advice | Alison Morton Author

The first 50 reviews?

Recognition is something most humans crave, admitted or not. Sometimes it’s an (un)acknowledged motivator for writing and publishing a book. People write for many reasons, but little beats the tingle of seeing your name on the front of a work you’ve created. Recognition takes many forms, such as a mention […]

Forgetting your characters?

Surely not?

Picture me at a writers’ conference, a good two years before I published INCEPTIO, the first of the Roma Nova thrillers, in 2013. Full of enthusiasm, going to every class, talk, workshop and seminar followed by long nights in the bar discussing structure, characters, pitfalls, agents, heroes, failures and […]

Characters in setting

Rounded, multi-layered characters are essential if you want people to be engaged in your story. Reading is an emotional trip and we want to gasp, shiver, feel rolls of warmth, resentment, sympathy, fear, loss, and triumph as we turn the pages.

Superwomen are fine in some contexts – we like a bit of pushing over […]

The terror of writing

You stare at the stodgy sentences. You can’t think what words to write next. You are starting to bore yourself. Your characters are boring each other. Nobody will want to read this drivel.

And so it goes round and round in your head.

You’ve written ten novels or none. You’ve won prizes or you’re just […]

Helen Hollick: How NOT to fall into the pitfalls of writing an (unintended) series

I’m delighted to welcome Helen Hollick back to the blog to celebrate the release of the latest Captain Jesamiah Acorne adventure. And what breath-robbing story it is! More later… 😉

First accepted for traditional publication in 1993, Helen became a USA Today Bestseller with her historical novel, The Forever Queen (titled A Hollow […]