Month: July 2010

Rediscovering Undiscovered Country

For the past six weeks, I’ve been retyping one of my previously published novels – a task that might strike some people as entirely pointless. There’ve certainly been times when I’ve identified with the deluded hero of the Borges short story who, having transcribed Cervantes’ Don Quixote line for line, believes himself to be the Read More

On Not Being Stephen King

Stephen King and I have quite a lot in common. We’re both writers, for a start – although, admittedly, his sales are rather better than mine. We both have names that mean the same thing, and that begin with the same letter: he’s just before me on the shelf half-way along the ‘Fiction’ wall in Read More

Writing for profit and pleasure

Why do people write? Novels, I mean. Short stories. Plays. Poetry. It’s hard, unremitting and – with some much-publicised exceptions – financially unrewarding work. You get up each day, and are faced with a blank page – or screen – which you have to cover with words. Those words have to hang together, not only Read More

Publishing in a changing world

As the author of three novels, several anthologies, and a guide to children’s fiction published by mainstream traditional publishers, and – recently – a novel published by an independent online publisher (The Dark Tower, Arbuthnot Books, 2010), I think I can say I’ve seen publishing from both sides. When my first novel, A Mild Suicide, Read More