Books | Alison Morton Author

Speculative heroines

Some reflections for International Women’s Day…

All fictional characters are, er, fictional. We borrow, mine, or lift characteristics from Real Life, but unless we want to get sued, the finally moulded form is a construct. We can gender mirror (I love using that expression – also made up), we can speculate, we can imagine.

Ditto […]

Meet Paul Bennett, writer of American historical fiction

Darryl and Paul Bennett

Today, my guest is the delightful Paul Bennett who lives in the New England town of Salem, Massachusetts with his wife Daryl and writes historical fiction, the first of which The Clash of Empires is set during the French and Indian Wars.

Discovering his future did not include the […]

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, […]