I know a couple of writers who, offered a two-book contract on the basis of their first novel, turned it down on the grounds that they book they wanted to write next wasn't remotely like this one, and they didn't want to be tied into a contract that was expecting it to be aimed at the same sort of readers. (There are other more businessy reasons for turning down a two-book deal, but that's for another day and probably another blogger.) And if you get in among any gathering of literary-ish writers, much of the grumbling is about how publishers only want authors to write the same book all over again.

I do sympathise with the feeling; all three books in my personal TBW (=To Be Written) queue will seem perfectly reasonable to people who like the ones they've already read, but I do reserve the right to write a peculiar techno-thriller if I feel like it, and if anyone actually said to me, "You know that you'll have to write The Mathematics of Love forever, now?" I'd probably take up market gardening. And the chit-chat among aspiring writers about whether you're "allowed" to put X in chicklit, or "ought" do Y in fantasy, always makes me seethe: who is it who has the power to allow or disallow what you want to write? Who says "ought"? And do you really think you'll sell the book if you just tick the right boxes and none of the wrong ones?

But if you stop thinking of publishers (or the capitalist system) as bean-counters hell-bent on crushing literature, and understand the nature of people and books, it begins to make sense.

Read Full Post

Do you remember the early books you read? Or the first films you saw? In my case my favourite early childhood book was Enid Blyton’s ‘Five On A Treasure Island’ and one of my first film memories is 'Broken Arrow' starring James Stewart. Two very different stories, a treasure hunt off Kirrin Island with Julian, Dick, Anne, George and dog Timmy, versus cowboys and injuns in the broken wild west.


Read Full Post

I now have a kindle. I don't yet have any books on it (apart from the Oxford American Dictionary, which it comes loaded with, and an ebook file of the novel I'm working on for editing purposes). But I do own a kindle.

Most people are talking about e-book readers such as kindle as if they are recent developments, but actually the idea has been around since the early nineteenth century. An early (magical) prototype features in Hoffmann's story The Choosing of The Bride (from Tales of Hoffmann). At the end of that tale, Albertine's disappointed suitors are compensated with a series of magical consolations. Chancellery Private Secretary Tusmann receives "a little book bound in parchment which when he opened it proved to contain nothing but blank pages'. The secretary despairs, thinking he has drawn a worthless bundle of paper. The mysterious goldsmith tells him he is mistaken:

Read Full Post

Today we reveal a sure-fire simple formula for success in writing. Only available at SW.

Read Full Post

Something solely stored in the imagination is worthless.

I’m saying goodbye to my old writing community; after three years it’ll seem strange not to click in there for a chat, but it’s time to move on, for a while. I might return at some point because it feels like home. I’m a bit like a teenager, running off to join the circus – belting out into the world to see what kind of life I can make for myself. More like what kind of trouble I can get myself into! No – I’m too old for trouble.

Read Full Post

Forgive me for how long it's been since my last post, but it's been a funny few days. Not, you understand, in a life-changing sort of way; in fact, my outside self is bored to tears because I've been doing almost nothing but work. My inside self, however, is feeling a bit shaky because I'm rapidly coming to the end of my life with this novel. A few weeks ago I was talking about the strangeness of the novel having become finite, though not finished, and since then I've been working my way through from the beginning, sorting out tweaks and fiddles and the snagging list and being left with smoother, shinier novel in one monster file instead of separate chapter ones, and a new and much shorter snagging list. Once I've done with that, there's only the print out, read and final tweak to go, and then it's off to my agent. Until now, not a single soul has read a word of it, but the public life of this novel will have begun.

I might not feel so shaky were it not for the fact that, because of the way I work, I haven't, until the last couple of weeks, actually read any of the novel that I've written. Once a chapter's scrawled and then knocked roughly into shape in the typing up, I move on. So it's over a year since I scrawled Chapter One. And because writing is slower than reading, even the recent chapters, which I would say I remember pretty well, seem quite different when I approach them along the path that a reader will follow with everything that's just happened fresh in my mind.

Read Full Post

Declared fit after being confined to barracks for three weeks by a troublesome cough, I was more than ready to join friend and Westminster guide Joanna on what she called a 'bibulous tour', in other words a pub walk, in Belgravia. I thought it might be useful to know about some backstreet inns for the times when I'm stuck in the West End wondering where to get a drink and a sit-down.

It wasn't all pubs, though. Joanna stopped from time to time and supplied her group of eight walkers with interesting historical asides (and current house prices) relevant to the mews, churches and sidestreets around Eaton Square.

We learned, for instance, about the fortuitous marriage of Sir Robert Grosvenor, Marquess of Westminster. His twelve-year-old bride was heiress to an area known as 'Five Fields' which included most of Mayfair. His statue has him with a foot placed on a milestone as reminder that his family seat was 197 miles away in Cheshire. The Talbot dogs that flank the great man appear on his family escutcheon and were familiar from the pottery versions I'd seen on sideboards. They remain as sad reminders of a breed now extinct.


Read Full Post

One Saturday in June, about three or maybe even four years ago, I left home to meet my friend Lorna for lunch. She lived a little further south than me, in Surrey, and we’d agreed to meet in Epsom as it was equidistant between our homes. Anyway, I’m absolutely flipping rubbish at directions, and have little-to-no spatial awareness – I literally can’t remember my way home unless I’ve done the journey about fifty times. So, even though I’d been to Epsom on many occasions, I decided to dig out Mr Sat Nav, to make sure I didn’t get lost.

I think we’d arranged to meet in a car park, but anyway, I thought the High Street was a logical address to tap into my sat nav. So I set off, and said a small prayer to whoever’s up there that the stupid machine wouldn’t try to take me the wrong way up a one-way street like it has done before (I had a bitch about my relationship with Mr Sat Nav a long time ago so won’t bore you again, but suffice to say, it’s far from harmonious).

I can’t remember exactly when I noticed something had gone wrong. The problem with me, when I’m driving, is that I go off into some kind of hypnotic state and really don’t absorb where I’m going or what I’m doing. It’s all a bit autopilot-y – which is probably why the Musician thinks I’m a terrible driver and is always so willing to sacrifice his second glass of wine in favour of driving us home. But anyway, at some point I turned off the main road and drove down a side road, as instructed, probably singing along incredibly loudly and badly to Britney, and missing the big signs warning me not to enter.


Read Full Post