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Simon Whaley
ALLi Author Member
Location: United Kingdom (the)
Genres: Self-Help/Personal Development, Crime, Mystery, Narrative Nonfiction, Other, Advice & How To, Humour
Skills: Press/Media Interview, Reading/Literary Event, Self-publishing Workshop/Training, Speaking Engagement/Lecture, Writing Workshop
Simon Whaley lives in rural Shropshire, having escaped from Greater London in the late 1990s. His first published piece was a word search puzzle, aged 17, and he’s since written over 825 articles in publications as varied as BBC Countryfile, Country Walking, Cheshire Life, SelfBuild & Design, The People’s Friend, The Daily Express, The Observer, Outdoor Photography, Coast, The Simple Things and Writing Magazine.
His first book, One Hundred Ways For A Dog To Train Its Human, was published by Hodder & Stoughton in September 2003, with an initial print run of 10,000 copies. By the end of December 2003, over 100,000 copies had been sold to bookshops, and the book spent three weeks on the UK’s Top Ten Non-Fiction paperback bestseller lists. (Lifetime sales now exceed over a quarter of a million copies.) He became a full-time writer in January 2004. He’s since gone on to write over a dozen books, not all of them about dogs, though.
Simon has worked for a variety of organisations including a high street bank in southwest London, a government development agency, and a local authority somewhere on the Welsh Borders. When not writing, he enjoys walking and photography. When he’s not writing, he’s out taking photographs, particularly around his home patch of Shropshire, on the Welsh Borders. He also a BBC WeatherWatcher submitting photos on a frequent basis, which have been broadcast on both regional and national weather forecasts, under the name of Snapper Simon.
He’s self-published The Complete Article Writer, which offers advice to writers about how to construct, write and pitch articles to magazine editors. He bought back the rights to two other books, Photography for Writers and The Positively Productive Writer, and has since fully-updated both books and self-published them. All three books for writers now appear as part of his Practical Writer Series.
After two near-misses with traditional publishers (it got to their acquisitions meetings, but failed to get taken on), Simon self-published his cosy crime novel, Blooming Murder, the first in his Marquess of Mortiforde Mysteries.
Simon Whaley's books
The Complete Article Writer
The Complete Article Writer began life as a series of eight step-by-step workshops that took delegates through the process of creating a publishable article. In book format its aim is the same: to show you how to get from a potential idea to a finished article written for a specific readership. The Complete Article Writer explores:
– article ideas: generating ideas and maximising their potential
– magazine analysis: identifying your potential readers and the aspects of your idea that will interest them most
– article structure: choosing the best structure for your idea, and how to make it an engaging read
– creativity: adding interest and sparkle to your article
– pitching: selling your idea to an editor before you write the article
– rights: understanding the rights a magazine buys from you, and how you can re-use your ideas.
Photography for Writers
Which would you rather be: the writer paid £200 for an article or the writer/photographer paid £600 for an illustrated article?
Practically every magazine uses photographs, so why not become an editor's dream supplier by sending them a complete words-and-picture package? Some magazines only use writers who can supply the photos, so taking photos can open up new markets to you.
Inside Photography for Writers you will learn:
- How to increase your chances of selling more words by offering photos.
- How to take publishable photos using your smartphone or compact camera.
- How to supply photos with your submissions.
- How to illustrate your articles when you don't have a camera.
- And how to use your smartphone or compact camera as a research tool.
Take your writing to the next level... with photos! Increase your publication opportunities and boost your writing income!
Simon Whaley's illustrated features have appeared in a variety of publications including BBC Countryfile, Country Walking, The Simple Things, Outdoor Photography, The Countryman, The People's Friend and Writing Magazine.
The Positively Productive Writer
Can't find time to write? Daunted by the sheer size of your writing project? Lost your motivation? Scared of being rejected?
It doesn't matter whether you want to write a page-turning novel, a life-changing non- fiction book, produce fascinating features or sizzling short stories, there comes a point when you have to sit down and write. That's when negativity and despondency show up. To achieve your writing dreams, you need a positively productive mindset.
Inside The Positively Productive Writer (Second Edition), you will learn how to:
- embrace rejection, tame Imposter Syndrome, and avoid comparisonitis,
- find more time to write, and turbo-boost your productivity by designating it 'maker' time or 'manager' time,
- banish Writers' Block, embrace sloppy copy, and celebrate your writing success,
- and so much more!
With an extra 40% positivity, this fully revised and updated second edition of The Positively Productive Writer will help you turn your creative dreams into writing reality.
Simon Whaley is a bestselling author, magazine columnist, and feature writer. This second edition of The Positively Productive Writer draws upon his thirty years of published writing experience, and over two decades of creative writing tutoring.
Blooming Murder
Two communities. One flower competition. So much dead-heading! Aldermaston's having a bad day. A falling hanging-basket has killed the town's mayor, and a second narrowly missed him. His wife wants him to build her new greenhouse in three days, and someone is sending him death threats. This isn't the quiet life he expected as the new Marquess of Mortiforde.
It's the annual Borders in Blossom competition, and Mortiforde is battling with Portley Ridge in the final. But this is no parochial flower competition. The mayor's mishap looks like murder, and there's another body in the river. Someone desperately wants Portley Ridge to win for the fifteenth successive year.
So when a mysterious group of guerrilla gardeners suddenly carpet bomb Mortiforde with a series of stunning floral delights one night, a chain reaction of floral retaliation ensues.
Can Aldermaston survive long enough to uncover who is trying to kill him, and why? And can he get his wife's greenhouse built in time?
Foraging for Murder
MORTIFORDE’S FOOD FESTIVAL IS A RECIPE FOR MURDER.
Three butchers. Two deaths. One four-hundred-year-old grudge.
It’s Aldermaston’s first food festival as the Eighth Marquess of Mortiforde and it’s not going well. One butcher is missing. Another has been threatened.
And the Vegetarian Society has been sent a meaty ultimatum.
Meanwhile, Lady Mortiforde desperately needs her husband to find some wild boar meat for her savoury pie entry into the festival’s Bake Off competition.
When the Council’s Chief Archivist disappears, along with the Food History Marquee’s star attraction, a seventeenth-century recipe book, Aldermaston has all the ingredients of a murder mystery that’s been marinating for over four hundred years.
Can he find the missing butchers before it’s too late? Will Lady Mortiforde avoid a soggy bottom in the Bake Off competition? And why do all the butchers take their pet pigs for a walk in the woods at night?
Paperback ISBN: 9781739863203
eBook ISBN: 9781739863210