Radio star!

Last Thursday, I was delighted to be internet-based ExpatRadio‘s special guest on ‘The Scribblers’ spot. They let me witter on (in between music) for an hour. No, it was more of a conversation with Mike Madden, Wendy H Jones and Eilidh McGinness. I’ve met Wendy several times before – we both spoke a the last […]

What length will you go to in your writing?

When we say ‘creative writing’ what do we mean? Poetry, a story, a play? Perhaps you are moved to write a short story or a piece of flash fiction. Or go for a full-length novel or its little sister, the novella. Let’s unpick some of these…

Plays and poetry are well recognised as such […]

Applying research

Research. Yeah, I know, a sticky subject in more ways than one. Writing of any sort needs research whether it’s a modern shoes-and-shopping story, crime thriller or a historical magnum opus.

Almost every story written hinges on a set-up or a problem the writer has purposefully created, but it must be plausible. Readers will engage […]

SUCCESSIO launches in London - the official report!

Friends, Roma Novans and colleagues lent me their hours. The bubbly flowed in the glorious library at the University Women’s Club in Mayfair as we gathered to celebrate the publication of the third thriller in the Roma Nova series.

I’d asked long term Roma Nova fan Sue Cook to sit in conversation with me and […]

Historically logical or completely bonkers? The sliding scale of alternative history

Basically, alternate history is a type of speculative fiction where stories are set in a world where historical events have unfolded differently from the way they did in the real world. The event that changed history (point of divergence or PoD) must be in the past from when the story is set and have affected […]