Tag Archives: Smash all the Windows

Winning an award produces a whole raft of emotions and, as Olivia Colman proved so charmingly at this year’s Oscars, it is impossible to predict how you’re going to react. I learned that I’d won the Daily Mail First Novel Award when I was at home on my own, beginning to get really quite nervous…
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As a self-published author, I get to blow my own trumpet. (After all, I have no-one to do that for me.) And so with a small introductory fanfare, I can confirm that Smash all the Windows has been shortlisted for the first Selfies Award, produced by BookBrunch in association with the London Book Fair.  “The shortlist we’ve come…
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This week’s Art in Fiction focuses on novels that are set in the mecca of modern art, Tate Modern.  One of my favourite reads in recent months was Harriet P Paige’s Man With A Seagull on his Head, which was nominated for Not The Booker 2017.  Paige perfectly pitches a portrait of outsider artist Ray…
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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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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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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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This week we come to the copy edit. The structure is in place. The beta readers have had their say. It’s getting interesting.  I first approached John Hudspith when I was working on My Counterfeit Self because I felt that I needed to be challenged a little more. He steered my writing in subtle ways to…
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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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This week will be the first of a short series of posts about the production of Smash all the Windows. Its cover design has been attracting compliments, with many people wanting to know about my cover design process.  One of the other huge joys of self-publishing is choosing how to present your work. Given that…
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Since winning the Daily Mail First Novel Award in 2008, I’ve become known for writing about big subjects and giving my characters almost impossible moral dilemmas. What interests me is how people behave under pressure, because it reveals so much about them. And as the tagline of Smash all of the Windows suggests, my new…
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