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 …
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 …
Mar 16 2010
… or “Whose book is it anyway?” Part Two. I was inspired to compose this post by a friend of mine, MM Bennetts, who feels not at all confident about writing female characters and was therefore somewhat stunned to find one had leapt, fully formed, like Athene from the brow of Zeus, onto the pages …
Feb 10 2010
Terry Pratchett once said in an interview that you’ve got to keep an eye on your secondary characters, or they’ll take over the show. Turn your back for five minutes and there they are, merrily rearranging the plot to suit themselves, the blighters, and generally making more work for the poor put-upon writer. I thought …
Aug 16 2009
So I’ve started on Book 2 of “The Wild Hunt Trilogy”, “Trinity Moon”. I confess, I’ve cheated a bit – there was a sub-plot in Book 1 that I was deeply attached to but it wasn’t deeply attached to the rest of the opening story arcs and just didn’t fit, timeline-wise. So I cut it …
Jul 29 2009
Any writer will tell you it’s hard work writing a novel. What’s even harder is the final edit, when you have to trim and prune and polish until the damn thing shines so bright it’s blinding. Unfortunately all that trimming and pruning and polishing means cutting stuff out. Stuff you love. “But it’s mine!” you …