What length will you go to in your writing?

When we say ‘creative writing’ what do we mean? Poetry, a story, a play? Perhaps you are moved to write a short story or a piece of flash fiction. Or go for a full-length novel or its little sister, the novella. Let’s unpick some of these…

Plays and poetry are well recognised as such […]

'Ebooks vs. print books' is a false battle

Are ebooks and print books in some sort of fierce battle to the death with one another in which the only outcome is total dominance? Will ebooks soon drive their dinosaur cousin to extinction or will print books will see ebooks off and show the whole digital phenomenon to be a mere flash in […]

How to write a 'damnèd, smiling villain'

Octavian (Author photo) Shakespeare’s Young Octavius

O villain, villain, smiling, damnèd villain! My tables—meet it is I set it down That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain— At least I am sure it may be so in Denmark. (Hamlet, Wm.Shakespeare)

“And some that smile have in their hearts, I fear, […]

A writing hiatus

Alison not quite cross-eyed

You may have thought I’d disappeared.

No, apart from squeezing in some writing and finalising edits with my copy editor, I was just publishing and launching a new book.

“Just publishing and launching” doesn’t quite describe it.

Let me show you…

Target RETALIO publication date: 27 April 2017

Mid […]

Our fearless leader – of a lady in armour

The Mitela women of Roma Nova are not the only women warriors to go armoured into battle. Sometimes we glimpse one from time to time in the real historical record. In celebration of the publication of Under the Approaching Dark, historical fiction writer Anna Belfrage introduces us to a(n in)famous one.

Women in medieval times […]