This has been a bad month. 11,500 words. Way below my target.

My main excuse is my lap top, which keeps freezing up, making it impossible to write on the thing...

Read Full Post

Today I shaved. The beard is gone. The kids didn't want me to shave it off, but it's my face, after all, not theirs. If they want a beard, they can grow one themselves. That's the problem with kids these days. They expect everything to be done for them.

It was the soup at lunchtime that decided it. Too much got filtered out on the way to my mouth. Also, I hated the feeling of moisture on my moustache when I had a drink of water in the night. Somehow it was worse in the night. In the darkness. I could feel the water sitting their on my whiskers, tempting me to lap it. Like some animal licking its fur.

Read Full Post

I was on Strictly Writing the other day talking about how embarrassingly un-British is it to have to go out and plug my own book. But that’s tough – the alternative is to sit around and whinge that it’s someone else’s fault when it doesn’t sell, so I have to publicise it as much as possible and hope that if people don’t like it, they won’t find out until after they have paid money. That’s why I’m in two minds about whether to put an excerpt on my website.

Lots of author websites have a taster of the book, but I wonder whether or not it’s a good idea. For everyone who says “ooh, that sounds great, I’ll get me to Amazon right now,” there are probably ten who think “what a load of crap,” when they might otherwise have taken a punt on it.



Read Full Post

As writers, we naturally like to think of ourselves as imaginative people. People who can weave a story out of thin air, pull sparkling and arresting characters from the ether, create Machievellian twists and turns of plot with audacious creative flair. We follow the whims of fancy, allowing them to take us where they wish, until at the end of it, we have a story or a novel – hopefully original, possibly unique, but definitely MADE UP.

Well, unfortunately, our friends and family are unlikely to see it the same way. In some little corner of their minds, no matter how unacknowledged, they will be harbouring a conviction. Oh, you might tell them that your novel is based on nothing but your own imagination, but they know the truth. They know that, really, it’s all about you. It’s an autobiography, thinly disguised as fiction, and by reading it, they are going to discover all your deepest darkest secrets. Let the hunt commence!


Read Full Post

Yesterday I received the editing notes for Changeling: Dark Moon, and I went through the usual raft of emotions that every author goes through once they realise that their submitted novel is not quite as perfect as they had thought it was. Now don't get me wrong, I know my books aren't perfect when they arrive on my editor's desk, I think that almost all authors know that (what the hell would be the point of having an editor otherwise?). But it still...

Read Full Post

'But,' said the Medical Man, staring hard at a coal in the fire, 'if Time is really only a fourth dimension of Space, why is it and why has it always been, regarded as something different?'

This is from H G Wells's The Time Machine, and a writing acquaintance on WriteWords questioned whether 'staring hard at the coal in the fire' was really necessary, or just padding. I was intrigued, because this sentence is a shape into which much of my dialogue falls (too much, unless I'm concentrating), so it really appealed to me, and I couldn't see what his problem was with it. Since 'it's scene-setting' is never an adequate reason for padding things out with a bit of description, any more than, 'it's characterisation' is, I started thinking about what would be happening when I actually wrote that scene. Of course I've no idea if Wells was, but in my case, biro poised, my mind and pen would be going something like this:

Read Full Post

Sue unplugged the portable radio, forcing the bent telescopic aerial to retract with a little more emphasis than was strictly necessary. The black and white bankers’ box had slowly filled with stuff throughout the morning as she went about the business of decanting her desk. I watched her as she balanced up the probability of being able to squeeze this last item in, decided against it, jammed the lid on the box and plonked the radio down hard on top.


Read Full Post

I mentioned a few weeks ago here that I'd started writing again and that I wrote a flash story for Liars' League's theme of Art and Science. Liars League is a monthly evening in London where actors read out the winning stories on that month's theme. Art and Science... that's so me, I had to go for it. And, as I said then, if I didn't get anywhere, well, I'd have a new flash story.

I got in!

Read Full Post

I spent most of the last year and a bit writing a novel. To stop myself contracting that well-known condition 'writer's arse', I made myself go swimming twice a week, a quick(ish) twenty lengths at Wednesday lunchtime, and thirty lengths (going up to forty lengths more recently) on Saturday morning. That's not a lot of exercise, I know, but more than I have done for a long time. And I am not a strong swimmer, nor a technically proficient one. My breaststroke is ragged and my front crawl raggeder.

Read Full Post

Peter Hall's Diaries 1972-80 edited by John Goodwin. A fascinating read, about the period when the ex-RSC supremo took over the newly-built National Theare. He dictated half an hour every morning and the results were edited down to one sixth of the total .


Read Full Post