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February 13, 2016

Why emotion matters

Some people don’t understand my fascination with apocalyptic and dystopian fiction. The thing is, I’ve always loved fantastical tales. When I around four I became obsessed with Enid Blyton’s The Faraway Tree (I’d listen to the book on tape as I fell asleep), I loved C.S. Lewis’s Narnia (specifically the Lion, the Witch and the…

July 11, 2015

The importance of action and context

Start with a bang. I see that advice all the time from published authors who’ve decided to share their expertise. Let’s have none of this slow build up nonsense, you want to get readers right into the action.

May 16, 2015

How to find balance

I started out 2014 thinking “do all the things!”. I set myself up with the task of reading as many books as I could manage – even making them a theme for blog posts. I set aside time for fiction writing, and for reading books written by writers on technical aspects of writing. I wanted…

November 23, 2014

Storytelling: beyond books

You know you have reader’s block when everything else in the world is much more interesting than continuing to read that book. To be fair, I have tried. “Just read a few pages”, I say to myself, and I do but….

October 6, 2014

Review: The Fault in Our Stars

When I decided to sample some recent, successful, YA fiction books, The Fault in Our Stars (TFiOS) was at the top of the list. I’d seen some images from the film, so I knew the book was about sick teenager, and I’d seen people wailing about how heart breaking the book was. It has that…

September 17, 2014

Finding Balance

Okay, so August was supposed to be the month where I read four books – after all, I had two whole weeks off, so why not? First, I had two really busy weeks at work, which involved loads of writing and trying to do everything I needed to get done before my time off. I…

August 20, 2014

Review: The Crucible *****

Okay, here is where I admit to being the typical heathen fangirl. Until Monday, my only experience of the theatre was childhood panto trips and a dance/musical play put on by a friend. Yes, I booked tickets to see Arthur Miller’s ‘The Crucible’, purely because of the lead actor – Richard Armitage. Uncouth fangirling There’s…

August 3, 2014

2014 Reading Challenge: Young Adult fiction month

So, I spent July not finishing A Game of Thrones, and reading four apocalypse books. I’ve done around 15k of creative writing for work, and God knows how much not very creative writing for work. I even managed to make progress on editing the book. I’m picking up the reading challenge again this month –…

July 24, 2014

Post-apocalyptic diversions

AKA, what I read while avoiding finishing A Game of Thrones. * Warning: here there be spoilers * I’m having issues with Game of Thrones. It has tonnes of characters. Many of them are asshats (that may be my favourite American word). Bad stuff never stops happening to the nice people and pets get…