Category: On Writing
The Inspiration for The Chalky Sea
I live in Eastbourne, on the English Sussex coast. My family lived here when I was a schoolgirl and I decided to move back recently after twenty years in London. I have always had a hankering to move back to the sea. What I hadn’t expected was that the town had a secret wartime history. […]
I Now Call Myself A BAME Writer
I never used to call myself a writer – let alone a black, Asian or minority ethnic one. I kept my writing private, confining it to a world that consisted only of my laptop, the occasional scrap of paper, and me. When I started my first novel I knew things would have to change, and […]
Going to College with a Book of Her Own
Some of us live our lives in Full Catastrophe. This was true for me that night in November 2000. That time between the stars and the sunrise, between our demons and our angels is a time the Romans call The Watch. We have all been there. At 3:20 a.m. How did I get here? What […]
Fashion of a Doomed Queen – the Inspiration behind The Wardrobe Mistress
I’ve always been drawn to history because of the people. It’s fascinating to me that some people are remembered so strongly, even hundreds of years later. That’s usually how I choose what historical period I want to write about: I come across an interesting person or opportunity, and the story blossoms from there – with […]
Food as an Enchanting Writing Tool
People sometimes ask me why I write about food. Is it because I love to cook and eat? I’m sure this is partially true, but of course I know there is much more to it than that. I recently watched the movie, “The Lion,” and was struck particularly by a powerful scene, which further solidified […]
Women’s Fiction Writers Association Star Award
If you are the published author of a book of Women’s Fiction, the Women’s Fiction Writers Association (WFWA) has a contest just for you. WFWA’s annual Star Award is the only contest in the publishing industry that exclusively recognizes outstanding published Women’s Fiction. Is this your first book of WF? Don’t worry, you needn’t go up […]
From Glossy Magazines To Novel
The seed for my novel Love Apples was sown during a summer creative writing course at Central Saint Martins in London. Although I’d been working as a food writer and sub-editor for women’s magazines for several years, I didn’t know where to begin with fiction; it’s one thing producing a 1000-word feature, another altogether growing […]
When Raw Writing Reflects The Fragmentation Of Memory And Identity
“A forger can imitate a painter’s brush stroke or a writer’s style and make the difference between them imperceptible, but he will never be able to make his own their obsession,” (Anne Dufourmantelle 1999). While Dufourmantelle speaks of writing as an obsession that drives writers to return to pieces over time and changing circumstances, in […]
Writing My Way Home
When I first began to write my memoir The Coconut Latitudes, it was so the past would not get lost. Like many others contemplating memoir, we are often keepers of family secrets, whether wittingly or not. Those circumstances can be paralyzing, and it certainly was for me for many years. But at some point the […]
Getting To Know Caleb: Discovering My Own Character
Sometimes characters reveal themselves to me after many months of work and countless drafts, sometimes they appear almost fully formed. The protagonist of my debut crime novel, Resurrection Bay, strode onto the page as though he’d been waiting impatiently for me to give him the opportunity. Caleb Zelic was a thirty-something investigator with a dry […]
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