Provocations | Alison Morton Author

Is an author name a feminist issue?

A new fan I met today who said she loved thrillers with a difference, asked me why I used my obviously female name and not initials. She thought I would gain more credibility as A M Morton than Alison Morton as I would sound like a man. I gave a stock answer and buried my […]

What interests readers?

Authors write books.

Books get published.

Then it begins…

Authors, publishers, publicists and promoters go into full swing, telling the world about the new book, the author’s lifestyle, their children, garden, holiday. Background posts about the book’s setting, the author’s journey, research discoveries, insights, writing hints are posted. Facebook profiles and pages are populated with […]

Alternate history and the butterfly of doom

A butterfly in the Amazon jungle makes that little extra flutter of its wings and a few weeks later there’s a storm or even a hurricane in the Caribbean that wrecks cities. That’s a little crudely put, but this is the idea behind Edward Lorenz’s chaos theory. In reality, the butterfly’s flapping wing is just […]

In defence of round-robins

A round robin

Oh, the sneering! Oh, the superiority! Even Lynne Truss (Eats, Shoots and Leaves) is on BBC Radio4 broadcasting a series of witty ripostes to round-robins (RRs).

Now some RRs are painful: long-winded, which goes hand-in-hand with boring; poorly composed and/or typed; with scattered blurry photos; and produced with tight margins […]