My First Article Published!

I was very excited when I woke up yesterday as I had achieved one of this year's goals - to write and have an article published - and couldn't wait to buy a copy of Writing Magazine to see my technology feature about guest blogging in print.

Getting the idea for my article wasn't hard. I had just posted up a guest post from the lovely Samantha Tonge to promote her anthology of short stories and was thinking about how easy she had made it for me. She had written a polite request, had got to know me through our womag writing, was a reader of, and regular commenter on, my blog and sent everything I needed for the post in good time. In contrast, that week, I'd had a request for a guest post from someone starting... 'Dear Fellow Blogger...'

Needless to say, I didn't reply.

It made me think that just as there is an etiquette to being a house guest, there is also an etiquette to being a blogging guest. This was the light bulb moment: I had my article idea.

But how to pitch it? Never having written a feature before, my first port of call was the brilliant series of articles in Writer's Forum written by another of my guest bloggers. Douglas McPherson. Following his guidelines, I pitched the article to Writing Magazine (I chose this magazine as I had already had a star letter and a further letter published in it about Wendy's Story Timeline.)

Surprisingly, Jonathan Telfer got back to me within hours saying he wanted the article and the rest, as they say, is history. I'd like to thank everyone who contributed to my article: Tracy Fells, Samantha Tonge, Cally Taylor, and Marianne Wheelaghan.

A second article has today been accepted by the People's Friend which makes me feel that I am not just a one-trick womag pony.

Having said that, I will never enjoy other types of writing as much as I enjoy writing my magazine stories. At the newsagents, I also bought a copy of this month's People's Friend Special. In it is another first - my first historical story. It is called The Gypsy Bride. I loved writing it and have sold a few more historical stories since then.

To finish my post, I just wanted to tell you that the 50's swing dress from my last post arrived in a day and fitted a treat - I can't wait to dance in it.

I hope you will all join me next Monday to welcome  Samantha Tonge to my blog as she is back to talk to us about her fabulous new novel 'Doubting Abbey' which will be published on Sunday... you see, as my article said, if you are a well-behaved guest blogger, you get invited back!