Books | Alison Morton Author

How book bloggers help authors – 10 Dos and Don'ts

Bookbloggers read, review and promote books in their spare time. They don’t get paid. They love reading and want to share that joy with others.

Delving into a new world, meeting enthralling characters, being chilled or thrilled, rooting for the protagonist, biting their fingers off, never mind the fingernails, or sighing with pleasure or […]

Thriller, mystery, action adventure, suspense, or what?

What’s in a genre? More precisely, what’s the difference between the genres in the title? Are there any hard lines between them?

And what do we, as readers, get from each of them?

Action stories feature a lot of movement-heavy exciting scenes including but not limited to fights, shootouts, car chases, foot chases, explosions, fast […]

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 […]

Unpicking a legend by a legendary writer

Writing friend Helen Hollick is no stranger to this blog, nor to publishing. This week, she’s celebrating not only her 70th birthday, but also her 30th year of publishing books. (And I thought I was doing well with my 10th year!)

First accepted for traditional publication in 1993, Helen became a USA Today […]

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 […]