Leigh Matthews's Blog

Hi friends and fellow readers,

I hope you're all looking after yourselves and your communities today, however that looks for you.

Thanks to all 781 of you who entered the giveaway for Eat to Beat Acne! How a plant-based diet can help heal your skin. The three winners' copies are now in the mail and heading to Pennsylvania, Texas, and North Carolina. What a well-travelled book.

There's still time to enter the giveaway for Don't Bang the Barista! And remember, if you're local to Vancouver and win the book, I'd be happy to meet you in person with a signed copy!

If you're local to Vancouver, Vancouver Island, Sunshine Coast or the Gulf Islands and would like a signed copy of any of my books, get in touch. I'd love to meet more readers!

Thanks!

L

As a medical copywriter, I’ve written a lot of health-related articles and documents over the past six years or so and one thing I’ve found is that often the most time-consuming part of the job is not the research and fact-checking, but the agonising over how to make that copy inclusive. Look up any info […]

If you’re in Vancouver on April 8th, 2016, come on down to The Lido for Happy Hour and pick up a signed copy of Go Deep! The second novel in the All Out Vancouver series, Go Deep follows on from Don’t Bang the Barista!, featuring Kate, Cass and a dazzling array of queermos navigating life, […]

One or two typos almost always sneak past even the best authors and editors, but typos probably won’t affect the success of your book unless your manuscript is literally littered with errors (or if you’re writing a book about editing, perhaps). You are likely to lose a few readers, however, if there are major flaws […]

The first draft of the novel is complete and I have emerged, mole-like and blinking into the blinding light of real-life. The unreal looks pretty cosy right about now, and I’m feeling a little insubstantial, which got me wondering about the relationship between writing and psychosis. Does ‘writer’s psychosis’ exist? Am I the only one […]

On Friday, I took part in Vancouver’s Queer Arts Festival with a reading of a short piece of queer erotica at the aptly named event, Queerotica. The evening featured some amazing performances by the ever-wonderful Amber Dawn and Jillian Christmas, the phenomenal Vancouver Poet Laureate, Rachel Rose, as well as a new voice in the […]

For a while now, I’ve been dreaming up a crowdfunding campaign for the new novel (the sequel to Don’t Bang the Barista!). Why should authors with traditional publishers get all the fun (and terror) of an advance for second and subsequent novels? It seems that every week a new article springs up somewhere in the […]

Back in January, I decided that I would make 2015 a significant year in terms of personal and professional development. I would force myself to make hard choices, push myself out of my comfort zone and really try to put myself out in the world as a writer and in general. How am I doing […]

In just over four weeks I will hear a live rendition of an art song I have been working on with a young composer as part of Art Song Lab 2015. To say I’m excited is somewhat of an understatement. I’m not a writer who does readings. I have yet to make my voice heard […]

Vancouver, BC, October 31 ��� If you’ve been waiting for a Vancouver-based modern lesbian pulp-fiction novel, today is your lucky day! Don’t Bang the Barista! is the second novel from British-born, Vancouver-based writer, Leigh Matthews, an author whose first novel, The Old Arbutus Tree, was said to be beautifully written, if a tad harrowing. For […]