Fiction Can Save Your Life
On 7 October 2010 by AdminFlying back from New York a couple of nights ago, on the ‘red-eye’ – and never was an unaffectionate nickname more aptly bestowed – I found myself once more confronting the fact that a good book can save your life. I’m speaking figuratively, of course – although there are doubtless instances, from the bullet-stopping Bibles
Writing Historical Fiction
On 1 September 2010 by Admin‘I don’t like historical fiction,’ a friend said recently and, until a few years ago, I might well have agreed with him. I mean – what’s the point of setting your story in the past, when there’s so much about the present that’s worth describing? Of having to go to all the trouble of recreating
Writing about War
On 9 August 2010 by AdminI don’t know anyone whose life hasn’t been affected by war. In fact, I’d go further and say that there can hardly be anyone alive today whose existence isn’t a consequence of war. War has shaped human society for thousands of years, and it’s impossible to think of a time – our own most of
Writing about Sex
On 2 August 2010 by AdminWriting about sex is hard, as everybody knows. Unless you’re as breezily unafraid of double entendre as Kathy Lette, or as secure in the knowledge of your own literary genius as Philip Roth – whose depictions, in successive novels, of liaisons between septuagenarian men and thirty-something women, are offered without a trace of humour –
Rediscovering Undiscovered Country
On 27 July 2010 by AdminFor 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
On Not Being Stephen King
On 20 July 2010 by AdminStephen 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
Writing for profit and pleasure
On 13 July 2010 by AdminWhy 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
Publishing in a changing world
On 5 July 2010 by AdminAs 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,
Other Dark Towers
On 29 June 2010 by AdminChoosing a title for a work of fiction is always tricky – especially when, as is the case with The Dark Tower, your title is one that has been used by many others for their, otherwise entirely different, works. If, as I did, you’ve chosen to call your book after the title of a famous