Writer's Life

Writer's Life · 25 March 2025

A brutally honest dispatch from the writing trenches. Joyce Barnacle on burnout, broken plot beats, haunted fridges, and the ache of losing the spark mid-story. Blackmore.Pembroke. is not going well.

Writer's Life · 12 March 2025

A supermarket parking lot. Type O Negative. An epiphany that hit like a truck. Turns out, I wasn’t just writing a book—I was writing me.

Writer's Life · 03 March 2025

Struggling to balance writing, work, and the relentless demands of social media? Same. As an indie author, I’m spiraling over my book while screaming into the Instagram void, trying to reach the right readers without losing my mind. Why is marketing harder than writing the damn book? Read my full rant on why I refuse to be good for the algorithm—and what I’m doing instead.

Writer's Life · 02 March 2025

ADHD and fictional men are a dangerous combo. My brain doesn’t just like characters—it imprints on them. From Damon Salvatore to Spike to every brooding, tragic bastard in between, no real man stands a chance. And because I can’t be normal about it, I wrote a book featuring the ultimate hyperfixation-worthy character. Read my full chaotic confession and let’s scream together.

Writer's Life · 23 February 2025

aka – The Existential Despair of Nailing a Scene You Can’t Show Anyone Yet. You know that feeling? That soul-destroying, fist-pumping, maniacal laughter-inducing moment when you nail a scene? When you write something so perfect, so ridiculously funny, so YOU, that it makes your entire shriveled writer heart swell with chaotic glee? You’ve just written a scene where your brooding love interest says something so devastatingly good, so agonisingly perfect, that you want to print it out and...