I recently wrote On Getting Stuck for Shots e-zine. It’s a heartfelt post about the difficulties that can sometimes beset writers…
Shots is great! It’s full of news, interviews and reviews from the crime and thriller writing/reading community. If you’ve not visited the site before, it’s well worth a nose around while you’re there.
Photo by Darren Cool for CONNORS BRIGHTON
It’s a funny old business, publication day. Particularly when it’s your third book and you’re writing a fourth, and the deadline is looming.
For your first novel you go out and have a long, boozy lunch, ‘possibly’ followed by an ill-advised walk along the seafront. Your second might see you nipping out to the pub and perhaps sharing a bottle or two of champagne in the evening with a couple of mates.… read more
OK, so I know it doesn’t look much different to the book in the photograph on my last but one post, but believe me, this is a different thing altogether.
They arrived a couple of days ago, a big box of them: beautiful, pristine, gorgeous and smelling as brand new books should.
It’s the finished trade paperback of my new novel TARNISHED, and, unlike the bound proof, it shouldn’t have any typos or errors. I am bracing myself to go through it and check, but as I’m loath to spoil the illusion of perfection it gives me as I flick through it today, perhaps I’ll put my Jonathan Franzen moment off until tomorrow.… read more
Photo by Darren Cool for Connors Brighton
Last week I ran a three-hour MA class on plotting at City University. Apart from being one of the scariest things I have ever said yes to (and I admit this as a constant yes-person), planning the session coincided with a small sea-change in my working process.
If you have even glanced at some of my previous posts, you will have gleaned that, in NaNoWriMo parlance, I am a pantser, not a plotter.… read more
This is one of the most thrilling moments in the life of an author. Well, I suppose winning a major literary prize – say the Booker – might almost be up there… It’d be good to find out.
But really! Back down to earth, Crouch. This is the moment. You have spent the past year grappling with the contents of your mind, trying to give this story you have to tell shape and form and voice, feeling sometimes exhilarated, more often downhearted, wilting with guilt about leaving it alone for more than a day, feeling sick if youdon’t hit your deadlines; dreaming and thinking and scribbling and writing and writing and rewriting and cutting and slaying.… read more
Here’s to a restful holiday and a peaceful, yet exciting, new year.
Crouch family card. Inspired by this.
I’ve looked back at 2012 and answered Vic Watson’s questions on her great book blog, Elementary Watson – have a look at it here.
The Street in Tankerton
Last week, Rosanna Ley tagged me in her blog for this, which is a sort of chain blog thing, where you answer questions about your next book and tag five other writers to take up from you. It’s a great idea, but I’m suffering from mathematics, because practically everyone I know has already done it.
So I’m not able to pass it on to quite five, but I hope you’ll take a look at the blogs of the lovely writers at the end of this article, who should be posting within a week (but it is the holiday season, so perhaps we can be a bit more lenient about timescale than we might normally be).… read more
When I finished the very first draft of my first novel Cuckoo at the end of NaNoWriMo 2008, even I knew that I needed to do a lot of work to get it into a shape where I could show it to anyone else. After all, it had only taken me thirty days to produce. The pants to pearls ratio was pretty high.
So I worked on it for another ten months, until it was the best it could possibly be.… read more
And this is a bit how I feel after emerging from two months of heavy-duty editing/major surgery on novel #3, which I can now happily announce is to be called TARNISHED.
I’ve been working on Editor Leah’s brilliant and comprehensive notes on my first draft, as well as a bundle of rather more haphazard and gut-based queries of my own.
I had fully intended to post weekly with lessons learned while editing, but I found it quite difficult to lift my head from what I was doing.… read more
