Genres | Alison Morton Author

So what makes a good read?

As I promised in the previous post, I’ve turned my beady eye to current bestsellers and read through some of the Amazon bestselling rankings reviews. These are some of the words the readers and critics used about them:

The Thread – Victoria Hislop Twin timeline, discovery, history, fast narrative, sense of pace, fresh, intrepid storytelling, […]

What's a thriller?

When I mentioned to a new friend that I wrote thrillers with an alternate history setting, she batted aside (or maybe ignored) the alternate history bit and asked, “What do you call a thriller, then?”.

Er, isn’t it obvious? Apparently not.

Merriam-Webster defines a thriller as “a work of fiction or drama designed to hold […]

Did the books you loved make you into the writer you are?

Drafting my latest query letter, I did a little exercise. No, not twenty press-ups on the floor, but one prompted by this particular agency’s submission guidelines. As part of the marketing approach, I was asked to thinking of two to three (i.e. three) comparable books. That wasn’t a problem, but it started me thinking about […]

Are some genres more equal than others?

I love bookshops. I love bookstalls at charity dos and the second-hand paperback club. I love the book table at conferences. The second and third are informal; the offer is either serendipity or confined to the books written by speakers (and certainly in the case of the RNA) attendees. Running my hands over the spines […]

What if?

Ever mislaid something, convinced you’d left it on the kitchen table and then found it on the bed? Or been somewhere completely certain of having made the journey before?

One answer could be that you did and you have, but you’ve shifted a nano-interval into another reality, according to a short story I’ve been reading […]