Debbie Young: Humour in Crime Fiction

Photo: Dominic Cotter 2017

Today, my blog guest is Debbie Young writer of warm, witty, feel-good contemporary fiction inspired by life in the English village where she’s lived for nearly thirty years. Her Sophie Sayers Village Mystery’series begins with ‘Best Murder in Show’ and, when complete, will run the course of a calendar […]

Jean Gill: " Never let the blank page win!"

Today’s guest, Jean Gill, is a very experienced writer brimming with information and helpful advice. She’s the author of twenty-one books, including the award-winning ‘Troubadours’ series. She’s a Welsh writer and photographer living in the south of France with two scruffy dogs, a beehive named ‘Endeavour’, a Nikon D750 and a man. For many years, […]

Does diversifying your writing offer a book marketing advantage?

At the Triskele LitFest

This post was updated in 2021.

It’s generally accepted that it’s easier to market a series of novels than separate, stand-alone ones.

It’s also more fun to write as you can introduce more entanglements and conflicts across several books. 😉

But if you already write a novel series you […]

Funny old business launching a book

First you have an idea, then you think it through, conjure up characters or sometimes try to stop them yammering at you, then you imagine a setting and stir all together into a really sticky problem.

Several months later or sometimes a year later, out comes a typed manuscript. If you’ve […]

Conflicting emotion

Conflict and emotion are two pillars of fiction writing whether in high-end literary fiction or the most melodramatic genre fiction.

A story will often start by providing the main character with a conflict, be it professional or personal. Sometimes it’s the place where the initial event is set (weather, nighttime, urban, with unlit streets), a […]