Interview: Lucy Furlong
Writer, wordsmith, poet
I met Lucy Furlong when she took part in The New Libertines (described by its founder as a touring troupe of troubadour tearaways) It Only Hurts The First Time event last summer, and we recently bumped into each other at Alice Furse’s book launch, where we discussed all things poetry and publishing related with Clive…
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Author interview: Mark Farrell
Meet the man behind Ascribe Novel Solutions
Today I’m delighted to welcome, Mark Farrell, the man behind Ascribe Novel Solutions, to my blog. Mark has written five novels, four of which he says will almost certainly never see the light of day. Since coming agonisingly close to success with his most recent novel, The Shoemaker’s Apprentice, he is taking a break from writing…
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Author Interview: Alexander Games
On creating flawed but driven characters and trying to set them on the right path
Alexander Games went to school in Hampstead, north-west London. He read Classics at Cambridge, a subject he would return to when getting his first ‘serious’ job, teaching Latin in a prep school in south-west London. After university, he worked on Auberon Waugh’s Literary Review magazine, then moved to Spain for a year, where he claims…
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Author interview: Amy Mason
On winning the Dundee International Book Prize
I’m delighted that Amy Mason has agreed to appear on my blog. She is thirty-two, currently lives in Oxford and her debut novel The Other Ida has just won the 2014 Dundee International Book Prize. This year’s biggest prize for unpublished authors, it came with a modest pot of gold and a contract for publication with…
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Author Interview: Alison Morton
On her life-long love affair with ancient Rome
Today, I’m delighted to invite Alison Morton to my blog. Alison writes Roman-themed alternate history thrillers with strong heroines. She holds a bachelor’s degree in French, German and Economics, a masters’ in history and lives in France with her husband. She is a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s New Writers’ Scheme, the Historical Novel Society, the Alliance of…
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You may ask why I love physical books. What could be more absorbing than trawling the bookshelves of two of the most fascinating characters of the twentieth century, Vita Sackville-West and her husband, author, diplomat and politician, Harold Nicolson? At Sissinghurst Castle, a team of expert conservationists are doing just that. This painstaking project will last…
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Today, I’m delighted to welcome Julie Harris to my blog. Julie is a prolific writer whose works include No Exit, The Longest Winter, Fool’s Gold, The Site, The Diamond Factory, Beyond Laughter, An Absence of Angels, Kizzy, The Edge of Nowhere, A Tear of Blood, One Act of Kindness and Anything for Love. Since 1992 she…
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Not all routes to third-party publication are conventional, but the speed at which my guest Alice Furse was picked up is certainly unusual. I first came across Alice at last year’s London Author Fair. She had recently self-published her first novel, Everybody Knows This is Nowhere. Shortly afterwards she was approached by Burning Eye Books,…
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To celebrate the release of Jessica Bell’s latest novel, White Lady, she is giving away an e-copy (mobi, ePub, or PDF) to the first person to correctly guess the one true statement in the three statements below. To clarify, two statements are lies, and one is true: One of the characters in White Lady ……
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Author Interview: Keith Dixon
On the release of The Strange Girl
Today, I am delighted to welcome Keith Dixon to my blog. Keith says that he began writing as a presumptuous teenager – producing scripts for the TV show ‘The Avengers’ and sending them off full of anticipation and ambition. Undeterred by the lack of response, he started to write short-stories and then full-length books, writing…
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