A river runs to Stonehouse, though you would never know, for all the parks and roads and cemeteries the river flows below.   Born on volcanic tor, crowned with an old folks’ home. From Morrisons through Central Park, the river flows below.   Pennycomequick’s...

After my rant yesterday, I promised you I would offer some thoughts on how I am going to finish writing the new book, "The Burning Girl", with a view to promoting it in a world stuffed with (many great) new books. I've already got my story laid out, and I'm about...

​I'm not going to mention any book titles and authors in this post, because that would be cruel and that's not what this post is about. My publisher and I have been discussing the role of reviews in the promotion of a book, and it's worth a brief mention here,...

In yesterday's blog, I was talking about how I write, editing and re-editing as I go. Well, here's why I write like that. Now this takes a lot for a writer to reveal, because no writer ever wants you to read their dreadful first drafts, so I'm going to start...

One of the great shocks of being a writer is you have to be able to sell your books.Whether you have a publisher or you do it all yourself, you still have to be involved in the promotion and sales of your work. And that's pretty tough. I started out being a writer...

As a writer, I have a huge problem. I can't writeThere, I've admitted it. I read a lot of other people's drafts and their text flows, their language choices are good and they write like this. (And no, I'm not a graphic designer either!) So they start at the...

I've studied narrative for a long time now, and it's disappointing to see structural​diagrams still looking kind of like this:​ These kind of diagrams may be useful when you are starting out, but as I've progressed, I've realised that I want a...

One of my greatest challenges as a writer in a world full of great books is reaching readers who will choose to read my book. In future blog posts, I'll be considering my relationship with my readership, but for now I just want to look at      ...

The first half of "The Burning Girl" outlined on record cards When I started preparations for writing "The Burning Girl", I considered various ways to keep track of those story beats and details that keep the narrative moving forward (and hopefully keep the readers...