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Goodreads would like to know what I am currently reading. Well, Goodreads, the book I’m currently reading is A Funeral for an Owl by Jane Davis. When there are so many choices of reading material, and my to-read pile is toppling, why should I revisit my own books with a fresh eye? Once I have published, shouldn’t I just move on? You might argue…
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Let’s get this straight: I don’t have a lot of money, so I don’t like being ripped off. I don’t even like the feeling that someone might be ripping me off. So when I pay a builder  £7,000 for a job, I don’t expect to receive a bill for materials that he forgot to include in his…
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Today, I’m delighted to invite Carol Cooper to my blog. Carol is a doctor, journalist, and author.  I love her novel One Night at the Jacaranda, but this came after a string of non-fiction titles on health and parenting, and an award-winning textbook of general practice.  She works as a family doctor in London and is…
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The process of discovering your characters can be an odd thing. Sometimes it involves writing whole tracts that have no place in the novel that emerges. As so, I experienced  a strange sense of nostalgia when, this morning, I stumbled across a forgotten Word file. I wrote this text after visiting Waterstones, Piccadilly, in 2011, and getting the real…
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Today, I’m delighted to welcome biographer, poet and novelist, Kathleen Jones to my blog. Kathleen is one of seven entrepreneurial authors who has contributed a novel to the limited edition box-set Outside the Box: Women Writing Women which showcases the most exciting fiction being released by authors who are in full charge of their own…
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Today, I’m handing my blog over to indie author, Jessica Bell, whose invaluable guide to self-editing Polish Your Fiction will be released at the end of June. Jessica is a thirty-something Australian-native contemporary fiction author, poet and singer/songwriter/ guitarist, is the Publishing Editor of Vine Leaves Literary Journal and the director of the Homeric Writers’ Retreat…
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Today, I’m delighted to welcome author, Bobbie Darbyshire to my blog. Bobbie is the author of three novels: Love, Revenge & Buttered Scones, Truth Games, and (due out this November) Oz. She is currently polishing a fourth. Winner of the 2008 fiction prize at the National Academy of Writing and the New Delta Review Creative…
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Many of you will know that I am interested in cover design. Today, a review I posted on Amazon has invited more comments that anything else I have posted of late, and so I thought I would share it. ‘Amazon customers have occasionally commented ‘that is not a review’ when I have posted my thoughts…
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Early in my writing career I was given some excellent advice: develop the skin of a rhino. And at no time have I found this advice more valuable than during the tortuous submissions process. ‘The literary industry – agents, editors, media arbiters of taste, publishers – forms a chain of filters that takes raw fiction, cuts…
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Last week Dan Holloway asked me about the research I had carried out for my novel, An Unchoreographed Life, which tells the story of a ballerina who turns to prostitution when she becomes a single mother. In truth, it was very easy to find historical accounts of prostitution. There was no shortage of reference books for…
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