Jan 04 2013
I had a review a little while back from a lady who hadn’t enjoyed my second book, Trinity Rising. She’d had a bit of a problem with the sexual aspects of Songs, but soldiered on because she liked my prose. The opening chapters of Trinity, however, had defeated her: there’s a couple of aggressive, non-consensual …
Nov 21 2012
Urban fantasy author Suzanne McLeod – of Spellcrackers fame – tagged me to be part of The Next Big Thing blogfest meme – you can read her post here. Unable as I am to pass up any opportunity to waffle on about my books, I naturally said yes. There’s ten questions to answer, so without …
Nov 01 2012
Second books are tricksy things, as I’m sure any writer will agree. No longer can you meander along at your own pace, letting your story take shape as it will; you’re on a contract now, and you have deadlines – you know, those things that Douglas Adams loved for the whooshing noise they made as …
Oct 18 2012
So that’s The Raven’s Shadow a.k.a Book 3 of The Wild Hunt Quartet packed off to my editor for scrutiny, so I can start to think about Book 4 in more detail than I have up to now. It’s going to take quite a bit of planning (a novel experience for me) as there is …
Jun 25 2012
Honestly, I go for weeks with nothing to blog about and then I have to write two posts in one day! The big news is that I’ve signed a contract with Orion for a fourth book in The Wild Hunt Series. As I finished Book 2 and got into Book 3, there turned out to …
Apr 16 2012
Funny things happen over the course of a novel’s gestation, especially if you’re a writer like me who has a very free-range, organic approach to the whole business. Sometimes it’s only obvious quite far down the line that the book you thought you were writing isn’t actually what’s coming out of your pen. Keyboard. Whatever. …
Jul 27 2011
Hey, guess what? Songs of the Earth got a mention in the Sunday Times! Unfortunately, that mention turned out to be little more than a single line of internal dialogue quoted out of context†, with the admonition that lines like that aren’t going to do anything to make fantasy cool. Um, what? Who says a …
Jan 07 2011
I love notebooks. Proper hard-backed ones, Moleskines, gorgeous Italian suede covered journals, even supermarket cheapies as long as they’re pretty. Blank ones, ruled ones, refillable ones, it doesn’t matter. People know this, and buy me things like that one up there as presents. They’re gorgeous to look at and lovely to handle, and I imagine …
Dec 09 2010
It’s hard enough being an unpublished writer, struggling along with the rest of the teeming multitude, trying to get noticed, so why the heck do we make things harder for ourselves by perpetuating myths, misunderstandings and downright untruths about the process of being published? Hang about in any writer’s community, be it online or in …
Nov 28 2010
As I’ve come to the end of Trinity Moon, I’ve found myself thinking about how it all began. As one so often finds, in endings are the echoes of the beginning and as I wrote these last few scenes I got to pondering. On questions of honour and integrity, on promises given and the value …