I had a bit of a mad week last week, but Friday topped the bill. I spent the day working with a guy called Mark Hayes, who came to our school through Konflux Theatre to do a drama workshop during the half term break. I quite liked drama as a kid so I volunteered to take part – besides, I was told it would be an easy ride, just sitting in the background, watching it all come together.

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The first bit of advice new writers get is usually 'read a lot'. Like we weren't already.

But when I first started writing, I often read or heard advice that urged me to only read 'quality' fiction. By which the adviser usually meant 'literary' or 'classic' fiction.

I'm sure I can't be the only writer whose heart sinks when a question on Great Literature comes up in the office Christmas quiz. 'Oh, Claire'll know this one,' everyone on my team says excitedly. 'She's a writer,'. Only I usually don't.

I didn't do English at university – didn't even do English 'A'-level. I've never read Thomas Hardy. I've never read Iris Murdoch or Martin Amis. I've never even read Lord of the Flies.

I am neither proud nor ashamed of this. I don't think it makes me a better or a worse writer. But I do think it makes me the writer I am – a writer who reads the same sort of books as her readers do, i.e. popular, commercial fiction. And when I'm reading a book – whether it be a thriller, romance or Harry Potter – that I can't put down, I'm always struck by the immense skill involved in creating something so grippingly easy to read. Because 'easy to read' does not necessarily (or, probably, ever) equal 'easy to write'

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Even if the prospect of a free Literary Festival in London, followed by a drinks reception at the inaugural talk, hadn’t been enough, how could I resist the title? Might it signal the end of reading, like an expansion ad infinitum of The Readers’ Digest?

LSE Alumni clearly don’t swell the noble (i.e. poorly paying) professions. The New Academic Building in Kingsway is a palace of blond-wood and steel. Surely the Champagne quality would match it.

‘Don’t leave any gaps! We’re expecting a full house!’ Marshalled by redshirts with military haircuts into the Sheikh Zayed Theatre, the docile booklovers fill up rows from the front, like Saturday morning picturegoers.



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I try very hard not to wade into healthcare/environment debates out here in AmericaLand. As a tree-hugging lefty who cares about how chickens/cows are kept this means I practically have to staple my mouth shut sometimes (I would consider my own views quite mainstream at home but here I think they may verge on communist...)

So I never thought I'd spout my opinions on this blog but I saw something posted today that made me think about the difference in being a poet starving in your garret in the UK, as opposed to the USA.

Tania Hershman pointed this out: the average earnings of writers in the UK.
The 'average' writer in my age group earns £14,564, although the median, i.e. typical, earning is £5000. That's not a lot. Generally, you'd have to do something else to keep the wolf from the door. However, I could very easily live on £14,564.

And that's because of something called the National Health Service.
Now, like most people I hadn't given the NHS a lot of thought until I became too ill to work for nearly three years.

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For a few weeks now, I’ve been raising the issue of the slush pile in our agency meetings on Monday mornings (when we discuss new authors, deals and Other Business). SAE’s seem so last decade and isn’t it time we geared ourselves up towards the digital decade? And just how many people have we found in the slush pile anyway? For the past few years, many of our clients have come to us through the ‘back door routes’ – those routes that ensure a manuscript lands firmly with a loud plop and a bit of glitter on the desk instead of the floor. Those authors haven’t asked for their work to be returned – either they are too cool for that or they assume – quite rightly – that we will agree to represent them.

So what are these ‘back door routes’? Let me name a few:


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After eight months of living and travelling in a motorhome, I’m back in good old England and living in Devon.

As someone who’s never even camped in a tent before, the whole notion was a bit scary, but I coped surprisingly well.

With my husband, I toured France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, as well as parts of Britain that I hadn’t seen before – right from Land’s End , all the way up to John o Groats, and Dunnets head.

It was the most interesting eight months of my life. We saw some amazing scenery: the snow capped mountains of the Sierra Nevada; the world’s biggest and longest sand dune, where I climbed over 200 feet up, even though I’m terrified of heights; the endless vineyards of the Mosel Valley in Germany. I gained plenty of inspiration for stories and travel articles. We visited some places that had great names I can use for characters – I’ve made a list for my next book!

I kept a journal for the whole eight months and wrote it up daily – well almost. I sometimes left it for a few days, but caught up when I had some free time, usually sitting in the sun with a glass of chilled white wine!



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I know a couple of writers who, offered a two-book contract on the basis of their first novel, turned it down on the grounds that they book they wanted to write next wasn't remotely like this one, and they didn't want to be tied into a contract that was expecting it to be aimed at the same sort of readers. (There are other more businessy reasons for turning down a two-book deal, but that's for another day and probably another blogger.) And if you get in among any gathering of literary-ish writers, much of the grumbling is about how publishers only want authors to write the same book all over again.

I do sympathise with the feeling; all three books in my personal TBW (=To Be Written) queue will seem perfectly reasonable to people who like the ones they've already read, but I do reserve the right to write a peculiar techno-thriller if I feel like it, and if anyone actually said to me, "You know that you'll have to write The Mathematics of Love forever, now?" I'd probably take up market gardening. And the chit-chat among aspiring writers about whether you're "allowed" to put X in chicklit, or "ought" do Y in fantasy, always makes me seethe: who is it who has the power to allow or disallow what you want to write? Who says "ought"? And do you really think you'll sell the book if you just tick the right boxes and none of the wrong ones?

But if you stop thinking of publishers (or the capitalist system) as bean-counters hell-bent on crushing literature, and understand the nature of people and books, it begins to make sense.

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Do you remember the early books you read? Or the first films you saw? In my case my favourite early childhood book was Enid Blyton’s ‘Five On A Treasure Island’ and one of my first film memories is 'Broken Arrow' starring James Stewart. Two very different stories, a treasure hunt off Kirrin Island with Julian, Dick, Anne, George and dog Timmy, versus cowboys and injuns in the broken wild west.


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I now have a kindle. I don't yet have any books on it (apart from the Oxford American Dictionary, which it comes loaded with, and an ebook file of the novel I'm working on for editing purposes). But I do own a kindle.

Most people are talking about e-book readers such as kindle as if they are recent developments, but actually the idea has been around since the early nineteenth century. An early (magical) prototype features in Hoffmann's story The Choosing of The Bride (from Tales of Hoffmann). At the end of that tale, Albertine's disappointed suitors are compensated with a series of magical consolations. Chancellery Private Secretary Tusmann receives "a little book bound in parchment which when he opened it proved to contain nothing but blank pages'. The secretary despairs, thinking he has drawn a worthless bundle of paper. The mysterious goldsmith tells him he is mistaken:

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