Writing update and last push to the end of the year! #amwriting

Posted on December 12, 2025 by Suzanne Rogerson Author

So November passed in the blink of an eye and we’re almost halfway through December as well!

Book 4

My plans to finish book 4 in the Mermaid Hotel series have fallen behind – it’s currently sitting at 53K. It’s going well and I could still finish it by the end of the year, but it will be a tough challenge! I’m trying to make it a well developed first draft, which takes longer than just churning out the scenes, though as Christmas approaches I may have to rethink how I do this.

Will I hit the 75k word count that the other books are averaging? From experience, the first draft is usually shorter and increases as I edit. 75k will be my end goal for next year when I have a polished, edited version.

Other writing

I’ve started working on the first prequel in The Mermaid Hotel series which starts during the run up to Christmas and ends the following Christmas. I’d love to get this ready to publish later in 2026.

Winter Warmers Series – I haven’t found the time to really get planning on book 3 in the series but I’m challenging myself to write one story a month starting in January. I would aim to get it finished by August, which would be 8 stories just like the other books.

Throughout December I’ve been enjoying taking part in the Advent Calendar Story Train, both sharing ‘A Squirrel’s Tale’ on 8th December and reading everyone else’s stories. Ari is keeping a list on her blog of each story as it goes live. Here is her link if you’ve missed it – 2025 Advent Calendar Story Train.

I can’t resist sharing Sammy AKA Scruffy’s picture one last time because he’s so sweet…

Audiobook news

The start of two book tours starts tomorrow with a ‘One Day Blitz’ hosted by Rachel’s Random Resourses. I can’t wait to get sharing the reviews on various social platforms and I’ll share a few updates here as well.

The from 17th December I have a week long tour with Love Book Tours. Again, it will be wonderful to share these reviews and see how the reviewers found Colette’s narrating style. I feel she has a very calming and relaxed voice, perfect to help you unwind after a hard day’s Christmas shopping.

Publishing decisions and marketing

I haven’t made any progress on my newsletter dilemma and really need to start marketing rather than just talking about it here! I also need to make some decisions on the covers for the series and set a publication date.

I feel like January will be a big month for making decisions, that’s why I really wanted to have book 4 in decent shape by 31/12/2025.

Reading

I’m close to reaching my Goodreads goal which is only a lowly 19 books this year. I’m on book 17, so again it’s going to be close. At least I caught up with my Netgalley reviews and have banned myself from looking on there for the rest of the year.

Everything else

Work and family each have their challenges but with only a week left before breaking up from college / work, I think I can make it!

I’m hoping to start the holidays fit and healthy as last year was ruined with a bad, lingering cold that meant I could barely taste the Christmas dinner I slaved over, or the many chocolates I scoffed.

That’s about it in my world, I’ll be back with some review highlights of the audiobook blitz for A Little Christmas Magic over the weekend.

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October wrap up and plans for November #amwriting #indieauthor

Posted on November 3, 2025 by Suzanne Rogerson Author

Ok, so I realise my October wrap up is slightly later than planned, but I’m quite proud of what I achieved, so I wanted to share it.

First, the big news:

I’ve just agreed the audiobook for A Little Christmas Magic, and it’s now with ACX for their quality checks before they release it for sale. Colette Davies-Kerwin has done an amazing job bringing the stories to life, and I can’t wait to share the audiobook with everyone. To help with this, I’ve set up two audiobook blog tours in December, so will share more info on those when I can.

I made changes and sent Book 2 in the Mermaid Hotel Series out for its second round of critique feedback. Cristal is a very thorough reader and really challenges me to make the story better, so I’m looking forward to working through her suggestions as they come in. I’ve also entered the first chapter into a competition and have everything crossed that it gets to the shortlist stage.

I finished the latest draft of Book 3 in my Mermaid Hotel Series and sent it to two of my beta readers – we meet next week to discuss their thoughts on the last chapters. I hope they like it!

The story for the Advent Calendar story train is complete, and the post will publish on 8th December. It’s called ‘A Squirrel’s Tale’ and is a little different from my usual stories, so I’m looking forward to sharing that.

Plans for the rest of the year…

November is all about Book 4 and trying to finish the first draft by the end of the year. I’ve been reading through the story so far and trying to make a brief plan of what comes next. I’m aiming for around 1k words a day. If I manage this over November and December, I should reach an end word count of 75k. It would be great to start working on the finished novel over the Christmas break, as it will need a lot of editing!

I also need to start marketing my Mermaid Hotel Series and decide on things like my newsletter – do I try going with a different provider and use a new name? I don’t like Mail Chimp, so it seems like the perfect time to start afresh. If you have any newsletter recommendations, please let me know.

I still need to share my reviews of NetGalley books. I should get onto that ASAP as these were summer books, and now I have several Christmas ones to read and review as well.

I’ve also purchased the new Authorpreneur Academy course from Dave Chesson. I need to work through the modules and get familiar with self publishing again. If I want to make a big splash next year, all the preparation work I do now will hopefully help The Mermaid Hotel Series take off.

That’s enough from me. I’ll be back soon with those book reviews and details on the audiobook tours for A Little Christmas Magic.

Author update. Audiobook news! #amwriting

Posted on October 12, 2025 by Suzanne Rogerson Author

Ok, so it’s already been a few weeks since my last post, which means I’ve fallen behind on the promise to blog more often. But I am working my way through the other items on my to do list for the last 100 days of 2025, and I also have a great new development to report.

Firstly, September’s challenge – Complete the draft of book 2 in The Mermaid Hotel Series.

I completed this a little late, but sent the book off to my beta reader last week. A win!

October:

Complete the draft of book 3 in The Mermaid Hotel Series. I’m getting on really well with this and have got the word count up to 72.5K. I still have about 60 pages to edit and develop, so I’m hoping to get that up to about 76k by the end of October.

I treated myself to a mini writing retreat and booked into a local hotel, where I wrote in my room until midnight without distraction. In fact, I only stopped to go to the curry house attached to the hotel for dinner. As well as getting lots of words done, it also gave me an appreciation of how the characters in my books might feel booking into a hotel as a solo traveller and dining alone. I also saw firsthand how much of a struggle in must be for the hotel industry to keep afloat with few guests – all invaluable experience for the crafting of my new series set in a Cornish hotel.

I would recommend any writer take a similar retreat to focus and recharge, especially if you have a busy home-life.

I still need to write a story for the Advent Calender Story Train and the deadline is looming, plus a Halloween themed story for the library writing group I attend.

The rest of October will be a busy one, especially now I have made an offer to a narrator to perform A Little Christmas Magic – I will keep you updated on the progress.

I still have lots of words to write today and stories to draft. I hope to be back with some late book reviews on my Netgalley reads and hopefully news on the book covers for my Mermaid Hotel Series.

Lastly, I finally got a new laptop! My old one has had a broken ‘down’ button for the last 2-years and the screen had bubbles and was leaking at the edges. Thanks to the recent Amazon Prime day deal, I’m typing this on my lovely new blue Lenovo IdeaPad. So far I’m very happy with it, though the battery life could be a little better.

Until next time…

My plans for the last 100 days of 2025 #amwritingromance #indieauthor

Posted on September 24, 2025 by Suzanne Rogerson Author

Competition win for Secrets and Love Songs at The Mermaid Hotel

Posted on December 20, 2023 by Suzanne Rogerson Author

I’m really excited to share the news that I came second in The Flash 500 Novel opening 2023 competition. The winners were announced this afternoon and I’m still buzzing.

Here’s what the judges from Headline Publishing had to say…

‘There is much to admire in this submission and it is a thoroughly deserving runner-up. We found it hugely readable and, in the end, there wasn’t much between this and the winner. We found ourselves immediately drawn in by the author’s characterisations, which seemed considered, believable and satisfyingly complex…’

You can read the full comments and learn more about the competition here Flash 500 Novel Opening competition.

It’s a wonderful feeling to reach the final and be placed second in this competition. The book is a special one for me as writing it helped me through those long months of lockdown. I’ve spent the last few years editing it and planning a series around the original story.

Secrets and Love Songs at The Mermaid Hotel will be published in 2024. I still haven’t decided whether that will be with me self publishing it, or through a publisher. Keep following my blog for updates.

I hope to post next week with a 2023 writing and reading annual wrap up, and my plans for 2024.

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Suzanne Rogerson – Author of epic fantasy, heart-warming romance and short stories. You can follow me on;

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Update on NaNoWriMo 2023 #amwriting

Posted on November 20, 2023 by Suzanne Rogerson Author

This is a quick update as I really should be getting on with the word count!

It’s day 20 of NaNoWriMo 2023. So far, I’ve been able to stick with the daily target of hitting around 1667 words a day. My word count currently stands at 32,027 and should be 33,340 by the end of the day. Fingers crossed!

But that’s only on book 3 in my romance series and I had set myself a target of adding word count to book 2 as well. As yet, I haven’t even looked at extending the draft for book 2. That may be a task for December if I don’t get a chance to work on it before.

Through November, I’ve been busy editing book 1 after some great beta reader feedback. Hopefully, I will soon be sending it out to publishers, I want to act before it gets too close to Christmas.

I’m hoping in these last 10 days of Nano I can really pick up the pace on book 3. It would be great to beat the 50k target. I know I can do it if I really get my head down, but I also know it’s easy to get distracted. This blog post is a perfect example! HA HA.

With that in mind, I think I will wrap this up. I may try for another update at the weekend, if not I’ll been back at the end of the month hopefully with good news on my word count.

Are you taking part in Nano? How are you finding the daily demands?

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Suzanne Rogerson – Author of epic fantasy, heart-warming romance and short stories

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NaNoWriMo 2023 starts today #amwriting #indieauthor

Posted on November 1, 2023 by Suzanne Rogerson Author

Today is the start of NaNoWriMo, where thousands of writers pledge to dedicate themselves to writing a novel, or 50k of a writing project, during November.

I’ve tried the challenge on and off since 2011 with varying levels of success.

In 2023 I’ve pledged to type up my handwritten draft of book 3 in the Mermaid’s Hotel series and expand it to 50k (or more if I can!).

I also want to increase the word count of book 2 in the series which currently stands at 24,096. I would like to add 20k to this, but that would be an added extra as my main focus is book 3.

I have written a novel plan of each book in the 6 book series on excel to help me. This is a break down of each chapter showing what happens and whose VP it is.

I have some cool printed word count sheets to keep me going. And I’ve signed up to Nanowrimo where you can post your daily word count and watch it grow. You can also see how your buddies are getting along.

I’m hoping to post weekly updates on my progress, so look out for that. These sheets should have a bit of colour on them by then!

Now I really must get on. It’s been a slow start for me so far with only 500 words achieved today. Hopefully I can put in a big stint before bed.

See you next week for that update.

P.S. Are you taking part. Let’s cheer each other on.

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Suzanne Rogerson – Author of epic fantasy, heart-warming romance and short stories

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Writing update and signing up to NaNoWriMo 2023

Posted on October 21, 2023 by Suzanne Rogerson Author

It hasn’t been that long since my last update back in July (see the post here), but I thought October was a good point in the year for another brief writing update.

I’ve been making some decisions over the last few days and feel positive about the future of my Mermaid Hotel series. Book 1 is currently with beta readers and I am embarking on a re-read myself. Once I’ve had some feedback, and made any changes, I hope to send off the whole book to a few publishers on the short list I’m currently compiling.

I do have some sad news for my fantasy readers. Starlight Prophecy is still on hold. I feel the whole series needs more time dedicated to it but my head and heart are too much into the romance books at the moment. I hope to look at it again towards Christmas time, it depends how my other plans go. Which leads me to…

I’m signing up to do NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) this year with not one, but two books!

I originally signed up to force myself to type of the draft I have of book 3. Because it is already partly written it felt like cheating, so I decided I would also try to increase the word count of book 2 – from 24k to 44k. Obviously it will still need a lot of work to reach the 90k mark I’m looking for, but I can’t set my sights too high for one month! Or can I?

Considering I’m working part time now, it may be a bit much of an ask to write 70k in a month, but I seem to work better to a deadline. After all, I did write and prepare to publish ‘A Christmas Wish’ in just 6 weeks last year. I guess I like a challenge.

On the reading side, I still have three books from netgalley / publishers to read and review by December so look out for some more reviews coming your way soon.

I’ve also played around with the colours and background on my website. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Now, I best get back to work planning for Nano and reading book 1. I’ll be back with another update before the end of the year.

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Suzanne Rogerson – Author of epic fantasy, heart-warming romance and short stories

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You can also join my Newsletter for writing updates and news of promotions.

Mid-year (sort of) Writing Update #amwriting

Posted on July 23, 2023 by Suzanne Rogerson Author

I’ve been meaning to review my writing goals for 2023 for a while. It was good to look back at last year’s post Writing Plans for 2023 to see what I’ve achieved, what I still need to do and also judge if these goals are still important to me. I have to admit that even though we’re over half way through July, it doesn’t look good for my long list of tasks.

You can also see straight away why this blog has been so quiet – it’s all down to goal 1.

Goal 1 achieved – Get a part time job to bring in some money and support my writing. I’ve been employed for just over 3 months now. It’s been good getting back into the workplace and I’m enjoying my role, but fitting writing into my new schedule has been harder than expected.

As well as working in my new job and trying to keep everyone sane at home through the stresses of exams, I’ve been busy editing Secrets and Love Songs at The Mermaid Hotel (formerly known as Evie’s Song). This leads me to…

Goal 2 achieved – Join the Romantic Novelist Association’s New Writer Scheme. I managed to secure my membership the day it opened in January. Since then I’ve been able to send a full MS off to a professional reader for feedback. I hope to get that report back by the end of the month and then I can decide my next steps. While I wait, I’ve been reading the draft of book two to see where the story needs development. I’m also planning to add in the VP of the hotel owner, especially as part of the storyline for book 2 links back to her past. How I’m going to deal with that is still a mystery to me so there is still lots of work to do. I need to write approx 60K to this draft to bring it close to the word count of book 1. No problem!

An extra achievement – Whilst looking for work at the beginning of the year, I received some 1-2-1 help from A2 Housing Association’s employment service. It played a big part in helping me gain the confidence to apply for jobs and I’ve recently appeared on their website. You can read the news article here.

Delayed goals

My fantasy series The Starlight Prophecy is still stalling and I’m struggling to find my way back into the story. I tried for a month of frustrated false starts that left me feeling deflated. Maybe I need to accept that I’m still not ready to write this series even though it really hurts me to give up on it. I love Delphine, my troubled anti-heroine, and I want to tell her story and share it with the world. Maybe her time will come soon…

A new short story collection – I haven’t written much short fiction, at least not much that is worthy of putting in a new book. This is disappointing as I really enjoyed writing last year’s books, especially A Christmas Wish. Those stories still make me feel good when I think about them and I desperately want to replicate that. I also still want to revisit the world of the Silent Sea Chronicles but again not much has happened there apart from a vague storyline that won’t leave me alone.

Goals that are still in progress… or at least I still plan to do at some point.

Approach libraries to stock my books and see what formats they accept. This will lead on to whether I should publish large print editions of my short story collections and if hardback editions of all books are worthwhile.

Update all books with publication details of the short story collections published in 2022, which also means I need to reformat all books to conform with the new table of contents Amazon prefer.

Contact reviewers

Set up book Ads

The dreaded tax return – this really should be a priority!

Short term plans

Work on the romance series – Decide if book 1 is ready for the next stage. Edit and develop book 2.

I’m enjoying reading a fellow author’s book – ‘Your book won’t well itself: An introduction to writing and publishing’ by GJ Stevens. I’ll share a review here as soon as I’ve finished reading it, but spoiler alert I think it’s a great starting point for those considering becoming an Indie author.

I’ve signed up for an RNA course that runs through September. Led by Jessica Redland, it’s called ‘A series bestseller’s guide to writing a series’. I attended her last course in series settings in March and enjoyed it, so I’m really looking forward to this one. It could be just what I need to get me writing again. Plus I hope to see some familiar faces amongst the other writers taking part as I know a few of the writers on the March course were signing up to this as well.

Now it’s time to leave this update and get on with some writing!

I will try to review my goals again during the last quarter of 2023 and I hope to have some positive news on both the romance and fantasy series I’m writing. Wish me luck.

How are your goals for 2023 shaping up? What have you achieved so far this year?

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Suzanne Rogerson – Author of epic fantasy, heart-warming romance and short stories

You can follow me on

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You can also join my Newsletter for writing updates and news of promotions.

Monthly round up – reading and writing #amreading #amwriting

Posted on February 1, 2023 by Suzanne Rogerson Author

I am not great at sharing reviews, which is a shame as I know how important they are to authors, so I’ve decided to try a monthly wrap up post to share what I’ve been reading through the month. I also plan to share any progress on my writing projects as well as trying to stick to a quarterly plan.

January Update

Reading

I’ve made a good start to the year and my Goodreads goal of 26. Reading 4 books this month has set me up well.

The Fifth Sun Series by Talis Jones has kept me entertained and I’m looking forward to the final installment.

Writing Romance Novels and Love Stories has given me plenty to think about and work through with The Mermaid Hotel Series.

Rules for dating a Romantic Hero was a quick read and enjoyable. A good choice to get someone into reading who is daunted by bigger books.

Christmas Kisses by Alison May was a great read. I loved how the three novellas were interlinked and how it all came together at the end. Very enjoyable.

Writing

My new audiobook came out in January – Love, Loss and Life In Between. I have free audio codes available for reviewers, so please get in touch.

Romance series

Book 1 has a new title (formerly known as Evie’s Song) – Secrets and Love Songs at The Mermaid Hotel. It really fits the story and the genre. Feedback so far has been brilliant. What do you think?

I’ve also decided that I’ve been mentally putting the book in the wrong category – thinking of it as Contemporary Women’s fiction when it’s closer to the Cosy Seaside Romance genre.

I’m still editing the above and have quite a bit of work to do on the descriptions and layout of the novel.

Other Writing

Starlight Prophecy – No progress

Other writing – Nothing to report.

Other relevant writing news

I have joined the Romantic Novelist Association’s New Writers Scheme, which turned out to be easier than anticipated. It means I can send ‘Secrets and Love Songs at The Mermaid Hotel’ to a reader in March and get new professional eyes on the story.

I have subscribed to Mslexia, the women’s writing magazine and taken out their special Salon membership which has various perks throughout the year.

I have signed up to the RNA’s course ‘Writing a series with a coastal or countryside setting’ taught by Jessica Redland (I’m reading one of her books for the first time and loving it!). I think this course will be really helpful as I plan the rest of The Mermaid Hotel Series.

Plans for February

Books I hope to read this month