Crossing the genres

Kylara Vatta from Trading in Danger, Elizabeth Moon Eowyn, Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien Carina Mitela, PERFIDITAS, Alison Morton

When I started pounding on my keyboard, I just wanted to tell a story. There’d be adventures and Romans, a heroine, a love interest, good guys and bad guys, a ton of action and […]

April 8th, 2019 | Tags: , , , , , , , | Category: Alternate history, Books, Genres, Marketing skills, Readers, Writing skills | Leave a comment

Throwing a sickie

And breathe…! Or not.

Well, I’ve been having some difficulty doing this over the past fortnight. I flew home from the highly energising Dublin Writers’ Conference with a raging sore throat and feeling like a superannuated wet dishcloth. The tiredness could have been due to the conference (it was fairly intense), but the sore throat […]

July 6th, 2018 | Tags: , , , , | Category: Authors, Insights, Interruptions, Writing life | Leave a comment

Speculative heroines

Some reflections for International Women’s Day…

All fictional characters are, er, fictional. We borrow, mine, or lift characteristics from Real Life, but unless we want to get sued, the finally moulded form is a construct. We can gender mirror (I love using that expression – also made up), we can speculate, we can imagine.

Ditto […]

March 8th, 2018 | Tags: , , , , , , , | Category: Alternate history, AURELIA, Authors, Books, Characters, Gender, Provocations, Roma Nova, Women warriors, Women's history | Leave a comment

A writing hiatus

Alison not quite cross-eyed

You may have thought I’d disappeared.

No, apart from squeezing in some writing and finalising edits with my copy editor, I was just publishing and launching a new book.

“Just publishing and launching” doesn’t quite describe it.

Let me show you…

Target RETALIO publication date: 27 April 2017

Mid […]

May 16th, 2017 | Tags: , , , , , | Category: Amazon, AURELIA, Books, Getting published, INSURRECTIO, iTunes/Apple, Kobo, Nook, Promotion, Writing life | Leave a comment

What the OU did for me and history

David Puttnam congratulating me at the degree ceremony

Study can broaden, widen and enrich your mind – that was a good enough reason for me when I signed up to do an MA in history with the Open University. I’d had to leave studying history at school because it clashed with Latin. (Who […]

March 22nd, 2016 | Tags: , , , , | Category: Books, INSURRECTIO, Research, Women's history, Writing skills | 4 comments
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