In-depth

Harriet Steel is married with two grown-up daughters. She spent her childhood in Wiltshire and went to school in the New Forest. After leaving school, she took ‘A’ Levels at Queen’s College in London, read Law at Cambridge University and qualified as a solicitor; subsequently, she worked in private practice. A long-standing interest in writing…
» Continue Reading

Fran Pickering is a London-based murder mystery writer. She was born at the foot of Alexandra Palace (or Ally Pally as the locals call it), famous as the place from which the BBC made the world’s first television broadcast in 1936, but she grew up in South London and went to school in Catford. When…
» Continue Reading

Today, I’m delighted to welcome Bobbie Darbyshire back to my blog, shortly after the release of her third novel, Oz. I interviewed novelist Bobbie Darbyshire on this blog in May 2014 about her writing and reading habits and her tips for aspiring writers. The tip I liked best was, ‘Write fearlessly; banish the worried ghost of…
» Continue Reading

In December 2013, I took the decision to cut back on paid work and throw everything that I had at writing. This meant taking a long hard look at my finances and (1) making a commitment to living within a very tight budget, with no more than £50 spending money per month. In terms of…
» Continue Reading

In November 2012, I decided I owed it to myself to investigate something I had been told no self-respecting writer should consider. I attended the Writers’ & Artists’ Self Publishing in a Digital Age conference. It was a revelation! There I discovered that, far from being amateurish, self-published authors are a diverse group – authors…
» Continue Reading

I must admit that ‘I Stopped Time’ was not my original title for my story of how Sir James Hastings discovers the mother he never knew through her body of work. However, reading accounts of pioneering photographers, it soon became apparent that it was the phrase that best expressed most photographers’ feelings about what it…
» Continue Reading

Asked to provide information about my best-selling self-published book, I realised that I have nothing on my own blog about I Stopped Time. So here I am interviewing myself. Where did you find your inspiration for ‘I Stopped Time’? Reading a biography of Lee Miller, one of my heroines. I knew her photography but, as…
» Continue Reading

Today, I’m handing over the reins to Roz Morris. Roz published nearly a dozen novels and achieved sales of more than four million copies – and nobody saw her name because she was a ghostwriter. She is now proudly self-publishing as herself with two acclaimed literary novels My Memories of a Future Life and Lifeform Three….
» Continue Reading

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…
» Continue Reading

Having previously failed to convince Surrey libraries to stock my self-published titles, I was delighted to be invited to Redhill to talk to a packed room of librarians and key influencers. But, whilst my intention was to bust a few myths, I was also interested to learn about the obstacles as they see them. If the publishing…
» Continue Reading