Tag: 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 […]
New Author’s Survival Guide
There it is in your inbox, the passport to the magical country that has haunted your dreams and obsessed your waking hours: Author Land. After so many false starts and rejections (only a fraction admitted to), the email has landed and the contract is coming – one of the gods of publishing (small, large, doesn’t […]
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 […]
Why The Term Misery Memoir Offends Me
I may as well start off bluntly. I simply hate the words ‘misery memoir’. I can recall the first time I heard it. I was speaking to a sales account manager at a well known publishing house in London and she used those words in reference to my book. They were one of three publishers […]
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 […]
Miracles DO Happen
Let me preface this by saying I believe in divine intervention. And for me that is God, for you it may be something else…but without that intervention…The Secret to Hummingbird Cake would have never happened. During the course of this story I don’t want anyone to construe anything I say as ungrateful, arrogant or pretentious. […]
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 […]
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