Tag: fiction
Writing Advice
Having just turned in my eighth novel in five years, one would hope that I had some writing advice to share with new writers. Giving advice on a process that is a little like witchcraft and a little like playing roulette is tricky, but I think I have learned some tricks and strategies along the […]
Writing Black Comedy
Three years ago, I went on a ‘Work in Progress’ writing course to try and find a way to flesh out the bones of an idea I had for a novel. Part of the course was a one-to-one feedback session with the writing tutor. Each delegate had to submit a piece of sample writing and […]
From Ghost to Flesh-and-Blood Novelist
My first career was in publishing: acquiring, commissioning and editing fiction and general non-fiction. Writing was what other people did and, as an editor, I tried to help them make what they wrote the best it could be and publish it in the most successful way possible. Even when I embarked on my second career […]
Q&A with Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke
Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke, the writing team behind THE STATUS OF ALL THINGS, YOUR PERFECT LIFE, and the upcoming THE YEAR WE TURNED FORTY (expected publication April 2016), all published by Simon & Schuster/Atria, have been best friends for over twenty-five years. They blog (hilariously) at LizandLisa.com where they share their lives and this […]
How to Use Memories to Enhance Your Writing
There is no such thing as a dearth of writing material. We sit with fingers poised over the keyboard and are met with a ghastly silence that threatens to be our undoing. All we need to do is to call up the past. One’s own past might seem mundane, but get out your microscope. Look […]
Short Story: The Keepers
Short story about friendship between lighthouse keepers by Melissa Bailey, whose novel Beyond the Sea came out earlier this year. Ten miles from shore, perched on the low black rock, the lighthouse was a hazy smudge of white in the gloaming. Isolated, indistinct, hovering somewhere between sea and sky, an as-yet unlit beacon of hope […]
Female Friendships in Literature
Men have dominated the friendship scene in books throughout literary history. Pip and Herbert, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, Frodo and Sam, Harry Potter and Ron Weasley, Romeo and Mercutio. The list goes on and on. Straight forward, no nonsense bromance at its best. Delve into the archives for a history of female friendships however, […]
Diving Into the Silence: Writing Inspired by Real Life
My novel, The Herbalist, is set within living memory (1939) – and is based on a real-life court case I came across when I was nineteen. I was archiving yellowed local broadsheets crammed with small print when I noticed a tiny article. It referred to an Indian Herbalist who was arrested for an ‘offence against a […]
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