Its Jim and Jenny’s Book Swap on Sunday 9th July at 3pm – Don’t miss it!

Ruth Hartley Storytelling, Books by Ruth Hartley, Festival, Imagination, Photography2 Comments

Free books and free drinks A wonderful opportunity to indulge yourself for a whole afternoon searching out those fantastic books that you’ve been dying to read while you have a free drink. It’s too hot to go outside and garden – all you can do is lie in the shade and read and read. Bring the books that you have […]

Is White Writing Black, Right Writing or Wrong Writing?

Ruth Hartley Storytelling, Politics, Race, Southern Africa, The Tin Heart Gold Mine8 Comments

Writing black and white people, men and women, good and bad. This is a rewrite of post on Marginal Scribbling that contains some complicated ideas that need thrashing out with other writers and readers. I intended to repost this anyway but it seemed more relevant after the launch of my novel The Tin Heart Gold Mine because I was asked […]

Storytellers, readers, writers and reviews

Ruth Hartley Storytelling, The Shaping of Water, The Tin Heart Gold Mine2 Comments

We are all storytellers. We are all readers. Some of us are writers. Not all readers write reviews but all writers need reviews and even bad ones mean that we have been noticed and read. In this post, I am going to tell you in a 4 short paragraphs, about 4 books that have given me great pleasure and that […]

My story, is it a memoir, an autobiography, or a novel?

Ruth Hartley Storytelling, Graphic Novel, Memoir, The Tin Heart Gold Mine, Writing Process4 Comments

What is my novel? “How much of your novel is an autobiography?” It’s a good question to ask a writer. A good question It was asked at the launch of The Tin Heart Gold Mine, but it’s not a simple question to answer. I immediately wanted to ask the other writers there what they thought. It’s easier to answer this […]

Writing and selling The Tin Heart Gold Mine

Ruth HartleyBook Launch, Promotion, Southern Africa, The Tin Heart Gold Mine4 Comments

Writers need to sell books Writers write – rather than talk about what they write – but the current publishing market forces us to become Independent Authors and acquire self-promotional skills entirely different from writing. The idea of a book launch for The Tin Heart Gold Mine gave me sleepless nights, but, nevertheless, we decided to hold the event at […]