It’s hard to imagine those tiny arms we all used to have; that upper section without the swing…and the memory of having long legs in my youth – I think the rest of my body fell, or slid, down and stole almost a foot from my thighs! I find myself ogling ornaments in shop windows – I always wanted to be a fairy. Sharp elbows and knees were once a part of me and would’ve looked fabulous in any enchanted wood, but even little folk must grow.

What happens to fairies when they’re 40?


Read Full Post

My favourite writing rule is the one that says you shouldn’t use the verb “to be.”

EVER.

Got that? Go through your whole book and circle them all, then restructure the sentences in a convoluted fashion, OK? Being is just existing. It’s boring and passive. Your verbs as well as your characters should take charge of their own destiny. “Was” and “were” are particularly nefarious. You have to strike them out, otherwise you’re not A Proper Writer.



Read Full Post

There is a school of thought that believes it to be counter-productive to edit your work as you go along. To be able to get that first draft down on the page (or document file) warts-and-all so that the story flows in an undiverted stream would, undoubtedly, be great.


It's just that I can't do it. I didn't do it with Changeling or Changeling 2, and I don't think that I ever will be able to do it. My way is much slower, but it appears it is the way that my particular muse chooses to operate.


Read Full Post

Thought I’d do some limbering up for nanowrimo (catchy but irritating acronym don’t you think?) … a literary workout. Used one of my shortlisted titles (see previous post) as a prompt for a freewrite to see how much content it would generate. Managed to type 1223 words in 38 minutes. Worked out my ’stream consciousness’ peak flow at 31.57894736842 words per minute! As I can copy type at 47 wpm I was quite cheered - thinking - maybe I can cope with a target of 2000 words a day... (more)

Read Full Post

A day off today as I've finally succumbed to the evil demands of the cold I've been developing, sigh. Having managed a grand total of 4 hours' sleep on Sunday night and a gloriously indecent one hour last night, I probably ruddy well deserve a day off. I gave up even trying to sleep at around midnight yesterday and got up and began to do a stream of endless puzzles in the living room instead. Couldn't be arsed to turn the TV on really. My one hour's sleep finally overtook me on the sofa at around 5am. Frankly it was delicious ...


Read Full Post

I was up early, at The Boy's insistence. We sat on the sofa; me bleary of eye and fuzzy of head, him raring to go. "Bugsla," he kept saying. "Bugsla," more earnest every time. I eventually worked out that he was saying A Bug's Life. It took me so long I actually agreed to let him watch it. Come on, it was 6am, not a time for wholesome activities like puzzles.

Read Full Post

Producing and selling anything as complicated and hard to pin down as a novel was never going to be easy, but there seems to be more trouble between writers and publishers over covers than over just about anything else. From the annoyingly smug position of never yet having had a duff or even a merely dull cover (though I think the Russian cover of The Mathematics of Love is probably, shall we say, an acquired taste, even without the watermark) I can still see how painful it is to feel that your book isn't being fairly or elegantly/wittily/powerfully represented, and I know plenty of stories where there's been blood on the editorial carpet as a result.

The obvious problem is when the publisher's made a clear decision to sell a book as something the author deeply feels it isn't. Have they mistaken the nature of the book? You'd hope that's unlikely, after all those months of acquiring and editing, but it does happen. More often it's that the cover's trying to push it into an industry pigeonhole which the author doesn't think it fits. Okay, so so your book has more pigeon DNA than it does ostrich or cormorant, but that doesn't mean you want your lovingly bred and raised Luzon Bleeding Heart Dove dressed up (or down) to look like every other pigeon queuing up to be fed in Trafalgar Square.

'But it's not that kind of book' the agonised author howls, probably to their agent (this is one of the ways agents earn their cut).

Read Full Post

Up early ... again (masochists never have a lie-in), so early that the hens haven't got round to laying. Bring one egg home - instead of six. Fingers recovered from Writathon (Saturday) but mentally knackered. Managed 13 stories over 10 hours, but only 2000 words, the equivalent of walking a marathon. Broken three resolutions to myself (so far) today. The first ...



Read Full Post

Am once more neck-deep in timetabling issues for the refresher talks but, thanks to the totally wonderful Safety guy, it all seems to be relatively under control. For the moment. I’m sure most things are more successfully sorted when I’m actually not there. Which is much like the play, The Dog It Was That Died, where lots of things happen but everything would have been just the same without the main character existing at all. Ah, life’s a wonderful thing, eh …

I also seem to have developed a cold, dammit – just what I need for this week. Not. Still, I am dousing myself in Lemsips, Lucozade and Echinacea so I’m hoping for a clean bill of health by the time the operation comes round on Thursday. I don’t after all want to be too sick to go to hospital. It would be too much like the time many years ago in my pre-marital days when I was planning to go to the Healing Service in Lord’s H’s church, but in the end was too ill to attend. Sad but true ...


Read Full Post

Been covering the ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards for suite101.com.

This is the inaugural event and I think the judges and public got most of the awards about right. I'm particularly pleased that Ian Rankin got Author of the Year for Exit Music (ahead of Peter James's Not Dead Enough, Robert Harris's The Ghost and Lee Child's Bad Luck and Trouble).

I thoroughly enjoyed The Ghost and I have bought but not yet read the Lee Child. Still I'm glad Rankin won. I really enjoy the Rebus books, having read many of them while I was writing Cheetah. They taught me a lesson – character. My first two or three drafts of Cheetah were all plot, with characters so dead they made cardboard look full of beans.

Read Full Post