I was lucky enough to be invited to facilitate a session at this weekend's Newcastle Noir Literary Crime Festival, held in the Central Library in my old home town of Newcastle. The session was entitled, 'The Men in Black' - due to the fact that the authors interviewed write novels firmly entrenched in the 'real... Continue Reading →
In a recent article in my Resource for Writers series I talked about the importance (or not) of having a regular writing space. After writing that I reached out to a few fellow writers about their own creative spaces and, with their permission, I’m sharing them with you today. First off, a couple of my... Continue Reading →
There was a minor kerfuffle a while back when Arron Banks (dodgy Brexit backer - no, don't bother looking him up, you'll just feel as if you need a shower afterwards) accused JK Rowling of being 'pretentious' for mentioning she had a writing room. The response was pretty amusing with the good and the great... Continue Reading →
As some of you reading these posts might know, my background is in Marketing. (The good sort, not the sort Bill Hicks talked about.) I worked for 25 years at one of the most respected publishers in the world. During that time I ran or managed hundreds...actually, probably getting into the thousands, of marketing campaigns... Continue Reading →
I've published two collections of short stories (did I ever mention Basement Tales and You Could Make a Killing?) to test the waters in self-publishing, Kindle and so forth but these have been, in a sense, warm ups before I start publishing novels. I have a number of novels in various stage - one fully... Continue Reading →
In Yesterday's post I said I was going to spend a strict 4 hour period creating a short story for an upcoming Halloween Story session. I did. How did it go? Well, given that this was the first time I've written a fiction piece to a strict deadline since my GCE English Language Exam 33... Continue Reading →
I've previously written about flash fiction: stories of 1,000 words or less, I even included a few versions of my efforts in the subsection of it - micro fiction (100 words), and sudden fiction (750 words) elsewhere on this here site somewhere. Today I thought I'd try a different version of 'flash fiction' - although... Continue Reading →
On Wednesday night I did a two-hour session at Temperance, in Leamington Spa on publishing and writing. The session looked at the state of publishing today, different types of publishing opportunities, costs and opportunities, as well as some recommended resources, and some collected writing tips from the good and the great. While I continue to... Continue Reading →
Today's resource is part advice, part 'why would I listen to anything you say when you're clearly as dumb as a box of rocks'? Backup: Unbelievably obvious, right? This thought struck me as I spent a considerable part of last night and into the early hours of this morning, as well as this morning searching for... Continue Reading →
Some writers see editors as an indispensable element of their writer's toolkit, others see them as a pain in the ass disrupting their beatiful ideas and creations. Those writer's is likey to remain magnificent in there own minds and with works sitting on their c:drive and nowhere else. (That was a non-to-subtle way of pointing... Continue Reading →
