Which is, exactly, where? For the past weeks of July and August, I have been reading. And writing. And staring at spectacular sunsets and casting my eyes over the valley of a Cretan village. And marveling at mountains, their limestone shifting from pink to grey as the reliable sun rises every morning. It’s surprising that I managed to read and write as much as I did with such natural distractions. But I did. Initially, I read and read for the background of my next novel and made copious notes. Then, eventually, I had to concede that I could not read...

Knee-deep in research, obsessed and fascinated by everything I can source about the Home Front in WW2 and other matters relating to my new novel, I know it is time to start writing it. After all, only a smidgen of what I am reading about will eventually find its way into the book. There is nothing worse than reading a novel that screams out to the reader I did all this research and I am determined to prove it to you on each and every page! It will require a selective process of providing sufficient detail to convey the tone...

This is the question that is unfailingly asked by potential customers every time I go to a book or craft fair to sell my novels. It’s also the question that is always asked at the end of a talk that I might give about writing and publishing. But where do you get your ideas from? By now, I should have a coherent answer ready to offer. But each and every time the question is put, I find myself fumbling around and giving what no doubt sounds like an inadequate response. Because the truth is that the source of ideas can...

There’s a vacuum when a novel is finished, manuscript dispatched to publisher, synopsis, book blurb and AI (advanced information that goes out to bookshops et al) all written. It’s a kind of empty nest feeling – and I’ve been experiencing that restlessness when there is no clear reason to sit down in front of the computer screen each morning to pick up characters and help them on their way to a resolution of sorts. And for the first time since I started writing novels, I have not fully formed the ideas for my next – which will be my fifth....

Every author will tell you – I imagine – that the worst part of writing a novel is not actually writing it. Or researching it. Or editing it. Oh no. All these are delights. Frustrating, time-consuming, near blood-letting events – but nevertheless overwhelmingly satisfying. And – yes, well …delightful. It’s once the novel is finished that the really hard task starts. Because you have to write a blurb. And a premise. And a synopsis. And come up with key selling points. Prepare pertinent sentences suitable for a press relief In other words, you have to simmer down well over 100,000...

Some weeks, the days disappear so swiftly that it’s hard to remember anything that has happened on them or in them. They simply seem to have be swallowed up by the mechanical and practical business of living. Then there are other times. Which is where the sheep bells come in. The past four mornings I have woken up and for a fleeting few seconds have had to focus on exactly where I am. On Thursday morning, early, the sun was streaming into my room in our Cretan house and the sheep in the village land next to us (they only...

Recently, I came across an Anne Tyler novel that I realised I had never read. I thought I had devoured everything she has ever written, always waiting with anticipation for her latest novel. But no. Thumbing through a few pages of Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant was to discover the joy of a novel new to me, even though Anne Tyler wrote it many years ago in 1982. It was, in fact, her 9th novel and she has now written 24. In a preface to the edition I read, it was interesting to see the author reflect that she thinks...

Mother’s Day – or Mothering Sunday to give it the more traditional name – feels like the start of good times. Better times. Spring surely has sprung or at least is meant to have done and days are drawing out, daffodils are delighting us and clocks will be magically accelerated by an hour in a week’s time so that there will be more time for living in each 24 hours. Or so it always feels. (Of course it’s not always so – Mothering Sunday in 2020 was a day preluding the start of the first lockdown and our lives narrowing...

Editing is essential for any novel. Whatever length of story intended, there will always be far more words and pages than required once you arrive at the last sentence. It’s inevitable that there will be repeated comments or thoughts. At least it’s inevitable if you are as slow and disorganized a writer as I am. So some edits are easy. Cut the repetitions, reduce some of the details and avoid at times slowing down the pace and delaying the action too much. Editing my fourth novel, now completed, means cutting around 8,000 words. The first 3,000 words quickly get chopped...