Alison Morton | Alison Morton Author

Translating – don’t you just press a button on the computer?

Maybe not strictly a creative writing matter, but when fellow writers ask me about my previous life and I say I was a translator for over 20 years,they seem interested to learn more.

The main thing I tell them is about quality. Google’s great for getting the bare bones out of something, but if you […]

Tightening and shaving…

I’m editing the second part of my trilogy and it’s causing some blushes of embarrassment. No, not the romantic scenes, but the proliferation of bland and/or superfluous words.

However did I include so many ‘just’s, ‘I wondered’s, ‘I thought’s, ‘suddenly’s and ‘Well,..’s? Well, I thought I’d just bash the story out, then suddenly I wondered […]

Yes, I’ve got my synopsis, three chapters with a (fabulous!) letter out to an agent. It’s quite emotional, letting the A4 envelope disappear into into the postbox slot and hearing the ‘thunk’ as it hits the bottom of the cage inside. At that stage, my first thought was ‘Oh, God, the postbox is empty – […]

Sweating over my cover letter to agents…

It’s a cliché, but it’s damn right! The business of getting an agent, getting your book published and sold is definitely as hard, if not harder, as writing the novel in the first place. Similar to when you’re pregnant. You think being pregnant is bad (sickness, lassitude, ruined feet, stretch marks, galloping appetite, pan-galactic weight […]

Crime and Romance – any connections?

I went to an RNA London South East meeting yesterday with fellow newbie Rachel to hear Alison Joseph, author of the ‘Sister Agnes’ series, compare story structure in the two genres.

She observed that while crime and romance in the same story may be rare, there were similarities in the framework and essential elements. Both […]