’ group and ‘met’ an author who wrote for the same publisher. We met in real life, chatted for hours, and recently she put my name forward for a new history book, which will be published by Hodder & Stoughton in 2023. From little acorns…

I mentioned the blog collective, but having your own blog is a fantastic way to connect with other authors. Publish regularly, and invite other authors to write guest posts, or for interviews. The majority will reciprocate and, as well as finding new readers, you’ll make yet more writerly contacts too.

More than ever, the opportunities to meet authors are only a click away. We may have picked a lonely profession, but Social Media brings a whole community into our homes. It’s great for promoting your work, but don’t use it solely for this. Interact – comment on and share other writers’ posts. Use hashtags on Twitter and Instagram, such as #writerslife, #writerscommunity, #writerslift, #amwriting, #writersofinsta.

You never know where it will lead, career-wise, and along the way you will find help, support, and friendship. (And for those who are shy about conferences etc, it’s great finally to meet people you’ve connected with online first!)

Annie is an author and historian and an elected member of the Royal Historical Society. She has written four award-winning novels set in Anglo-Saxon England. She has contributed to fiction and nonfiction anthologies and written for various magazines including Cumbria Magazine and This England. She has twice been a prize winner in the Mail on Sunday Novel Writing Competition, and won First Prize in the 2012 New Writer Magazine’s Prose and Poetry Competition. She was a finalist in the 2015 Tom Howard Prize for nonfiction, and was shortlisted for the Exeter Story Prize and Trisha Ashley Award 2021.

She is on the EHFA (English Historical Fiction Authors) editorial team and is senior reviewer at Discovering Diamonds. She was the winner of the inaugural Historical Writers’ Association/Dorothy Dunnett Prize 2017 and is now a judge for that same competition. She has also been a judge for the HNS (Historical Novel Society) Short Story Competition. Her nonfiction books are published by Amberley Books and Pen & Sword Books. She has recently signed a contract to contribute to a new history of English kings, to be published by Hodder & Stoughton in 2023.

One family, two kingdoms, one common enemy …

This is the true story of Aethelflaed, the ‘Lady of the Mercians’, daughter of Alfred the Great. She was the only female leader of an Anglo-Saxon kingdom.

Born into the royal house of Wessex at the height of the Viking wars, she is sent to her aunt in Mercia as a foster-child, only to return home when the Vikings overrun Mercia. In Wessex, she witnesses another Viking attack and this compounds her fear of the enemy.

She falls in love with a Mercian lord but is heartbroken to be given as bride to the ruler of Mercia to seal the alliance between the two Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.

She must learn to subjugate her feelings for her first love, overcome her indifference to her husband and win the hearts of the Mercians who despise her as a foreigner and twice make an attempt on her life.

When her husband falls ill and is incapacitated, she has to learn to rule and lead an army in his stead. Eventually she must fight to save her adopted Mercia from the Vikings and, ultimately, her own brother. To Be A Queen was Long-listed for HNSIndie Book of the Year 2016 and has been awarded an indie BRAG Gold Medallion.