It's a question that I get asked time and time again: Where do you get your ideas from?

And the truth is, for me at least, I don't honestly know.

I've been thinking about it more and more since watching a presentation by Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity that really pushed all of the right buttons for me, because she argues that...

Read Full Post

A man with a tattooed face and a black bomber jacket snoozes in his wheelchair on the concourse outside. Around him men and women in suits and skirts flow and converse with overly loud hand gestures and exaggerated annunciation, or talk into mobile phone wires clipped to their lapels. A few feral pigeons strut and squabble over crumbs near his feet. I stand in the lea of a doorway smoking and watching the man with the tattoos. His head is rolled back onto the girdle of his shoulders and he is wearing only one shoe, his other foot strapped up in some kind of brace. He is sleeping soundly beneath the faintly illuminated Pret a Manger sign, eyes tight shut.


Read Full Post

So I see Val McDermid is to appear with other celebrity guests in a series of TV programmes about Bridge. Tony Hill’s psychological profile of a Bridge club killer could make chilling reading, a worthy addition to McDermid’s oeuvre of grisly crime thrillers.


Read Full Post

Almost shaking with frustration, Jack slammed the drawer shut. His family knew to keep back at times like these and they watched his tight-faced rage as he tore through the living room, hurling cushions off chairs and knocking Lilian’s neat pile of coffee-table books to the floor, where the colourful, glossy paper crumpled under their weight. Lilian had trained herself to put the blame for Jack’s thoughtless destruction on herself. Obviously the wrong place to keep my best books, she thought, ignoring the damage.
Jack turned to look at his family, lined up out of the way against the wall.
“Where?” he screamed.

Read Full Post

The best emails that I get are from fans. They ask the best questions, make the best suggestions, and write the most honest and insightful reviews.


So today I thought that it would be nice to blog about them. After all, if people can be bothered to take the time to write to me, it's only fair that I should return the compliment (I do reply to every piece of fan-mail that I receive).


I think for every writer...

Read Full Post

So now I am waiting - waiting for a sign to let me know that conception has occurred. Certainly, nothing as alien and momentous as the beginning of life could happen in my own body without me being alerted to it.

I think I am waiting for a noise, or an explosion, or perhaps some God-like voice speaking a language I've never heard before, whispering that I am With Child. Then I will run my hands knowingly over my belly, my face suffused with serenity and devotion. I'll be deeply aware of every newly-made cell dividing and growing, unknowable to all but me. This is going to be the quietest, the sweetest romance.

Read Full Post

I was feeling great this morning, woke up chirpy, checked email, switched on the fiction-only laptop (yeah, yeah) and was about to get some work done before 10am, which is rare for me. Then I got a Google alert for my name (everyone does those, right?). I click on the link. And it's this...

Orange Award For New Writers Announces 2009 Shortlist

No, I'm not on the shortlist (luckily, I think I would have had a heart attack), but...

Read Full Post

My name is Katy and I’m a procrastinator. There, I’ve outed myself, come clean, hoisted my head above the parapet, shaken my tail feather, strutted my funky stuff in full view of the virtual world. But if there was indeed a 12-step programme to cure me, would I want to take it? And am I even being accurate in my self-diagnosis of procrastinator when ‘hopelessly addicted daydreamer’ might be more apposite?


Read Full Post

Larry’s Party by Carol Shields is the tenth book I’ve read this year already. I loved the beginning, was bored in the middle and felt irritated by the end. At first the format inspired me to make notes for a future project. She tells the story of this guy’s life in sections two years apart and the writing is just wonderful but I don’t think the whole thing is as good as some of its parts.

The only character who is never more than a sketch is the son; I gave her the benefit of the doubt in that the musing is from a man; I thought she might be Showing quite literally how a man thinks about his life – rather than Telling, to make her point. If that is indeed what she was doing then she’s been successful –

Read Full Post

I am no longer Runaway Granny! How shocking is that? I came across a huge file on Saturday, stuffed with print-outs from the first year of the blog, some doodles with AOL and MSN and the travel journals I kept since I left in August 2003. I didn't begin writing here till May 2006. There it was, the tale of my travels, neatly sitting in glossy sleeves -

Read Full Post