You know when you have a formless blob of an idea floating around in your head? It could end up nowhere, but equally, it could end up being a half decent story. It’s a bit like having a lump of dough that needs to prove and bake into something with a purpose. And I don’t compare food and stories lightly, but I still compare them.

Sometimes you need to allow an idea, or a scene, to lurk inside your brain for a while until it takes shape. My friend Alexandra talks about putting it in The Mullage Machine.


Read Full Post

Once Suzy Jenvey left school she embarked on a freelance journalistic and writing career which included local radio and newspaper experience, and several published poems and a play performed at the Cockpit Theatre. Her publishing career began as press officer at Jonathan Cape, which progressed to marketing director at Chatto and Windus and at Macdonald Publishers. She then moved into editorial as senior commissioning editor at Simon and Schuster and editorial and publishing director at Faber and Faber and Quercus Books. She became an agent in 2007 at PFD Ltd heading up the children’s book department.



The author I wish we’d ‘discovered’ most is….
ANDY STANTON

Left on a cliffhanger or told all?
Told all. Cliffhanger is just teasing.

You really must read…
The Moth Diaries by Rachel Klein. Great for teenagers, great for adults.

My biggest tip for a writer is…
Keep writing. You never know which story or character is going to take off. And a rejection one year is an immediate offer the next.

An author should never…
Copy other stories or styles

My pet hate in a submission package is…
Feedback from the author’s children saying they loved it. It would be unusual for your own child to be an impartial literary critic.


Read Full Post

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. What a wonderful, inclusive festival: taking time out to give thanks... and eat big piles of food.

It is also my first proper Thanksgiving in the States and 12 real, actual Americans are coming round to our house where they will be getting a slightly British twist on the whole thing: turkey, roast potatoes (Americans don't do roast potatoes, which is just plain wrong), Bisto gravy, mince pies and brandy butter (why not?), stuffing, and all the usual trimmings. They'll be bringing such legendary dishes as green bean casserole (possibly with marshmallows?), yams and various pumpkin-related fare. Don't expect me to be able to move for the next few days.


Read Full Post

I love Christmas! So to celebrate the festive season and to celebrate the release of 'Cock it & Pull it' this year I'm giving away 3 autographed copies!

It couldn't be simpler! All you have to do is send me an email saying that you would like to enter the competition and that's it!

Click on the following link for more information!

http://www.peterjanes.co.uk/competition.html

Welcome to the blog Faye, it’s a real pleasure to have you here. Can you tell us a little about Roast Books? Who are you? What do you do?
Hello Nik, thanks for having me on. Well Roast Books is an unusual little publishing house which produces literary titles with an emphasis on quality of presentation and design. We like our books to look good as well as being delicious to read. It’s a tiny organisation and so far we’ve produce about 4 books a year.

How and why did it get started?
I was interested in the idea of literature that was suited to the modern lifestyle, reading for on the spot entertainment, so I decided to produce some contemporary novellas. There is a dearth of interestingly presented book. Not enough new authors are given the opportunity to publish their work. So Roast Books began as a remedy to these things. An A-Z of Possible Worlds [see my interview with its author here - Nik.] was a really exciting project, because the short stories can be read individually, at the readers’ convenience, but are packaged as a complete work. …….

What do Roast Books do best?
Take chances! I am proud of the care and attention that goes into each title, and I think in the case of ‘An A-Z of Possible Worlds’ the packaging really suits the work, we haven’t compromised on that just to make it easier to distribute.

Who’s the ideal reader of a Roast Books title?
Five foot four, brown hair, glasses, with a healthy amount of facial expression. Oh and book lovers.

Read Full Post

Here's what you do: Write a story where the first letters of each word are in alphabetical order.

Here's mine.

All because Christopher didn't expect five girls here in June Kevin lost. My natural opinion's pretty quiet really. So the unlikely victor was x-rated yet zesty.

Care to have a go and share yours? Just for a bit of fun?

Read Full Post

The issue of accuracy in historical fiction is one I'm often asked about. Does the word 'fiction' give a writer licence to ignore historical detail where the story demands it, or should the story be moulded to fit within the known facts, perhaps with a resulting lack of drama?

When people talk about historical inaccuracy, they are usually thinking of outright anachronisms – medieval serfs scrubbing germs off potatoes, or a Tudor apothecary doing CPR. Often, however, it's not that black and white. If I wrote a full exploration of historical accuracy in fiction it would be somewhat too long for a blog post, so I'm going to concentrate today on dialogue – an aspect where getting it 'right' can actively thwart your chances of creating a novel that works.

Let's take an extreme example, and say your book is set in Roman Britain. Are you seriously going to have your Roman characters talking in Latin? What about your heroic underdogs from various Celtic tribes? The likelihood of a significant number of modern readers been well-versed in each of these languages is slim, to say the least. Historical accuracy, in this instance, would prevent the novel ever reaching an audience. Even in the event of someone desperately wanting to read in Latin and Iceni, they would never get the chance because no publisher in their right mind would take it on.



Read Full Post

I thought Roy would miss his cronies, not to mention his bridge games, if he stayed too long in Zamora. So I suggested two visits instead of one; stay a week, return to London for two and join me for the final ten days. I even managed to book us on the same return flight.


Read Full Post

A lot of talking about writing ponders and circles around the mysteries of inspiration: the genie, the zone, the muse, the cloud of unknowing, the necessity for darkness or music, the fetishism about notebooks or mascots, the alcohol, the drugs, the digging in the garden, the long country walks, the endless games of patience (Heyer's preferred method, along with 'a little gin and benzedrine'). Some of the best-selling - and best - how-to books, including Brande's Becoming a Writer and Cameron's The Artist's Way, are all about such things, and the hands-down winner in the Most Often Asked Festival Question stakes is 'Where do you get your ideas from?' It's the great, and therefore fascinating, mystery.

Since it's easy to believe (not helped by the publisher's need/desire for high-concept, elevator-pitch promotions) that all writing a novel takes is a brilliant idea, writers then spend much of the school visit/festival session talking about how hard they work to cut and shape and re-cut and polish the idea. Or they talk about how we let characters walk in and misbehave, or find the ending was quite different from what we expected. (Dodie Smith said this of I Capture the Castle. How I'd love to know what she did expect!) Good writing courses, such as the Open University one I'm teaching, start by exploring how you find the material for your work - freewriting, clustering, keeping a notebook and what to note - and then tackle the cutting and shaping. In other words, even if there's lots of toing and froing between them, everything tends to assume that, fundamentally, inspiration comes first, and technique later.

It's undeniably true, at the fundamental level: you can't shape an idea till you've had it. But, just as I was arguing that you could ask your talent what it wants to work on, rather than expecting it to do its best with whatever you want to write about, maybe we should stand this idea, too, on its head occasionally. Maybe it's not always a matter of inspiration first, then technique.

Well, to be honest, there's no 'maybe' about it, at least not as far as I'm concerned, because I know that I've done things in my writing which began as cold-blooded, technical decisions.

Read Full Post

This morning I got an acceptance for the last unpublished flash in my folder. Yikes. I'd better write some new ones. I totted up, and this latest will be my 100th flash to be published. Yikes again. Did they all go to good homes? Well, maybe not all. Would I rewrite any if I had the chance (or the time)? Yes, nearly all of them. But there are maybe a dozen of which I am unreservedly proud, ones that connected with the reader. Which is not to say I regret sending any of them out into the world. The process of subbing and being rejected is essential, I think. Writing is a solitary art but we get better by engaging with our readers. I couldn't keep my flashes unread any more than I could keep children in an attic; words need a turn in the real world of reading, a rough and tumble, the chance to have the edges knocked off them. It's how stories grow and get better.

Read Full Post