To AI or not to AI? That is the question

Alison as a Roman (AI created)

AI – artificial intelligence – seems to be with us. Will it be a horror show stripping us all of jobs, or will it be a useful tool, shortcutting a lot of donkey work and letting us get on with more important creative stuff?

Let me be […]

No writer is an island

Author photo, Château du Rivaud

Sadly, there have been reports on social media and in the national press about a debut writer running a review campaign against her fellow writers. Using a number of accounts she created under different names, she’s been marking down all her perceived “competition” with 1-star negative reviews on […]

What to do after your first draft is written

After a well-deserved lie-in or even a day off, I gird up, send the draft to my Kindle and read it through without interruption (apart from comfort breaks, food and sleep).

I jot down quick notes or chapter references and then motor on. This way, I get the flavour of the book and find […]

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 […]

10 years of indie publishing – why?

When I set out in 2010 to find out what to do with the 90,000 words I’d bashed out in 90 days, I didn’t have a clue about the publishing world. A business friend, Denise Barnes, also a novel writing beginner, guided me towards the Romantic Novelists’ Association who has a mentoring scheme for new […]