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The Blondes Have It
I’ve now reached that silly season of my working year when the book isn’t quite finished but the designers need to get to work. Which is why the following query landed on my desk this week: is Nan a blonde or a brunette? Nan is my current protagonist. She’s brunette, no question. I’ve never been…
Read MoreRowling At the Moon
Several hundred thousand lemmings stampeded past me today squeaking, ‘J K Rowling’s new book! Gimme, Gimme.’ I feel absolutely no malice towards J K Rowling but I’d like to go on record as being sick to the tonsils of publishing hype and media sycophancy. She wrote some children’s books, they sold well, get over it. I…
Read MoreWord Play
Yes, I’m much recovered. Thank you for asking. It’s been a slow week with nothing like as much work achieved as should have been but I had some fun while waiting for the catarrh to clear and some clarity of mind to return. Funny word, catarrh. It’s from the Greek verb katarrein, which basically means to flow down profusely…
Read MoreWriters' Rights
Well, the hot toddies don’t seem to be helping. Here is the deal I cut with my cold on Friday afternoon: okay I’ll be patient with you, humour you over the weekend and subject you to absolutely no pressure, but I want you gone by 9am Monday. It’s now Sunday afternoon and has it gone?…
Read MoreGuerilla Book-Selling
I feel I must say a little something about the Sock Puppet affair. When this first started to rumble, after Stephen Leather’s admissions at the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival, I can’t say I was shocked or even mildly surprised. My childlike innocence about writers’ dirty tricks ended the day Orlando Figes fell off his pedestal. I was…
Read MoreJoined Up Writing
I realise it’s that time of year but I did wonder why a certain organisation has sent me enrollment information for their Creative Writing courses. Are they trying to tell me something? I’m not sure when Creative Writing became a taught subject. It’s a relatively recent development. For sure Mark Twain never took a class. …
Read MoreOn Committing Murder
The killing off of characters is always a tricky business. Unless the span of the story is a single day there obviously have to be some casualties and if you’re writing about a pre-antibiotic era there should realistically be many. But publishers don’t much like major characters dying because if you’re not careful where the Grim Reaper swings his…
Read MoreThis Little Piggy
No post today but you can find me at The History Girls on the subject of King Richard III and whatever became of his bones. The picture is of a gilded silver Yorkist badge, just one of the many items found during recent excavations at the site now believed to be the location of some of the…
Read MoreCherry on the Top
See, not only do I provide you with a weekly dose of wit, wisdom and the occasional recipe. Tomorrow, August 6th, you can catch me in the Daily Mail’s Life & Style section, growling about Botox, Cher, and related topics. Do I give you value, or what?
Read MoreListen Up
I was very happy this past weekend to find that two of my granddaughters, too young yet to be reading independently, are such good listeners they can recite their favourite books by heart. I particularly enjoyed joining in with Audrey’s rendition of Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy, although I don’t know that she approved of my doing it…
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