Insights | Alison Morton Author

Tackling the cat sick

My Twitter swarm and Facebook groupies will know that a few weeks ago I had a pretty serious operation on my foot which reduced my gadding about ability to minus 20. No more supermarket shopping, housework, gardening for a few weeks. I was also relieved of all cat-nurturing duties except for hugging and stroking.

The […]

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 […]

Researching – how to behave

Two years ago, I wrote a post on research, setting out five steps to getting a best result. During the past two weeks, I’ve been following that same methodology to assess service suppliers and have narrowed my search to two possibilities.

I googled then sifted the results, gathered reports, opinions, financial data (from the sycophantic […]

Finis - the end of the story

I didn’t know I’d feel so bereft. Now I’ve done the first run edits on fiction Book 3, the last in the trilogy, I’ve finished my heroine’s story. No, really finished. After the relief of completing the red-pen exercise, sadness crept up on me and now has me in its grip.

I’ve lived with my […]

Sobering thoughts and rebalancing

Ten days ago, my mother-in-law died. Born in 1929 in a working class family in Birkenhead, she’d lived a modest childhood, endured separation from her parents and siblings as an evacuee during wartime, returned to a bombed-out city, married, had a child at the start of the space race and witnessed the technological age from […]