Liesel Schwarz, steampunk queen

My guest today is Liesel Schwarz, writer extraordinaire of steampunk adventures. Her heroine reminds me a great deal of Karen/Carina: young women who know their minds, courageous and who try to make sense of the different (to us) worlds they live in. A life-long fan of 19th Century Gothic literature, Liesel is a hopeless romantic […]

Carole Blake on ‘Does a writer still need an agent?'

Photo: Jack Ladenburg

I’m delighted to welcome my friend Carole Blake to my blog today to give an insight into one of the hottest questions in the publishing today. Carole has just celebrated 50 years in the publishing business, so she probably knows a thing or two. In 1977, after 14 years in […]

Struggling to write in the promo sea

Those Who Know say the best way to keep your work in front of readers is to write another book. As I’m in the middle of letting everybody know about (let’s be honest, marketing) my new book and trying to reach as many potential readers as possible, I’ve snatched a few minutes out to think […]

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 […]

Publishing the Roman way...

Money-­making booksellers, exploited and impoverished authors, celebrity book launches and the danger of writing controversially. Sound familiar?

Although without the current technology of print-on-demand, digital publishing, even the lithographic or moveable type of not so long ago, the Roman world had a thriving publishing industry. Production was by teams of slaves who copied original […]