Posted by on Mar 31, 2009 in Uncategorised | 7 Comments

When good writers go bad … No, seriously that’s just to get your attention. Although, having said that, I could, if I allowed myself to, be completely depressed by the amount of depression I have been exposed to recently. There is something very special about writers: in aggregate, we’re like the bit of seaweed hung […]

As many of you know, I’m deeply interested in the writing of Jill Dawson, and so when I discovered she was part of a new mentoring scheme called Gold Dust, I asked her if she’d delve into it a little for me. In the period between sending my questions to Jill and getting the answers […]

Bread and books Somebody emailed to ask if I’ve stopped making bread. Not so! The thing is, I make bread two or three times a week and one loaf looks very much like another (very much like Enid Blyton’s Famous Five novels, according to my disapproving mother when I was a girl, although I remember […]

Anthology Launch I really like this Hand of Fatimah style imagery, although I can barely read a word it says. It’s the launch of Tell Tales 4 – The Global Village, in case you can’t make it out either. Sadly I can’t be there, even though I’m in the antho (I know my name doesn’t […]

Will books get longer in a recession?Recessionistas make predictions – skirts will be midi, lips will be redder, hair will be shorter (I’m ahead of the game there then!), eating in will be the new eating out, and books will be longer. Okay, I added that last one myself. But there’s a sense in which […]

Titles and short fictionI’m in the middle of what I’d like to pretend is a raging debate, but it’s more like a desultory email discourse, into titles. For complicated reasons I did some editing for an anthology while somebody else was ill. Somebody else is now back, so I’ve stepped out of the frame, but […]

Still Sleepless in Brighton Being a writer introduces you to many new experiences. I’m having one right now. Excellent Agent (hereinafter EA) wants revisions to novel #1. Good revisions too. Novel #2 has gone off for a bursary read to a literary consultancy. Novel #3 is around 35,000 words. Normally (if anything is normal in […]

Posted by on Mar 3, 2009 in literary agent, writing neuroses | 3 Comments

This is not what I planned to write about But this is what happened, and it dovetailed into what I was going to write about which is one of those things that happen and no writer could get away with letting them happen in fiction because it sounds too beautifully coincidental. Last night, well 2 […]