Thoughts about things I’ve written or read or heard or seen. An attempt to stay positive in a turbulent world.
Recent Articles
Back to reality
So, back to reality in my writing room (I’ll be there in a minute, when I’ve written this MAT … er, I mean, blog) after a dizzy day yesterday living on the adrenalin that Stuck in a Book’s review of Speaking of Love generated. Before I was published, a line or two from an enthusiastic...Continue reading→
Orchids for Simon
I am overwhelmed. This orchid is for Simon at Stuck in a Book for his overwhelming review of Speaking of Love. See The word on … at the top on the right. Orchids, according to Clare Florists’ flower meanings are flowers of magnificence and, although I’m not at all sure what the thanking-for-a-blog-book-review etiquette is,...Continue reading→
Writing, MATs and ticker-tape turn ups
On Friday morning, in the bath, before I started work (a bath can be a MAT, but only if I’m still in it after the practical stuff is over), the sentence, ‘On the whole we resist falling in love’ turned up in my head. This isn’t unusual (not that sentence, but sentences in general, or...Continue reading→
Roses, MATs and Annie Lawson’s "Partner"
Isn’t this rose beautiful? My boyf gave it to me (see below), and I took its portrait with my new digital camera which I went out to buy today, prompted by the beauty of Find me a Bluebird‘s blog, and helped by a good friend who is a wonderful artist and knows about digital cameras....Continue reading→
Blogging (is a MAT)
I’ve spent the morning roving from blog to blog (I never could surf, too much water up my nose) and finding more and more delightful things to read. I’ve been reading blogs about books and life at Asylym, BooksPlease, Cornflower, dovegreyreader and Stuck in a Book; and blogs about writing books and life at Bookarazzi,...Continue reading→
Making the language sing
So … I spent yesterday rewriting the first seven pages of the short-story-that-was-a-novel. Or, as I prefer to call it, making the language sing. Now that’s not a full-scale opera you understand, just one short under-rehearsed aria, but I hate clunky language. I’m a huge fan of the less-is-more-poetic school of writing, but when I’m...Continue reading→
First novels and short stories
The thing about writing your first novel is that as well as doing it you’re finding out how to do it. So, you would have thought that I’d have discovered at least the fundamentals of the how by now. But it seems that I haven’t, or hadn’t. My second novel, which I had the idea...Continue reading→
Man Booker Longlist, MATs and Natalie Goldberg
So … the Booker Longlist is out and it includes four first novels which can only be good news for those of us with books which have cleared the finding-a-publisher-for-the-first-novel hurdle. I looked in vain for Speaking of Love, knowing that it wouldn’t be there but hoping, fantastically against the odds, that it would be....Continue reading→
Bookarazzi and Find me a Bluebird
I’d intended to post every day … so much for the best-laid plans, or even the worst-laid. Anyway, one of the things I’ve discovered while trying to find ways to midwife my first novel, Speaking of Love, out into the world (yes, that’s another MAT) is Bookarazzi, and on the Bookarazzi recommended blogs page was...Continue reading→
Mark Thornton and selling to indies
Mark Thornton’s seminar at the Society of Authors today was inspirational. His fundamental message to writers who want to persuade independent bookshops to stock their books was to think like a bookseller (not like a writer trying to persuade a bookseller to stock her book). And as soon as you start to think like that...Continue reading→
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