Category: Contemporary Women Writers
Why We Should Reconsider The Way We Review Books
If you are an author, the uncanny ability of book reviews and ratings to fill your day with sunshine or suck you into a storm cloud may resonate with you. I’ve basked in the glow of thumbs-up reviews and ratings, and endured the gloom of a few poor ones, those fretful 1’s or 2’s on […]
On Co-Writing
For better or for worse, co-writing is a sort of marriage and therefore should not be entered into lightly. A quick Google search will tell you that there really isn’t a lot out there regarding how-to tips. My co-author, Melissa Storm, and I had to learn a lot by trial and error. From this experience, […]
Writing About History: Truth or Dare
I was recently confronted by a reader, who took it upon herself to inform me that the main character in chapter 1 of my book, ‘Cults: A Bloodstained History’, did not exist. ‘Everyone knows that Joshua is a mythical character’, she scoffed at me. As if that was not enough, she went on to verbally […]
A lesson learned
A lesson learned Picture me at a writers’ conference, a good two years before I published INCEPTIO, the first of the Roma Nova thrillers, in 2013. Full of enthusiasm, going to every class, talk, workshop and seminar followed by long nights in the bar discussing structure, characters, pitfalls, agents, heroes, failures and successes, I was […]
Books Of My Childhood
Like it is for so many others, each book that I’ve read has found its way into the fabric of my being, has helped form whom I’ve become ~ mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend, teacher, writer – and who I’ve yet to become. Being the youngest of six didn’t allow for much alone time in […]
Whose Point of View is it Anyway?
When I started writing my debut novel, The Other Mrs Walker (Mantle, 2016) I kept getting transported back to 1944. Not literally, of course (though that would have helped with research) but through the eyes of one of my characters.Then another. Then another after that. Sometimes this would happen within the same page. Sometimes within […]
On Being Genre Fluid
My day job involves listening to other people’s stories (Spoiler alert! I’m a doctor.) Each patient who walks into my room has their own unique narrative – some deliver their ailments like slam poets, some are dramatists, others unfold like a thriller novel and a few I would even categorize as metafiction. Whatever way the […]
To Be or Not To Be a Writer
I always assumed that authors came from a very special mould. They were the kind of people who spent their childhood scribbling down stories whereas I was a bit of a geek. I had one of the first home computers, a Sinclair ZX81 so I was busy writing computer programs while those budding authors were […]
The Cinderella Complex – Waiting For Mr. Write
How many of us have secretly hoped that we will be ‘discovered’ by some hot new literary agent or plucked from writer obscurity by a medium to large publishing house who will alter the course of our writing careers F-O-R-E-V-E-R? Go on, admit it. We’ve all day-dreamed about being the writing world’s equivalent to Kate […]
Writing About Sex (and the older woman)
Many years ago, as an experiment, and I admit a bit of a joke, I submitted the first three chapters of an erotic book to the publishers Black Lace. I read their guidelines carefully and made sure I ‘hit the ground running’; and although I must also have submitted some kind of synopsis I really […]
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