In-depth

The week’s exploration of the use of art in fiction (part 2) focuses on novels that tell fictionalised accounts of the lives of real artists.  One of my favourite examples is contained in How to be Both, by Ali Smith. Francesco del Cossa was a 15th Century painter. Although few known examples of his works…
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For the next few weeks, Virtual Book Club will be taking a break. Instead, I’m going to bring you an exploration of the use of art in fiction. Fictionalised stories behind real painting; novels based on the lives of real artists; fictional artists, fictional works of art; fictional members of real art movements; fictional muses…
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I’m a walker who writes. In my childhood years, as one of five children, ‘I’m a walker’ wasn’t something you needed to explain. It was a given. We even had our own chant. ‘I left (start with left foot) my wife with forty-four children and don’t you think I was (skip) right, right, right. I…
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You write a book about something you’re passionate about and hope it will resonate with others, but you never really know how readers will react. But now the first reviews are trickling in…  ‘This book was simply stunning – a portrait of grief and loss with immense emotional depth.’ ~ Anne Williams, Being Anne ‘Jane…
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Jean Gill is an award-winning Welsh writer and photographer living in the south of France with two big scruffy dogs, a Nikon D750 and a man. For many years, she taught English in Wales and was the first woman to be a secondary headteacher in Carmarthenshire. She is mother or stepmother to five children so…
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Today, I’m delighted to welcome Rohan Quine to Virtual Book Club, my interview series which gives authors the opportunity to pitch their novels to your book club. Rohan is an author of literary fiction with a touch of magical realism and a dusting of horror. He grew up in South London, spent a couple of…
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Today, I’m delighted to welcome Ali Bacon to Virtual Book Club, my interview series which gives authors the opportunity to pitch their novels to your book club. After graduating from St Andrews University, Ali worked in Oxford’s Bodleian Library where she found a cache of famous Victorian photographs, sparking a life-long interest in early photographers….
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This week we come to the final edits and the proofread. And for this I used Perry Iles. He describes his job as ‘look after the small stuff’, but attention to grammar, spelling and consistency (is it proofread, proof read or proof-read?) is vital at this stage, when the temptation might be think you’re on…
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Beta readers are an essential part of my editorial process. I couldn’t do without them. What is a beta reader, and how does this differ from an advance reader? Confusingly, authors use different terms to describe the same role, or sometimes one term is employed to describe different roles. When I use the term ‘beta…
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In this week’s blog, I focus on the structural edit. It includes a contribution from my structural editor, Dan Holloway, the person Stephen Fry might have had in mind when he said, “We are not nouns, we are verbs.” “I am not a thing – an actor, a writer – I am a person who…
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