Itinerary US trip 12th – 21st February
I have had a few people asking when and where I’ll be when I go to America this week, so here’s a short summary. I fly in to New Orleans on Wednesday 12th in the evening. I’m honoured to have been invited to be the Grand Marshal of the parade of the Krewe of Little … Continue reading
Blogs and Sales!
I have been a keen user of WordPress for some time now. It’s fast, it’s easy, and it lets me blog without having to worry too much about the sillier aspects of updating computers. In short, I like it. But not always. Sometimes you find little irritations and glitches that get in the way. For … Continue reading
Festivals and Cash!
It surely can’t have been such a long time since my last blog? I had thought I’d be writing up notes much more regularly than once in every eight weeks! Apologies for the long break, but there have been good reasons. Lots of work with the Royal Literary Fund helping students at Exeter university, finishing … Continue reading
Crooks and thieves
I’m going to have to be careful here. This week I received (yet again) another mailshot from British Telecom, or BT as the company prefers to be known. They want me to agree to move my phone and broadband accounts to them. In return, they’ll give me a large discount. Which is nice, isn’t it. … Continue reading
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
I have been growing more and more alarmed by the way that the police in Britain appear to be operating as a more and more paramilitary, unregulated force. And it is not a force for good. When I was young, I wanted to join the police. In fact, I tried to (my eyesight wasn’t good … Continue reading
Back to the Edit
Today I have settled down to work on the edits of my next book, Fields of Glory, which will be published next summer. Luckily there’s not too much to do, other than remove some unnecessary scenes and tighten some others. I say luckily, because as you can see, this isn’t the shortest book I’ve written! … Continue reading
Where Do The Characters Come From?
Continuing the theme of professional tricks of the trade, I thought I’d comment on characters I’ve used – and those I have read. Some authors are really not happy unless they’ve planned out every person in their book in a forty page synopsis. Many professionals do work in this way, I know. Recently I read … Continue reading
Editors and Editing
Yesterday I had to give a talk to the Society of Editors and Proofreaders – and I had great fun! It is a constant source of astonishment to me, how many people say that they hate editors and all their kind. One friend of mine routinely tells how his was trained by the Gestapo, while … Continue reading
A Short Interlude …
Today I managed to really upset another writer. Entirely accidentally. In fact, going through the twitter messages, I still don’t quite see where I managed to hit her somewhere painful, but there you go. I guess that all writers can tend to have soft parts that bruise too easily – but if that’s going to … Continue reading
Giving Talks
Ok, this is a slight digression. Today I’ve been writing a speech. Only a little one, but it’s one that has to be good, so I’ve been playing around with words, rereading old speeches and trying out new anecdotes. I enjoy giving talks. Which author wouldn’t? We get an audience, we get a fee, we … Continue reading
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