Tag: featured
The Inspiration Behind Cora Baxter
I always loved writing in English class at school, but after that it didn’t really figure in my life until I was well into my thirties. By then I was working as a TV news reporter, always travelling, permanently exhausted and not enjoying any of it anymore, and I found myself looking for an […]
Penguin European Writers: Mercè Rodoreda
Penguin European Writers is a new series of forgotten classics by European writers, with introductions by acclaimed contemporary authors. As a former student of French and Italian, I felt compelled by the current political climate to begin a new initiative to promote European literature to British readers. Translated fiction offers a unique insight into another […]
Taking The Restricted View
Outwardly, Spain wears its complex history with disarming simplicity: in a village cemetery, a human thigh bone stands propped against the wall; a fading pencilled statement, apparently equally forgotten, records the arrival of Nationalist troops on the 20th day of September 1938; on the rubbish heap above the village, among the old tiles and bricks […]
My Road to Publication
My crime fiction novel The Forgotten will be published on June 13th 2018 through Crooked Cat Books and its follow up, The Departed, will be published at the end of the year. I can’t wait! But this has been a long journey for me fraught with crippling self-doubt, generalised anxiety disorder, and dyslexia. I was […]
Writing Rituals – Do I Have Any?
I recently read Daily Rituals, by Mason Currey. It’s a fascinating account of the creative processes of a collection of famous artists, authors, composers and choreographers. Who knew that Anthony Trollope, rose before dawn every day and wrote three thousand words before going to his job at the post office, or that Thomas Wolfe wrote standing […]
A Sense of Place
“By nightfall the headlines would be reporting devastation. It was simply that the sky, on a shadeless day, suddenly lowered itself like an awning. Purple silence petrified the limbs of trees and stood crops upright in the fields like hair on end. Whatever there was of fresh white paint sprang out from downs or dunes, […]
Shared History
At 7:30 a.m. on a summer morning, the northern Wisconsin air did not yet hint at the promise of another typically beautiful day. Our twelve-year-old selves, denied the future pleasures of hot coffee, had stoked ourselves with pancakes and bacon. Dressed in the camp uniform of blue shorts and white blouses, some of us with […]
Readers: The Start Of A Story
The question I am most often asked is: “Where do you get the ideas for your novels”? While there is no single answer, there is a source that never ceases to inspire me— my readers. To understand such an answer, you first have to know that I am a Facebook Fanatic. The same is […]
Why I Wrote You Are Not Alone: A Heartfelt Guide to Grief, Healing, and Hope
No one is born knowing how to cope with the wave of grief that follows the death of someone we love. As a psychotherapist who’s worked with many grievers, I know when faced with overwhelming grief, many people feel like they are alone in what they’re experiencing and can feel like they’re going crazy. Helen […]
The Acknowledgement Dilemma
As a new writer you spend all of your time and energy getting the story and words of your novel to be the best that they can be. Then comes the hit and miss task of getting your work in front of agents and publishers. When you finally get that break and sign a contract […]
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