Category: Contemporary Women Writers
Seven Secret Ingredients of Classics
There are some books that always feature in Top Ten lists, including mine. I never tire of reading Wuthering Heights, for example, or Jane Eyre, or Rebecca and at least once every few years I pick up one of the books I adored when I was younger, Little Women or Ballet Shoes or Black Beauty. […]
The Invisible Days
I read somewhere recently that writing a book is like telling a joke and having to wait two years to find out if it is funny. It’s a painfully accurate analogy that made me laugh and wince with recognition at the same time. Writing, you see, is a curious profession. A single day can bring […]
The War Against Rape Culture
On 18th December 2012, I was having morning tea when my husband showed me a newspaper article about a girl being raped in a moving bus in New Delhi. The cruelty inflicted on this girl during the attack was brutal enough to make me feel sick to my stomach for days to come. In the […]
Revisions, Revisons
In a loft in a house outside a village on a wind-scoured peninsula in southwest Ireland, I sit curled in a wingback chair. A cup of tea steams on the table beside me. A milky June haze swells through the skylight. It is silent, but for the prattling rain and the desultory arguments between geese […]
Why You Should Keep A Journal
Once upon a time I had tiny children. And during that same time period I longed to write. Dishing up Cheerios and worrying about Word Counts aren’t a happy mix and I knew where my priorities lay; happy children would be a better contribution to the world than my words could ever be. So, I […]
Becoming a Publisher: Patrician Press
Publishing has always been my main career but I have written several children’s books over the years. Having, however, always wanted to write for adults, in 2012 I completed my MA in Creative Writing at the University of Essex. It was then that I was inspired to create Patrician Press. I starting publishing my own […]
Platinum Doll: A Conversation with Anne Girard
Long before Marilyn Monroe, another blonde bombshell glittered from the silver screen. Jean Harlow captivated audiences during the Golden Age of Hollywood and continues to do so in Anne Girard’s latest novel, Platinum Doll. In Platinum Doll, Girard explores what it took to turn Harlean Carpenter McGrew into a bigger than life movie star. How […]
Q&A with Literary Agent Katie Shea Boutillier of the Donald Maass Literary Agency
Katie Shea Boutillier is the Rights Director for DMLA handling the agency’s translation and audio rights and selected film/TV and electronic rights. In addition, Katie focuses on her own client list of smart contemporary women’s fiction/book club; edgy/dark realistic YA; commercial-scale literary fiction; and celebrity memoir. She looks for projects with the perfect balance of […]
Short Fiction: A Sliver of Ivory by Vanessa Lafaye
He wanted you to have this. It was written with exaggerated clarity on a scrap of paper, as if the author was unsure of the reader’s grasp of English. The torn paper, rather than a proper card, another signal from the sender. It was signed Elaine, with a rounded, buxom capital E. On the padded […]
Many Voices
I’ve just written and filed 10,000 words, but before I write the next 1,500, I need to shift space in my head. The last 10,000 were written for academic purposes; the next 1,500 are to be written for one of those ‘listy’ articles you often find in women’s magazines. In the course of my career […]
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