Writing skills | Alison Morton Author

Mind your language!

As a language nerd, certified translator and writer of fiction (and in a previous existence of proposals, reports, corporate documentation, advertising and PR copy), I’ve always been interested in the power of words. Tone, style and formality as important as context.

Although multi-lingual, I write in my mother-tongue English, but when writing a story in […]

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 […]

Helen Hollick: Writing the past

What happens when a historical fiction writer turns to crime? No, I’m not talked about me and the Mélisende crime thrillers, but Helen Hollick who has just published her third cozy crime. But she can’t shake off the historical fiction writer’s magic cloak. Her 1970s set series feature heroine Jan is the result.

Over […]

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 […]

Helen Hollick: How NOT to fall into the pitfalls of writing an (unintended) series

I’m delighted to welcome Helen Hollick back to the blog to celebrate the release of the latest Captain Jesamiah Acorne adventure. And what breath-robbing story it is! More later… 😉

First accepted for traditional publication in 1993, Helen became a USA Today Bestseller with her historical novel, The Forever Queen (titled A Hollow […]